Tuesday, January 17, 2017

A Preliminary Calendar of 2017 Conferences and Meetings

              2017 Conferences and Meetings
               January

American Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting
Jan 3-7, San Francisco

SHOT
January 17-20, Las Vegas

American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting
January 22-26, Seattle

American Association for the Advancement of Science’ Science and Human Rights Coalition Meeting: The Human Right to Water
January 26-27, Washington, DC

New York Times Travel Show
January 27 - 29 

February

American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Feb 13-18, New Orleans

Medical Group Management Association Financial Management and Payer Contracting Conference
Feb. 19-21, Las Vegas



Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
Feb 19-23, Orlando

March

National Arts Education Association
March 2-4, New York City

AHIP’s National Health Policy Conference
March 8-9, Washington, DC

AHIP’s National Conference on Individual and Small Group Markets
March 9-10, DC

Amnesty International General Meeting
March 10-12, Albuquerque

Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer
March 12-15, National Harbor MD

American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions
March 17-19, Washington, DC

BIO-Europe Spring Conference
March 20-22, Barcelona

Aging in America
March 20–24, Chicago

American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists Psychiatry Update
March 30- April 1, Chicago

National Science Teachers Association National Convention
March 30- April 2, Los Angeles

April

American Association for Cancer Research
April 1-5, Washington, DC

American Medical Association (with the Medical Group Management Association) Collaborate in Practice Conference
April 9-11, Chicago

Risk and Insurance Management Society
April 23-26, Philadelphia

The Federal Laboratory Consortium National Meeting, 
April 25-27, San Antonio

American Institute of Architects Convention
April 27-29, Orlando

Society of American Business Editors and Writers
April 27-29, Seattle

The 20th Anniversary Annual National Firearms Law Seminar 
April 28, Atlanta

May

World Drug Safety Congress USA 2015
May 3-4, Philadelphia

Digestive Disease Week
May 6-9, Chicago

American Society of Microbiology Clinical Virology Symposium
May 7-10, Savannah

Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions 
May 10-13, New Orleans

American College Health Association Annual Meeting
May 30- June 3, Austin

June

American Society of Microbiology’s Microbe 2017
(Integrating ASM's General Meeting and ICAAC)
June 1-5, New Orleans

ASCO
June 2-6, Chicago

America’s Health Insurance Plans Institute and Expo
June 7-9, Austin

Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo
June 14-16, New York City

International Society for Stem Cell Research Annual Meeting
June 14-17, Boston

BIO
June 19-22, San Diego

July

Annual Association of Black Psychologists International Convention
July 19-23, Houston

GynecologicOncology 2017
July 20-21, Chicago

International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science
July 23-26, Paris

August

National Lawyers Guild Convention
August 2-6, Washington, DC

American Psychological Association
August 3-6, Washington, DC

American Bar Association Annual Meeting
August 10-15, New York City

September

AHIP National Conferences on Medicare and Medicaid and Dual Eligibles Summit
Sept. 24-28, Washington, DC

October

Infectious Disease Week
Oct 4-8, San Diego

American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress
Oct. 22-26, San Diego

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Oct. 23-28, 2017, Washington, DC


CHEST Annual Meeting
Oct 28-Nov 1, Toronto

American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week
Oct 31-Nov 5, New Orleans

November

Association of American Law Schools Faculty Recruitment Conference
November 2 – 4, Washington, DC

American Public Health Association
Nov 4-8, Atlanta

American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium
Nov 4- 8, Washington DC

American Heart Association
Nov 11-15, Anaheim CA

December

San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
Dec. 5-9



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Thursday, January 5, 2017

Which 2017 Conferences and Meetings are Most Important to You?

As 2017 gets rolling, I am in the process of creating a list of this year's medical conferences and meetings, and other noteworthy events, as I do each year around this time.

I am very interested to hear from visitors: which are the most important or newsworthy meetings to you and your organization? (My contact information is in the sidebar).

I should add that I am also interested in finding opportunities, especially between now and June 1, 2017.

