New England Biz Law Update

Even though employment-at-will may be the dominant legal paradigm, any employer who discharges an employee today risks exposure to significant defense costs and potentially large jury verdicts. Perhaps the time is ripe for a comprehensive legislative wrongful discharge statute, the author argues.

If privileged information is disclosed to a third party who shares a “common legal interest” with the client and that person agrees to keep the information confidential, the privilege might not be waived. Agreements to share privileged information with persons ...

Virtual intellectual property owners are facing increasing licensing and infringement issues – the same issues, in fact, that are faced by intellectual property owners in the real world. The virtual world has recently become a popular place for business transactions. ...

In corporate families, the legal department of the parent often provides advice to the subsidiaries. That arrangement can lead to headaches if later there is a change in control of the subsidiary. Consider the following example. The scenario You are ...

Two new laws in Massachusetts require any person or organization with access to records containing personal information about Massachusetts residents to protect those records.

In a trial where the defense seemed to fold its case after two unsuccessful witnesses, a flight instructor and his student won a $54.5 million verdict for debilitating injuries they suffered in a private airplane crash. The plaintiffs claimed the ...

An Alabama jury awarded $50 million to the family of a man who was killed by an exploding water heater. Richard Krantz, a 55-year-old real-estate broker in Daphne, Ala., was critically injured on July 1, 2005, when he attempted to ...

In the first major punitive damages award since the U.S. Supreme Court placed new limits on punitive damages last February, a Los Angeles jury ordered DaimlerChrysler to pay $5.2 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitives to a ...

Award is part of a $134 million verdict to three women

Nine months before Merck reached a global settlement with thousands of Vioxx plaintiffs, a New Jersey jury awarded one man $47.5 million for a heart attack caused by taking the painkiller drug for just two months. Frederick “Mike” Humeston lost ...