New England Biz Law Update

With several U.S. pharmaceutical companies now conducting large-scale COVID-19 vaccine trials, employment lawyers are beginning to field queries from their corporate clients on whether their employees should be required to take the vaccine once it becomes available. As a general ...

Tagged with: employment law

A private sector union could not use agency fees collected from non-members to pay for lobbying expenses, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has determined. In 2009, intervenor Jeanette Geary, a nurse who had quit the United Nurses & ...

Tagged with: Labor law National Labor Relations Board

An energy company’s insurance covered lost revenue from a town-ordered shutdown of more than 11,000 solar panels in response to a fire that damaged only 88 panels, a U.S. District Court judge has determined. The plaintiff, NextSun Energy Littleton, operated ...

Tagged with: Business interruption insurance Business law

A plaintiff lacked standing to sue her former employer under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act for conducting a background check when she was hired that did not technically comply with the statute’s disclosure requirements, a U.S. District Court judge ...

It was up to an arbitrator and not a judge to determine whether a mandatory arbitration agreement signed by an unpaid intern governed a sex discrimination/retaliation claim that arose after she became a paid employee, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled. ...

Tagged with: Arbitration employment law

A subcontractor that hired field technicians to install cable, phone and internet for Cox Communications customers misclassified the workers as independent contractors, a U.S. District Court judge in Rhode Island has found. Defendant M+M Communications required the workers to attend ...

Tagged with: employment law Fair Labor Standards Act

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by two women against their former employers, concluding at the summary judgment stage that the evidence was insufficient to allow their gender, age and disability discrimination claims to move forward. U.S. ...

A U.S. District Court judge in Rhode Island has found that a sales professional could bring a misrepresentation claim against her former employer for allegedly allowing her to believe certain transactions she closed would count toward incentive bonuses that it ...

A federal judge has found that a local union acted in good faith and therefore did not breach its duty of fair representation in not pursuing arbitration on behalf of a plaintiff member who was terminated from his job for ...

An employer did not discriminate against an employee by firing her for misconduct she attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. Plaintiff Kirstie Trahan allegedly referred to certain co-workers as “bitches” on more ...