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Massachusetts
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December 16, 2024
The Biggest Massachusetts High Court Rulings Of 2024
Massachusetts' highest court added two justices this year while taking up several novel legal issues, including one town's effort to phase out the sale of tobacco, a paralyzed Uber rider's fight against arbitration, and a dispute over whether a hospital website's use of tracking cookies violates the state wiretap statute.
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December 13, 2024
Real Estate Recap: New Mapping, Terrorism, What We Learned
Catch up on this past week's key developments by state from Law360 Real Estate Authority — including a new state-by-state mapping tool for real estate practitioners, one BigLaw attorney's view of terrorism liability safeguards for commercial real estate, and takeaways from the multifamily and life sciences sectors in 2024.
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December 13, 2024
J&J Unit Deemed Family Duties A 'Distraction,' Suit Says
A prosthetics company owned by Johnson & Johnson said an employee returning from parental leave had "distractions outside of work" as it gave him negative performance reviews before firing him, according to a suit filed in Massachusetts federal court Friday.
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December 13, 2024
Mass. Law Wipes Out Pandemic Tuition Case Against Tufts
Tufts University on Friday defeated a putative class action seeking tuition refunds for pandemic closures of the Boston-area school's campus, as a Massachusetts federal judge upheld a state law providing immunity to colleges that shut their doors during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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December 13, 2024
'Copycat' Nantucket Wine Event Ordered To Issue Retraction
A Massachusetts liquor distributor was ordered Friday by a federal judge to post a bold-type correction and issue press releases retracting claims that it had acquired and "re-branded" a long-running Nantucket wine and food festival.
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December 13, 2024
Mass. Cannabis Biz Gets Receiver Amid $10M In Debt
A Massachusetts judge on Friday agreed to appoint a receiver to oversee either a sale or liquidation of cannabis grower and retailer Revolutionary Clinics, which owes nearly $10 million to its primary lender and thousands more to landlords and other creditors.
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December 13, 2024
Fight Over $40M Discount For Boston Casino Headed To Trial
A Massachusetts judge declined to toss allegations that Wynn Resorts lied to a landowner to secure a $40 million discount on real estate where the company built the Encore Boston Harbor casino, teeing up a bench trial in the case.
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December 13, 2024
McKinsey To Pay $650M For Work With Opioid Maker Purdue
Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. will pay $650 million to resolve charges related to its work helping Purdue Pharma market and boost sales of OxyContin, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
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December 12, 2024
Moderna Fires Back With Counterclaims In GSK RSV Vax Suit
Moderna Inc. on Thursday lodged counterclaims in Delaware federal court accusing GlaxoSmithKline of failing to develop its own vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, and then "resorting to the courtroom" and GSK's "manipulation of the United States patent system" to go after Moderna.
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December 12, 2024
Anti-Abortion Activists Say Clinic Pushed Bogus Hack Claim
The lawyer for an anti-abortion "pregnancy crisis center" on Thursday accused a Massachusetts abortion provider of knowingly filing a "far-fetched" complaint falsely accusing his clients of computer hacking, after the plaintiffs said they will be dropping those allegations but adding new claims in an amended complaint.
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December 12, 2024
Biden Steel-Deal Block, Walgreens For Sale, And More Rumors
President Biden is reportedly ready to block the U.S. Steel-Nippon merger on national security grounds, pharmacy giant Walgreens is exploring selling itself to private equity firm Sycamore, and cryptocurrency-related trading platform EToro is preparing an initial public offering.
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December 12, 2024
MOVEit Data Breach MDL Survives Dismissal Bid
Progress Software and a group of more than 100 businesses, healthcare providers and government agencies can't end a putative class action over a data breach tied to Progress' MOVEIt file transfer tool, a Massachusetts federal judge said Thursday.
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December 12, 2024
AGs Launch Gun Violence Crackdown With Glock Suits
New Jersey and Minnesota unveiled lawsuits Thursday against Glock Inc. aimed at ending "once and for all" the homemade machine gun industry, marking the start of a crackdown by a coalition of enforcers looking to hold the firearms industry liable for gun violence.
