The U.S. Supreme Court capped off its latest term by handing two key victories to corporations seeking to avoid being sued in plaintiff-friendly state courts. In Bristol–Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, the Supreme Court held that California ...
Read More »Duty of LLC’s attorneys reaches non-client minority
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has found that lawyers for a limited liability company could be sued for breaching a fiduciary duty to the LLC’s minority members despite the lack of an attorney-client relationship. Counsel for the LLC were accused of ...
Read More »Suit to enforce non-compete must be heard in California
A Massachusetts employer’s claims for breach of a non-compete agreement must be litigated in California where the defendant lives and worked for the plaintiff, notwithstanding a Massachusetts forum selection clause in the employment contract, a Superior Court judge has found. ...
Read More »Despite Facebook post, worker can get unemployment benefits
In a ruling examining the interplay between social media and the workplace, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has held in a split decision that there was insufficient evidence to show an employee’s Facebook post was “connected with his work” so ...
Read More »Nurse injured driving home for weekend entitled to comp
The “going-and-coming” rule did not apply to bar the workers’ compensation claim of a nurse who sustained serious injuries in an accident that occurred when she was driving home for the weekend during the course of a temporary job assignment ...
Read More »No bankruptcy jurisdiction over severance pay claims
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that two corporate executives of a bankrupt hospital could not bring a claim in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for severance payments. The 1st Circuit upheld a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling that ...
Read More »Pre-judgment interest OK’d in Wage Act suit
Employees who brought a successful class action against their employer for violation of the Wage Act are entitled to statutory pre-judgment interest on their lost pay and benefits, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has found. The SJC also decided, however, ...
Read More »Bar assesses Supreme Court’s nixing of structured dismissal
Bankruptcy attorneys see the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision rejecting a “structured dismissal” in a trucking company’s Chapter 11 case as potentially having a greater impact than the narrow holding might suggest. In Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., a Delaware ...
Read More »General contractor liable for ‘loss of productivity’ by sub
A “no-damages-for-delay” clause in a construction contract did not bar claims for additional labor costs incurred by a subcontractor due to loss of productivity resulting from the general contractor’s failure to manage the project efficiently, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has ...
Read More »Company acquisition leads to non-compete confusion
Whether an acquiring company will be able to enforce an employee non-compete agreement entered into by its predecessor will have everything to do with how its acquisition is structured, a pair of recent decisions by a judge in the Massachusetts ...
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