New England Biz Law Update

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 ...

Is encryption the answer?

The increased use of electronic discovery has resulted in a new cottage industry of sorts – e-discovery special masters. A special master is a parajudicial officer appointed to assist courts, such as by taking testimony or advising judges as a ...

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 ...