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December 12, 2024
Sam Adams Maker Using 'Draconian' Noncompete, Court Told
A former Boston Beer Co. sales worker told a Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday that the Sam Adams brewer is aggressively enforcing noncompete agreements that don't comply with state law.
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December 11, 2024
Temp Agency Owner Gets Prison For $2M Tax Scheme
A temp agency owner was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after pleading guilty in Massachusetts federal court to paying employees under-the-table wages to avoid $2.1 million in taxes.
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December 11, 2024
Metal Recycler Accused Of Polluting Connecticut Streams
Global industrial recycling firm Sims Metal was hit with a Clean Water Act lawsuit by an environmental watchdog group claiming the company lets stormwater and snow runoff drag metal particles and other pollutants into streams that enter Long Island Sound in greater New Haven, Connecticut.
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December 11, 2024
Developer, Feds Ask Justices To Pass On Offshore Wind Case
The federal government and Vineyard Wind 1 LLC are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a Massachusetts group's latest bid to block the large offshore wind farm taking shape in waters off Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.
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December 11, 2024
Liberty Mutual Accused Of Stalling On $21M Loss Claims
The owners of a Massachusetts metal recycling plant that was severely damaged in an explosion last year say Liberty Mutual is attempting to avoid a $20.8 million payout in part by claiming that the facility, ordered razed by the city of Springfield, could have been repaired instead.
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December 11, 2024
Mass. Prison Fired Pregnant Officer For Vax Refusal, Suit Says
A former Massachusetts corrections officer on Wednesday filed a suit against the state's prison system in federal court, saying she was wrongly denied a religious exemption to its COVID-19 vaccination mandate while she was pregnant, passed over for a promotion and ultimately fired.
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December 10, 2024
AGs Urge FCC To Remove 'Pain' From Customer Service Calls
A coalition of state attorneys general called Tuesday for the Federal Communications Commission to take some of the "pain" out of customer service calls in FCC-regulated industries from internet and voice calls to broadcast satellite.
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December 10, 2024
Mass. Chief Justice Says Courts Must Work To Improve Trust
In an era of declining public confidence in the justice system, Massachusetts' state courts are generally held in high regard for fairness and access, yet they still have work to do, the chief justice of the state's highest court told attorneys on Tuesday.
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December 10, 2024
Biz Owner In $2.8M Worker Tax Scheme Gets 18 Months
A construction company owner who failed to pay $2.8 million in employment taxes by falsely claiming his workers were subcontractors was sentenced to 18 months in prison Tuesday and ordered to pay full restitution, according to Massachusetts federal court documents.
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December 10, 2024
BioNTech, Pfizer Rival Wants Party Flip In COVID Vax IP Fight
German biotech company CureVac asked a Virginia federal judge to flip the positions of the litigants in its COVID-19 vaccine patent fight with rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, saying the case had morphed into an infringement suit involving 10 CureVac patents.
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December 10, 2024
Insurer QBE Settles Suit Over Failed $18M Wind Support Deal
Belgium-based insurer QBE Europe has settled a lawsuit accusing it of wasting available policy limits on pointless litigation rather than make a reasonable offer in a separate $18 million dispute over a failed wind support vessel deal, according to a Tuesday filing.
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December 10, 2024
Advent Says Chancery Rulings End Funeral Co. Suit
Private equity firm Advent International told a Boston federal judge that a heated fraud lawsuit tied to its sale of a Mexican funeral business must be dismissed due to rulings from a Delaware judge upholding agreements it entered with the buyer limiting claims related to the transaction.
Expert Analysis
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Contract Disputes Recap: Facts Differ But Same Rules Apply
Zachary Jacobson and Sarah Barney at Seyfarth examine two decisions illustrating that reliance on a technicality may not save an otherwise untimely appeal, and that enforcement of commercial terms and conditions under a federal supply schedule contract may be possible.
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Series
Spray Painting Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My experiences as an abstract spray paint artist have made me a better litigator, demonstrating — in more ways than one — how fluidity and flexibility are necessary parts of a successful legal practice, says Erick Sandlin at Bracewell.
