New England Biz Law Update

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that an individual employee who lost money in his 401(k) account could sue under ERISA, lawyers have been weighing the decision’s impact – and they’re split. Some say the case represents a big ...

Employees are increasingly resorting to class actions to claim money for unused vacation time when their employment ends, and some recent settlements should give employers pause for thought. In December, Target Corp. agreed to settle a lawsuit with approximately 270,000 ...

A recently filed trademark suit could potentially curtail online advertisers from using other companies’ trademarks to trigger web advertisements for their company. This occurs when an advertiser pays a search engine, such as Google, to have links to its company’s ...

Is encryption the answer?

The increased use of electronic discovery has resulted in a new cottage industry of sorts – e-discovery special masters. A special master is a parajudicial officer appointed to assist courts, such as by taking testimony or advising judges as a ...

For years companies have made mandatory pre-dispute arbitration a boilerplate provision in all contracts, but they are now rethinking the use of mandatory arbitration in business-to-business, consumer class action and employment cases. The reason: An increase in discovery, motions and ...

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has “reached out” to employee invention assignment agreements, ruling they should be interpreted under federal law, not under the state law that governs other clauses in the same agreement. The decision, DDB Technologies, LLC ...

Can an employer restrict its employees from using e-mail for non-job-related solicitations, such as for union activity, if it also permits employees to use e-mail for other non-business purposes? Unionized and non-unionized employers alike have faced this question all too ...

In more than six years investigating and prosecuting potential securities law violations as an enforcement attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, I frequently watched companies and their lawyers make decisions in the spirit of zealous advocacy that the enforcement ...

Employers scrambling to prepare this year