New England Biz Law Update

A life insurance company’s disbursement of death benefits under certain employee-benefit plans via the use of “retained asset accounts,” or RAAs, did not violate its duty of loyalty under ERISA, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The ...

Intellectual property attorneys who challenge decisions before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board say a recent Federal Circuit ruling means they no longer can be barred from introducing new evidence in appeals at the U.S. District Court. Until the Federal ...

Two years after a guidance warning employers against the overly broad use of criminal background checks to screen potential new hires was issued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is drawing renewed criticism from employers, business groups and ...

Lawyers in New England say a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down President Obama’s 2012 recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board threatens to invalidate hundreds of rulings made over an 18-month period. But the ...

An employer could not rely on the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine to block an employee from working for a competitor, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled. The defendant employee — who had been a scientist for plaintiff Boston Scientific, a ...

A recruiting company’s formula for calculating the per diem component of consultants’ wages violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime provision, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. A U.S. District Court judge had awarded the company summary ...

Volatility in the world of shareholder class actions has stoked a debate over whether the lawyers who bring such cases are laudable public watchdogs or stick-up artists. The number of federal securities class actions rose by 14 to 166 in ...

Massachusetts businesses are on pace to report a record number of data breaches in 2014. The revelation can be added to a litany of recent jarring developments that Bay State lawyers say have their clients taking privacy and data security ...

An employee could not bring suit in federal court more than 90 days after receiving a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission despite the fact that he filed a new administrative charge within the 90-day period, the 1st ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a pair of decisions that could make it more difficult to bring patent infringement claims in some circumstances, further hampering suits brought by so-called “patent trolls.” But while the justices’ rulings in Limelight ...