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Opinion
Judicial Independence Is Imperative This Election Year
As the next election nears, the judges involved in the upcoming trials against former President Donald Trump increasingly face political pressures and threats of violence — revealing the urgent need to safeguard judicial independence and uphold the rule of law, says Benes Aldana at the National Judicial College.
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Series
Riding My Peloton Bike Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Using the Peloton platform for cycling, running, rowing and more taught me that fostering a mind-body connection will not only benefit you physically and emotionally, but also inspire stamina, focus, discipline and empathy in your legal career, says Christopher Ward at Polsinelli.
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Spartan Arbitration Tactics Against Well-Funded Opponents
Like the ancient Spartans who held off a numerically superior Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, trial attorneys and clients faced with arbitration against an opponent with a bigger war chest can take a strategic approach to create a pass to victory, say Kostas Katsiris and Benjamin Argyle at Venable.
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CSA Case Could Shift Intrastate Commercial Cannabis
In Canna Provisions v. Merrick Garland, cannabis companies argue that the Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to intrastate commercial cannabis activity; the Massachusetts federal court's eventual decision will be important to the cannabis industry for several reasons, including that the threat of federal enforcement would disappear overnight, says Hilary Bricken at Husch Blackwell.
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What Recent Study Shows About AI's Promise For Legal Tasks
Amid both skepticism and excitement about the promise of generative artificial intelligence in legal contexts, the first randomized controlled trial studying its impact on basic lawyering tasks shows mixed but promising results, and underscores the need for attorneys to proactively engage with AI, says Daniel Schwarcz at University of Minnesota Law School.
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Litigation Inspiration: A Source Of Untapped Fulfillment
As increasing numbers of attorneys struggle with stress and mental health issues, business litigators can find protection against burnout by remembering their important role in society — because fulfillment in one’s work isn’t just reserved for public interest lawyers, say Bennett Rawicki and Peter Bigelow at Hilgers Graben.
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What FTC's 'Killer Acquisition' Theory Means For Pharma Cos.
The Federal Trade Commission's recent lawsuit to block Sanofi's acquisition of a pharmaceutical treatment developed by Maze Therapeutics builds on previous enforcement actions and could indicate the agency's growing willingness to use its so-called killer acquisition theory against perceived attempts to eliminate nascent competition, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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Series
Skiing Makes Me A Better Lawyer
A lifetime of skiing has helped me develop important professional skills, and taught me that embracing challenges with a spirit of adventure can allow lawyers to push boundaries, expand their capabilities and ultimately excel in their careers, says Andrea Przybysz at Tucker Ellis.
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Think Like A Lawyer: Forget Everything You Know About IRAC
The mode of legal reasoning most students learn in law school, often called “Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion,” or IRAC, erroneously frames analysis as a separate, discrete step, resulting in disorganized briefs and untold obfuscation — but the fix is pretty simple, says Luke Andrews at Poole Huffman.
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Employer Pointers As Wage And Hour AI Risks Emerge
Following the Biden administration's executive order on artificial intelligence, employers using or considering artificial intelligence tools should carefully assess whether such use could increase their exposure to liability under federal and state wage and hour laws, and be wary of algorithmic discrimination, bias and inaccurate or incomplete reporting, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.
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The Pros And Cons Of Protecting AI As Trade Secrets
Despite regulatory trends toward greater transparency of artificial intelligence models, federal policy acknowledges, and perhaps endorses, trade secret protection for AI information, but there are still hurdles in keeping AI information a secret, say Jennifer Maisel and Andrew Stewart at Rothwell Figg.
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How Firms Can Ensure Associate Gender Parity Lasts
Among associates, women now outnumber men for the first time, but progress toward gender equality at the top of the legal profession remains glacially slow, and firms must implement time-tested solutions to ensure associates’ gender parity lasts throughout their careers, say Kelly Culhane and Nicole Joseph at Culhane Meadows.
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Regulatory Trends Offer 4 Lessons For Debt Relief Providers
A string of enforcement actions, including a New York lawsuit filed last month by seven states and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, underscore the regulatory scrutiny that debt relief and credit repair companies face and offer important lessons on telemarketing and deceptive practices compliance, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.