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May 12, 2011 -
Employment Law Alert: Expanding Federal Disabilities Law New EEOC regulations that become effective May 24, following amendments by Congress to the Americans with Disabilities Act, will make important changes to federal disabilities law that will have a significant impact for employers. SRBC's employment lawyers summarize the changes in a new Law ...
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September 16, 2010 -
Product Liability Alert: Otis Elevator Liable for Defective Chinese Escalator In a new Law Alert, SRBC's product liability group discusses a recent decision of the Massachusetts Appeals Court adopting a rule that makes the licensor of a trademark used on a product liable for personal injuries resulting from defects in the product--even if the licensor did not itself make or ...
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September 14, 2010 -
New Massachusetts Laws on Personnel Files, Criminal Records In a new two-part Law Alert, SRBC's employment law group explains two recent pieces of Massachusetts legislation of significance to employers. Massachusetts law now requires that an employer notify an employee within ten days of placing negative information in the employee's personnel ...
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September 09, 2010 -
Federal Employment Law: New Rights for Nursing Mothers As SRBC's employment group explains in a new Law Alert, a little-noticed provision of the recent federal healthcare legislation granted new rights to breastfeeding mothers in the workplace, and the U.S. Department of Labor has now added its guidance for employers on the requirements of the new ...
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August 31, 2010 -
First Circuit: Plaintiff Must Show Actual Harm From Pre-Employment Inquiry About Disability The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has upheld the dismissal of a discrimination claim by a job applicant stemming from the prospective employer's inquiries about a prior workplace injury and worker's compensation claim. Although the inquiry violated the Massachusetts Fair Employment ...
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August 25, 2010 -
Massachusetts Court Limits Reach of Maternity-Leave Statute, Holds Employer's Attorneys Liable for Malpractice In a new Law Alert, SRBC's employment law group writes about a recent decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Global NAPs, Inc. v. Awiszus) which, in the context of a legal malpractice dispute, construed a Massachusetts statute that affords protection to employees who take ...
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August 03, 2010 -
Massachusetts Court Announces New Standard for Snow-and-Ice Cases Since 1883, the rule in Massachusetts has been that a property owner cannot be liable to someone who slips and falls on a "natural accumulation" of snow or ice on his property. Natural accumulations were taken to be one of the commonly shared risks of winter in New England. Thus, a ...
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February 24, 2010 -
New Massachusetts Data-Security Regulations Take Effect In a new Law Alert, SRBC's Jean Musiker writes about Massachusetts regulations taking effect March 1 which impose obligations on companies and others who maintain personal information about Massachusetts residents, including social security and bank-account numbers.
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August 09, 2009 -
Appellate Court: Employer Must Follow Employee Handbook Employers who issue handbooks of policies and procedures to at-will employees frequently include disclaimers emphasizing that the contents are meant as guidelines and not terms of an employment contract. A Massachusetts appellate court recently found such a disclaimer ineffective, and upheld a jury ...
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August 09, 2009 -
Massachusetts High Court: Patent Lawyer Has Lien Against Client's Patent Massachusetts has an attorney’s-lien statute providing that protects a lawyer who “appears for a client” in a court action or “any proceeding before any state or federal department, board or commission.” The lawyer obtains an automatic “lien for his reasonable fees and expenses”—a lien ...
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July 10, 2009 -
First Circuit: Debtor Can't Sue Its Bank for Mismanagement Under "Instrumentality" Theory A third-party creditor of a defunct company may sometimes seek to hold the company's bank liable for contributing to its failure, by relying on a common-law "instrumentality" theory. Where permitted, such a theory allows direct recovery against a lender who asserts such extensive control over a ...
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July 10, 2009 -
Has The Appeals Court Shifted Course on Legal Malpractice Statute of Limitations? A continuing source of uncertainty in legal malpractice cases has been application of the "discovery rule" in deciding when the statute of limitations for a client's malpractice claim begins to run. As SRBC's William Boesch writes in a new Law Alert, this uncertainty is unlikely to diminish after a ...
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July 01, 2009 -
Employer Must Pay Discharged Employees for Unused Vacation Time The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently held that an employer violates the Massachusetts Wage Act when it fails to pay a discharged employee for unused vacation time. SRBC's Jean Musiker and Andrea Studley Knowles discuss the decision (Electronic Data Systems Corp. v. Attorney ...
