New England Biz Law Update

Lawyers are scrambling to advise businesses about new rules that require them to implement procedures to detect and respond to identity theft.

Employers are not prepared for the new ADA Amendments Act that went into effect on Jan.1, some management attorneys warn.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to drastically slash from $2.5 billion to $500 million a punitive damages award against Exxon over the 1989 Valdez oil spill has lawyers assessing whether the ruling will affect punitive damage awards beyond maritime ...

Lawyers across the country are peeking at hidden “metadata” in electronic documents, and state ethics boards are all over the map on whether that practice is permitted. “There have been an increasing number of opinions on the metadata issue just ...

The use of trademarks sold as “keywords” by Google and other search engines to trigger “sponsored links” on the side of a search page continues to be a hot button issue for any business with a website. The dispute is ...

A controversial test that is supposed to detect “malingering” is gaining popularity among defense experts in personal injury, workers’ compensation and other cases. The “Fake Bad Scale” is being offered by medical experts as evidence that plaintiffs are fabricating or ...

For years companies have made mandatory pre-dispute arbitration a boilerplate provision in all contracts, but they are now rethinking the use of mandatory arbitration in business-to-business, consumer class action and employment cases. The reason: An increase in discovery, motions and ...

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that an individual employee who lost money in his 401(k) account could sue under ERISA, lawyers have been weighing the decision’s impact – and they’re split. Some say the case represents a big ...

A new breed of law firms providing “on-demand” in-house legal services is slashing corporate legal bills by as much as 50 percent in some cases. These outfits offer an alternative for companies who don’t want to hire or add a ...

Characterizing a company’s e-discovery violations as “monumental,” a federal judge in California recently imposed $8.5 million in sanctions, yet again demonstrating that in-house counsel must actively assess efforts by their companies to produce requested electronic documents.