Public health officers in seven counties of the San Francisco Bay Area issued orders on March 16, 2020 directing residents to shelter in place for three weeks and avoid all non-essential travel and business activities to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus as much as possible. The orders take effect at midnight on March 17, 2020 and are scheduled to last through April 7, 2020 unless otherwise modified.

Since the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus outbreak an international public health emergency in January, there have been more than 105,000 confirmed cases in more than 100 countries, with the majority in China, which has reported nearly 81,000 confirmed cases. In the U.S., as of March 9, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed more than 150 cases and eleven deaths across more than a dozen states.  

When you are a vendor providing goods/services to a customer, the most critical issues in a SOW are those relating to the description of services, payment, and the terms of acceptance. These provisions should be written with clarity and specificity. The remainder of the terms, while important, do not require the same level of detail. To help guide the providing party in its review or preparation of a SOW, consider the following: 

As discussed in Part 1, a SOW should tell a story with enough detail that a person who is unfamiliar with the deal could rely on it to understand the intentions of the parties, including such key terms as products/services, deliverables and pricing.

Statements of Work (SOWs) can easily be considered one of the “workhorses” of commercial contracts, documenting key business terms like price and deliverables between parties who, in many cases, have previously entered into a master services agreement with each other. Regardless of the nomenclature (SOWs, order forms, schedules, exhibits, work orders, etc.), business teams should carefully prepare and/or review a SOW’s first draft to ensure that it accurately captures their intentions and expectations, even if a lawyer will ultimately review it. In this 3-part series, I will explore the role of the SOW and its key provisions for each party. 

In an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the Trump administration has issued a presidential proclamation imposing travel restrictions upon individuals who have recently visited mainland China. Effective February 2, 2020, any non-U.S. citizen who was physically present in mainland China (all areas governed by the People’s Republic of China, excluding Hong Kong and Macau) within 14 days prior to seeking entry to the U.S. will be barred from entry to the U.S., unless exempt as described below. This entry bar will last until terminated by President Trump.

The State of California is taking additional steps to report sexual misconduct and abuse of patients by licensed health care providers. Effective January 1, 2020, Health Care Facilities and Other Entities (defined below) that arrange for services provided by certain licensed healthcare professionals can now be held liable for failing to report sexual misconduct or sexual abuse of their patients by providers.

As discussed in Part I of this series, independent contractor agreements contain a number of key protective provisions, the majority of which are driven by the type of services/work to be performed and the relative risk to each party. These provisions tend to be highly negotiated between the parties, in part due to the fundamental differences in the objectives of each party.