Hunton Retail Law Resource

On August 6, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved new Nasdaq rules (Rules 5605(f) and Rule 5606) aimed at advancing diversity among board members of Nasdaq-listed companies and increasing disclosure of diversity statistics. Nasdaq’s new rules underscore the increasing attention in recent years in addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues at the board level and creating new compliance obligations for Nasdaq-listed companies.

The CPSC’s nine-year saga over magnet sets has finally concluded.  Magnet sets are clusters of small, separable, magnetic balls that a consumer can rearrange into countless shapes.  In 2012, a distributor refused to voluntarily recall the magnet sets, forcing the CPSC to file an administrative complaint alleging that the magnet sets were defective and presented a substantial ingestion hazard to young children.  In 2017, the CPSC concluded that the magnet sets posed a substantial product hazard that cannot be mitigated by package warnings and ordered the distributor to recall the magnet sets.  The distributor sued in federal court to block the CPSC’s order.  After multiple appeals, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately agreed with the CPSC.  Thus, this month the CPSC issued a rare mandatory recall of 10 million magnet sets.  The recall noted that two children who had ingested the magnets from the magnet sets required surgery to remove them and a 19-month-old child died after ingesting similar high-powered magnets.  The CPSC also issued a warning to consumers about the dangers of high-powered magnets, noting that from 2009 to 2018, there was an estimated 4,500 cases of children from 11 months old to 16 years old who were treated in US hospitals for ingestion of high-powered magnets.

This year, like last, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an extremely active hurricane season. As we write this alert, the Gulf Coast, Mid-Atlantic, New York, and New England regions are just now realizing the devastation Ida has left in her path. Now is the time to ensure your insurance program is hurricane-ready. As reported in the client alert linked below, our insurance coverage team provides critical steps that you should take now to ensure that you protect your assets and maximize recovery in the unfortunate event of a hurricane claim.

As reported on the Hunton Insurance Recovery blog, Hunton product liability and mass tort attorneys Elizabeth Reese and Alexandra Brisky Cunningham and insurance attorney Latosha Ellis recently published an article in Risk Management discussing key lessons from Peloton’s Tread+ Recall.

As reported on the Hunton Andrews Kurth Privacy & Information Security Law Blog, on August 16, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that Pearson plc (“Pearson”), a publicly traded British multinational educational publishing and services company, agreed to pay a $1 million civil penalty in a settlement related to charges that Pearson misled investors about a 2018 data breach resulting in the theft of millions of student records. The SEC’s order found that Pearson made material misstatements and omissions about the data breach in a report furnished to the SEC and in a media statement.

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (“CARU”), a part of BBB National Programs (“BBBNP”), released its revised Children’s Advertising Guidelines earlier this month. These new Guidelines will go into effect in January 2022 and contain some notable changes.

In May of 2021, the CDC issued guidance that fully vaccinated individuals could stop wearing masks and observing social distancing in most indoor and outdoor settings.  However, in the following months, the delta variant of COVID-19 has presented a resurgence in cases across the country.  This uptick forced the CDC to reevaluate its guidance to again recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks in certain indoor public spaces, especially considering many of these COVID spikes are occurring in the least vaccinated areas of the United States.

In the US, NIL rights (name, image, and likeness) are grouped under the right of publicity, which generally “prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an individual’s name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one’s persona. It gives an individual the exclusive right to license the use of their identity for commercial promotion.” NIL rules allow athletes to profit off their personal brands with promotions for various services and products through social media posts, appearances, sponsorships, autograph sales, endorsement deals and private training classes or camps.  Prior to the introduction of these laws, college athletes could not endorse products or services, under any circumstances.

Environmental justice (“EJ”) is a central focus of the Biden administration’s environmental agenda. On Day One in January, the administration emphasized the importance of EJ in the federal government’s efforts to tackle climate change and to address the disparate impact of decisions affecting natural resources. In addition, many states are implementing their own EJ requirements. In the wake of issuance of new and enhanced EJ policies by both the federal government and states, it behooves lawyers in multiple disciplines to account for EJ issues in their legal practice.

In response to a challenge by animal rights organization Animal Outlook, the NAD has determined  that Butterball, LLC should discontinue several ad claims and slogans for its “all natural” turkeys.