New England Biz Law Update

Complying with the upcoming requirements of the Massachusetts Paid Family Medical Leave Act (“PFMLA”) continues to be a bit of a moving target. The Department of Family and Medical Leave (“DFML”) is providing regular updates that address employer questions and ...

The SEC this month voted to propose amendments to the definitions of “accelerated filer” and “large accelerated filer,” which are used to determine, among other things, the filing deadlines for periodic reports and the requirement for providing an audit of ...

Deferred compensation payments are due to one of your former executives, but the former executive is nowhere to be found. You know that the IRS has strict timing rules for payments subject to Code Section 409A (but maybe not as strict ...

Every year, employers with 100 or more employees (and certain federal contractors) must submit a completed EEO-1 form to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEO-1 provides demographic information about the workforce, sorted by job category, including race, sex and ethnicity.  ...

Does the adage “no good deed goes unpunished” apply to employers that fail to pay wages to hourly employees during volunteer events? Not necessarily, according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Opinion Letter. Per the Opinion Letter, to ...

The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed a rule revising and clarifying the responsibilities of employers in joint-employer arrangements that features a new four-factor test for determining joint-employer status. The inquiry under the proposed rule focuses on whether the alleged joint ...

On March 22, a federal judge permitted an Ohio man’s class action lawsuit to proceed against Ford Motor Company.  The lawsuit alleges the company discriminated against disabled job applicants because its online job application wasn’t fully accessible.  In the past, ...

The Massachusetts Wage Act provides that an employee who “prevails” in an action to recover unpaid wages “shall … be awarded the costs of the litigation and reasonable attorneys’ fees.” This “fee-shifting” provision is an exception to well-established “American Rule” under which ...

Over the last decade, courts around the country have been asked to decide whether ERISA preempts state slayer statutes – state laws that prohibit a murderer from collecting benefits as the beneficiary of the victim’s estate or as the surviving ...

In Lukas v. Unidine Corp., et al., Judge Davis held that, under the Massachusetts Wage Act, G.L.c. 149, §148, employee commissions can be conditioned on receipt of customer payments on which the commissions are based. Judge Davis found that the Wage Act ...