In a win for developers, Supreme Judicial Court says six-year clock for design and construction defect claims runs separately for each building within condominium development. On November 3, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) made it harder for condominium owners to...
Last month, the Commonwealth's highest appellate court considered how legal parenthood is defined in the context of children born to a same-sex couple as a result of artificial insemination. The case, Partanen v. Gallagher, is currently under advisement by the Supreme...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC) has rejected a challenge to the authority of an attorney to conduct foreclosure activities on behalf of clients without specific written authorization to perform those activities. See Federal National Mortgage...
Where a mortgage states the term of its underlying debt but includes no separate statement of its own term, the two are one-and-the-same, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC") has decided in an opinion interpreting and upholding the so-called "obsolete...
In a decision handed down earlier this month, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC") has resolved a split among Land Court justices regarding the availability of a "try title" action brought against a mortgagee prior to foreclosure. In Abate v. Fremont...
An act of theft committed by forcing the victim to withdraw money from an Automated Teller Machine ("ATM") is sufficient to trigger conviction under a Massachusetts statute prohibiting "confining to commit a felony" (see G.L. c. 265, § 21), the Supreme Judicial Court...
On March 12, 2013, the Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") in Morales v. Morales - SJC-11104 ruled that a divorced parent need not prove the widely recognized legal standard of "material and substantial change in circumstance" in order to modify a child support order in...
In a recent case, E.C.O. vs. Gregory James Compton (SJC-11259, March 13, 2013), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned a District Court Judge's extension of a G.L. c. 209A Abuse Prevention Order in favor of a 16-year-old girl whose father obtained a...
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