Thanks, and I hope I may look forward to hearing from you!
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Hello everyone, and Happy New Year. I am pleased to say that I had many articles published in a number of magazines and journals last year. A partial list of my 2016 publications follows. Constitutional law, in particular, is a subject I would like to write more about; and I greatly enjoying writing about medicine, especially because I love learning about medicine.

A Compelling Legal History of a Contemporary Civil Rights Catastrophe (Book review: Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State by Karen J. Greenberg)
Illinois State Bar Association’s HUMAN RIGHTS Newsletter, October 2016

Large Database Study Finds 11 Genes Associated with Increased Ovarian Cancer Risk
TARGETED ONCOLOGY, June 9, 2016

Population Health Management- Worth the Effort?
HIMSS EUROPE INSIGHTS, Vol. 4, no. 3, p. 22

Moving toward personalized medicine for melanoma
DERMATOLOGY TIMES, Jan 7, 2016

Risk Factors for Melanoma and Genetic Testing
DERMATOLOGY TIMES, January 7, 2016

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Tuesday, January 3, 2017

This is a cross-posting from my legal commentary blog

(from www.otrompkescommentaries.blogspot.com)


Three Cheers for New York City’s New Freelance Contract Law


by John Otrompke

It may have been buried in the tumult following this fall’s election, but New York City passed landmark social reform legislation in November, which may help to assure that the city continues to be a remarkably decent place to be creative and independent.

The Freelance Isn’t Free Act (FIFA), which became law on Nov. 16, makes significant changes to traditional contract law, and with but one exception, it probably doesn’t raise any major issues under the U.S. Constitution.

While FIFA falls short of the more thorough redistribution of economic power I favor, FIFA should nonetheless be helpful to independent contractors, and is worthy of celebration.

FIFA’s Economic Rationale

FIFA is designed to protect independent contractors; indeed, the law was motivated, in part, by the growth of self-employed workers as a economic sector.
According to some researchers, for example, more than 14.8 million people (constituting more than 10% of workers in the U.S.) were self-employed in 2014. The sector was growing at a rate of 5.4% per year. (1)

Indeed, FIFA is one of a number of laws addressing contract law and independent contractors which governments in New York state have mulled in recent years. Other examples have included the Construction Industry Fair Play Act (2014), the New York State Commercial Goods Transportation Industry Fair Play Act, and Assembly Bill 2539 (2016), which concerns modeling agencies.

Many factors combine to render freelancers vulnerable to unfair contract negotiations. However, contract law applies to almost everyone in our society, and is elegantly simple in design. Therefore, it is useful to learn a little bit of it. 

Basically, in our society, having an enforceable contract just requires an offer, acceptance, and consideration.

In layperson’s terms, that just means that both sides agree that there should be a deal, and each side agrees to do something, or give something, of value in exchange for it. In some cases, these critical requirements can even be established through a series of emails.

Nor does a contract even necessarily have to be in writing, though there are a few exceptions, which were created by a law passed in England in 1677, called ‘the Statute of Frauds.’ Exceptions, or types of contracts that have to be in writing to be enforceable, include contracts for marriage, or for the sale of land, or for the sale of goods worth more than $300, or for work which cannot be performed in less than a year, among a couple of others.

How Does FIFA Change Contract Law?

FIFA changes that rule, but it does so in a way that requires the client to assume a little bit of the freelancer’s burden. FIFA requires contracts for work worth more than $800 to be in writing; but it doesn’t appear to render such a contract which is not in writing unenforceable; instead, it penalizes the client by allowing the freelancer to sue them for $200 per violation. 

Perhaps FIFA may even apply to a contract that specifies a “kill fee,” or that claims to give the client a right to “cancel” the agreement at will; because such agreements lack what is known as “mutuality of obligation,” such a document could be considered a ‘non-contract,’ and so open up the client to FIFA liability. 

  And FIFA also contains a prohibition against retaliation, which means that if an independent contractor sues a client for doing business without a written contract, perhaps they could assert a right to future business if they’ve done a good job.

But probably the biggest change to contract law made by FIFA is that it creates a cause of action for double damages for breach. One of the things that makes it hard to be a freelancer in much of the country is that conventional contract law may sometimes only allow an individual to recover the amount they were promised. Hopefully, another FIFA provision, which can make the client pay a freelancer’s attorney fees, will also make it easier to go to court, and thus, make it easier for independent contractors to stay in business.

