New England Biz Law Update

Consumer protection attorneys are lauding a proposed federal rule that would effectively ban class action waivers in arbitration clauses included in new contracts for financial services. At the same time they are bracing for a wave of legal challenges by ...

Law firms that think they are adequately covered for cybersecurity risks may want to think again. A firm’s insurer may have slipped an exclusion for data breaches into the general liability policy the firm has been renewing year after year. ...

Lawyers investigating whether an out-of-state defendant’s operation of a website provides a basis for suing the party in local federal court will find few bright-line rules coming from decisions issued in the 1st Circuit. A survey of recent opinions by ...

Management-side lawyers claim the new federal rules bolstering disclosure requirements for third parties that advise employers in opposing union-organizing campaigns impermissibly interfere with the attorney-client relationship. The U.S. Department of Labor last month announced long-awaited amendments to its so-called “persuader ...

The co-founder of an investment management company, who is the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, is not entitled to the corporation’s attorney-client communica­tions even though he claims they are necessary for his ad­vice-of-counsel defense, a U.S. District ...

A bank manager’s unauthorized review and use of privileged emails detailing his former employer’s litigation strategy warranted the dismissal of his lawsuit over breach of his employment contract, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled. The plaintiff, John C. Ponte, ...

  It’s surely no fun getting grilled by lawyers from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But Carlos R. Garza insists he was positively “frightened” when he was called to testify at the SEC’s regional office in Boston on Aug. ...

A federal court in Massachusetts could exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state employer sued for breach of an employment contract by a sales representative hired to work out of his Wayland home, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ...

A limited liability company whose owners failed to disclose that they were acting as the LLC’s agents in negotiating the sale of a purebred dog could not recover damages for breach of contract, the Massachusetts District Court’s Appellate Division has ...

Shareholders were not entitled to the disclosure of privileged communications between a technology company and the company’s outside counsel concerning a proposed merger when they later sued over the terms of the completed deal, a judge in the Massachusetts Superior ...