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May 27, 2009 -
Massachusetts Court Limits Fee-Shifting in Insurance Disputes In a dispute between a liability-insurance provider and an insured over whether the company must provide a legal defense to its insured in a lawsuit by a third party, the insurance company runs the risk that it may ultimately be required to pay not ...
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April 30, 2009 -
Employment Law: New COBRA Amendments Explained In a new Law Alert, SRBC's Jean Musiker and Andrew Kanter explain Washington's recent amendments to COBRA, the federal law that allows terminated employees to maintain health-insurance benefits. The amendments are part of the federal government's efforts to assist workers affected by the ...
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March 25, 2009 -
Superior Court: No Legal Malpractice Damages for Loss of Stock-Market Value SRBC's William Boesch writes about a recent Massachusetts superior court decision rejecting a $60 million damages claim in a legal malpractice case, which was based on a decline in the client company's stock-market value after the SEC suspended trading in its stock. William is co-chair of the ...
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March 25, 2009 -
First Circuit: True Statement May Be Libelous If Made With "Ill Will" Jean Musiker, chair of SRBC's employment law group, and Andrew Kanter discuss the First Circuit's remarkable recent ruling in favor of a Staples employee who was fired for falsifying expense reports. The court held that a senior company executive's e-mail notifying employees of the termination ...
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February 12, 2009 -
First Circuit: Court, Not Arbitrator, Must Decide Challenge to Arbitration Clause SRBC's Natasha Lisman and Bill Benson discuss a recent First Circuit decision, Awuah v. Coverall North America, Inc. (Jan. 23, 2009), which holds that even where parties have agreed to arbitrate disputes and to give the arbitrator power to rule on his own jurisdiction, a party's argument ...
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February 03, 2009 -
Court Holds Malpractice Insurer Should Have Defended Lawyer in Sanctions Proceeding SRBC partner William Boesch writes on a recent Pennsylvania federal case holding that a professional liability insurance company that refused to defend a lawyer in a sanctions proceeding, on the ground that sanctions were not "damages" covered by the policy, thereby breached its insurance ...
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January 30, 2009 -
New FMLA Regulations Take Effect New regulations recently took effect relating to the Family and Medical Leave Act. The regulations clarify and renumber some existing regulations, and impose new obligations on employers, employees, and medical providers with respect to FMLA leave. In a new Law Alert, SRBC’s Andrew Kanter ...
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January 26, 2009 -
Winning Arbitration Plaintiff Recovers Statutory Attorney's Fees The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently upheld an arbitrator's award of attorney's fees to a prevailing plaintiff under the state's public construction bond statute, even where the parties' arbitration agreement did not authorize such an award. SRBC's Bill Benson analyzes the decision in ...
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December 19, 2008 -
Document Firm Gets No E&O Coverage For Release of Client's Documents SRBC's Serena Madar writes about the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent decision in Finn v. National Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, which upheld an insurer's reliance on the trade-secrets exclusion in an errors-and-omissions liability policy to bar coverage in a dispute over ...
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December 10, 2008 -
First Circuit Allows New Lawsuit After Declaratory Judgment SRBC's Samuel Furgang discusses the First Circuit's recent decision in Andrew Robinson Int'l, Inc. v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co. that an insured who prevailed in a declaratory-judgment action against its insurer could then start a new lawsuit alleging violation of unfair ...
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July 31, 2008 -
SJC Says Purchase of Non-Compliant Product is Sufficient Harm for Consumer-Protection Claim In a proposed consumer class action involving allegedly defective door handles on certain Ford vehicles, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has made clear that a consumer's purchase of a product that allegedly did not comply with federal safety standards would be a sufficient harm to ...
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July 01, 2008 -
SJC Considers Successor Liability After Asset Sale When a corporation sells its assets to another, the general rule in Massachusetts is that the seller's liabilities are not automatically transferred with the assets. The buyer may, of course, agree to assume the seller’s liabilities, or may be deemed to have done so if the effort to avoid ...
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July 01, 2008 -
First Circuit Allows Nonsignatories to Enforce Arbitration Clause The First Circuit recently considered an effort by a party to an international commercial agreement with an arbitration clause to block arbitration of a dispute with two nonsignatories, a subsidiary and a corporate officer of the other party to the agreement. In Sourcing Unlimited, ...
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