All in all, FIFA enacts a wide variety of remedies, some of which are available to individuals, while others are available to the City Department of Consumer Affairs, which may pursue civil penalties of up to $25,000.

Of course, there are limitations in the law: it doesn’t apply to doctors, lawyers, or salespersons, for example, and its effective date was delayed for six months.  

FIFA is Immensely Beneficial and Probably Constitutional

As mentioned earlier, while FIFA makes some dramatic changes to traditional American contract law, for the most part, the changes are unlikely to have constitutional implications (with one exception, which is soon to be discussed).

Why is that? After all, you might think, Article I, section 10, clause 1, of the American Constitution contains an explicit clause referring to contracts. 

For a brief period shortly the Civil War, this clause (known as the “Bills of Attainder clause”) was even referred to as “our Bill of Rights in miniature against the states[.]” (2).

The clause reads “No State shall...pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts[.]” 

But much of its import was read out of the Constitution in the Depression era, following a famous political maneuver named by newspapers (and forever after referred to by law professors as) “the switch in time that saved the nine.”

(As an interesting side note, while FDR’s court-packing scheme of the Great Depression era is famous among American legal scholars, it was far from the only time a government has resorted to such measures. Historians, for example, may remember the threat to pack the House of Lords made in 1832 by the British Crown, which had the power of making new peers, and thereby resolved the crisis over the Reform Act, which had been stalled by the bicameral nature of Parliament). (3)

Prior to the Depression and Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme, the Supreme Court had often held that the constitution makes it difficult for the federal government to intervene in contractual matters, good motives notwithstanding. 

At the time, the drive to radically redistribute America’s financial power and resources was suppressed, at least temporarily. And when the Depression struck, it became apparent that there was a real place in society for social welfare measures. The jurisprudential situation came to a head in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 US 379 (1937), in which the Supreme Court upheld early minimum wage laws.

Thereafter, many social welfare laws in the 20th century changed contract law.

It is also important to note that some state constitutions still pay respect to the traditional view that the right to earn a living is a fundamental constitutional right. While 
such “right to work” laws are sometimes characterized as union-busting schemes, there are some good things about the concept, too. (In particular, such a principle might make it easier to get government-issued professional licenses, take some of the mystery out of the process, and take away a certain amount of governmental discretion in licensure matters).

Conclusion

So if most of FIFA is likely to pass constitutional muster under contemporary views of the Obligation of Contracts clause and the 14th Amendment selective incorporation process, then what is the exception? 

There is one other interesting provision of FIFA that I have not yet mentioned, which in some cases makes it a criminal misdemeanor for a client to fail to pay a freelancer. 

If this provision is ever enforced, are we headed back to the era of debtor’s prison? While some say that era never really disappeared, the Supreme Court has put 
certain limitations on imprisonment for debt. In Bearden v Georgia, 461 US 660 (1983), 
the Supreme Court held that a debtor’s imprisonment violates the Fourteenth Amendment in the absence of evidence that the person being prosecuted willfully chose not to pay the debt.

FIFA makes significant changes in the traditional law of contract, which are likely to redound to the benefit of independent contractors. With the possible exception of the law’s criminal provision, FIFA will probably will not raise any constitutional issues.

The main question which remains is whether other jurisdictions will follow suit.

John J. Otrompke, JD, is a legal commentator, and was a 2015 faculty applicant at the Association of American Law Schools faculty recruitment conference. He has never practiced law. He has worked as a freelance journalist, and has been associated with Chicago Working Journalists (which is an effort involving the unionization of freelance writers). 

1 Maher M, “Freelance Isn’t Free: The Rise of the Abandoned Workforce,” p. 14 Thesis paper, CUNY Baruch College, Spring 2016 (on file with the author).

2 See, for example, Cummings v Missouri, 71 U.S. 277 (1867); Ex Parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 (1866).

3 Bagehot, W, “The English Constitution,” p. 79 (Oxford University Press, 2009). 

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