On June 15, the Supreme Court in Golan v. Saada resolved a circuit split regarding the application of the “grave risk” exception under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (“Hague Convention”). Adopted in 1980 and ratified by over...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled that an employer who failed to pay a discharged employee for accrued unused vacation time until three weeks after the date of her discharge violated the Massachusetts Wage Act. The Court held that the employer...
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has held that the Statute of Frauds does not require that a contract to pay for the services of a licensed real estate broker be in writing, in Huang v. RE/Max Leading Edge, et al. The Court found that if the broker could prove the...
The conflict in Emigrant Residential LLC v. Pinti (“Pinti III”) began when two homeowners defaulted on the mortgage for their Cambridge condominium and failed to cure the default. During this time, ownership of the mortgage and the note changed hands multiple times....
In many cases, a parcel of real estate will need to be valued for purposes of a divorce. This almost always occurs when one spouse wants to retain the marital home or another piece of land. The question then becomes, what value is going to be established for the house...
Due to COVID-19, the Massachusetts court system has relied heavily on online video conferencing platforms, like Zoom. A recent decision by the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), Adoption of Patty (decided May 9, 2022), overturned a trial court’s termination of a mother’s...
In a case anticipated by international arbitration practitioners, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that only governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative bodies, not private adjudicative bodies, constitute “foreign or international tribunals” under...
The answer is: it depends. The statute governing partition actions, M.G.L. c. 241, authorizes the holder of a life estate to file a petition for partition. For example, when two siblings hold concurrent life estates, their interest can be partitioned from each other....
In a recent decision, affirming the Superior Court, the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that civil enforcement actions filed by the Attorney General are not subject to the constraints of G. L. c. 213, § 59H, also known as the anti-SLAPP statute. In Commonwealth v....
Boston is known as the “Hub” for a reason and, in recent years, Boston has become the world’s top biotech hub, with over 1,000 biotech companies calling the Greater Boston area home. Boston also is a world-renowned educational hub, with over one hundred colleges and...
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