New England Biz Law Update

A limited liability company whose owners failed to disclose that they were acting as the LLC’s agents in negotiating the sale of a purebred dog could not recover damages for breach of contract, the Massachusetts District Court’s Appellate Division has ...

A class action seeking more than $5 million for wage and hour violations should not have been remanded following removal from state to federal court, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided. The plaintiffs, shift supervisors for defendant ...

An insurance agency could not be held liable for an employee who allegedly accessed an accident victim’s personal contact information from a database and passed it on to her boyfriend, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge has decided. The employee’s boyfriend ...

A worker at a high-tech startup who sued the company for misclassifying him as an independent contractor was entitled to have the company’s counterclaims for tortious interference and bad faith dismissed under the anti-SLAPP statute, a Superior Court judge in ...

Shareholders were not entitled to the disclosure of privileged communications between a technology company and the company’s outside counsel concerning a proposed merger when they later sued over the terms of the completed deal, a judge in the Massachusetts Superior ...

A plaintiff limited liability company that engaged in litigation over an asset purchase agreement waived its right to demand arbitration under that agreement, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. “[T]he plaintiff’s belated resort to arbitration was anything ...

A 7-Eleven franchise operator accused of fraud could not continue to use the chain store’s trademarks while contesting the termination of her franchise, a U.S. District Court judge has found. According to the plaintiff, 7-Eleven, Inc., a preliminary injunction was ...

A Canadian company was subject to personal jurisdiction in Massachusetts even though its direct contacts with the state essentially consisted of emails and phone calls to the plaintiff in the breach of contract suit, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of ...

Last month, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley reached across the border into Rhode Island to obtain a $150,000 settlement for violations of Massachusetts and federal data security laws. The consent agreement with Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island illustrates ...

A criminal investigator for Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management could sue the state under the whistleblower statute for actions taken against him after he reported his suspicions about possible misconduct by higher-ranking officials, a Superior Court judge has decided. ...