New England Biz Law Update

A number of pending cases in New England and before the U.S. Supreme Court could potentially have a significant impact on businesses in our region.

All in all, joint-defense agreements help level the playing field when addressing SEC investigations and securities enforcement proceedings and prosecutions. However, members of the groups that employ these agreements must be mindful of their limitations that could lead to the loss of protection of the attorney-client privilege or potential disqualification of counsel.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently told a Senate panel the Justice Department has replaced the controversial “McNulty memorandum” – which outlines federal prosecutors’ ability to encourage corporate defendants to waive the attorney-client privilege in order to cut a better ...

In overseas employee is protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provisions, a U.S. District Court judge in New York recently decided in an apparent first impression ruling. In O’Mahony v. Accenture (No. 07-7916), Rosemary O’Mahony, a foreign citizen, sued the U.S. ...

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 ...

The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in a case raising the issue of when, if ever, employees can bring discrimination-based retaliation claims under 42 U.S.C. §1981. In CBOCS West v. Humphries, No. 06-1431, the Department of Justice urged the ...

In trio of decisions, court rules state tort claims, regulations trumped by federal law

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 ...

Employees are increasingly resorting to class actions to claim money for unused vacation time when their employment ends, and some recent settlements should give employers pause for thought. In December, Target Corp. agreed to settle a lawsuit with approximately 270,000 ...

A recently filed trademark suit could potentially curtail online advertisers from using other companies’ trademarks to trigger web advertisements for their company. This occurs when an advertiser pays a search engine, such as Google, to have links to its company’s ...