New England Biz Law Update

Law firms that think they are adequately covered for cybersecurity risks may want to think again. A firm’s insurer may have slipped an exclusion for data breaches into the general liability policy the firm has been renewing year after year. ...

Lawyers investigating whether an out-of-state defendant’s operation of a website provides a basis for suing the party in local federal court will find few bright-line rules coming from decisions issued in the 1st Circuit. A survey of recent opinions by ...

A car dealership could not enforce a policy banning employees from wearing pins, insignia and “message clothing” in the workplace, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in a split decision. The dealership petitioned for review of a decision ...

A class-action waiver in a mandatory arbitration agreement between a Domino’s Pizza franchisee and its employees could not be enforced against delivery drivers asserting wage and tip law violations, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled. The plaintiff was a ...

For many years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and others have complained that lease accounting standards are not transparent enough, allowing too many off-balance-sheet lease transactions to occur, which are not properly disclosed to investors. New and dramatic changes ...

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division recently issued a controversial new Administrator’s Interpretation detailing the division’s views on “joint employment” under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. Notably, in ...

With the explosion of employment litigation — in particular, wage and hour lawsuits — many employers are turning to mandatory arbitration agreements as a strategy to keep defense costs down and avoid class actions. But as more and more companies ...

Massachusetts is the American birthplace of the jury system. Each year, residents of the commonwealth serve as jurors and collectively render decisions that directly impact members of their community. In certain instances, their verdicts send powerful messages and drive social ...

In the current Massachusetts legislative session, a number of bills are pending that have the potential to increase employee protections and, in turn, impose further burdens on employers. Covering such varied areas as social media privacy, non-competition agreements and workplace ...

The explosive growth of the so-called “litigation finance” industry is a game-changer in the civil practice arena. The New York Times Magazine recently documented the rise of this industry and described it as “transformational.” One litigation financing entity, Gerchen Keller, ...