If an employee works in Massachusetts and has not been paid employment compensation owed to him; whether it be salary, hourly wage, commission, or accrued but unused vacation from an employer who has fired him, laid him off, or from whom he has resigned, the employee may be entitled to relief under the Massachusetts Payment of Wages Act. That Act…
Absent a contract or a statutory right, an employee’s employment is at will and can be terminated without notice and with or without cause. However, if a fired employee can establish that his termination was motivated by bad faith, retaliation, or malice and that he was terminated for performing an act that public policy would encourage or for refusing to…
Boundary disputes can be difficult between residential neighbors or commercial property owners. Working with a surveyor, along with having a good grasp of the law of adverse possession and prescriptive easement can be of great benefit in resolving such matters amicably or if necessary through court intervention. I have represented individuals making claims as adverse possessors and in other matters…
Crowdfunding A New Way to Fund Your Company? Collecting small sums of money from the general public over the Internet is not a new phenomenon. Crowdfunding or Crowdsourcing has been around for a few years. In the past the majority of the Crowdfunding sites catered to one time creative events, or were used by charities to raise money. Two examples…
Many small contract claims are litigated before the local district courts which are now part of the circuit court system in New Hampshire. The local district courts can hear non-jury trial if the controversy is $25,000 or less. However the district courts do not have jurisdiction to hear general equitable cases. They can only hear cases on an equity basis…
Under the American with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), employees are protected from discrimination based upon a disability. A disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the individual’s major activities. It could also be a record of such an impairment or being regarded as having such an impairment. Just having a physical or mental impairment…
An employee who has the responsibility of terminating the employment of a subordinate rarely can be held legally liable to the terminated employee. This issue was addressed in the September 30, 2011 decision of the New Hampshire federal court in John Balsamo v. UNH. John Balsamo (hereinafter “Balsamo”) began working at UNH as a general maintenance technician in August 2006.…
On September 20, 2011, the New Hampshire Supreme Court in the case of Boissy v. Chevion adopted a new rule with regard to when an easement can be extinguished. An easement allows the owner of one parcel of land to come onto another parcel of land to do a specific thing. For example, an easement can be to cross over…
In December of 2010, the long-awaited “fix” to the uncertainty as to the future of the estate tax was resolved (at least for 2011 and 2012). The estate tax exemption was set at $5million and the concept of “portability” was added to the Internal Revenue Code. Portability allows the transfer of any unused estate tax exemption of a decedent to…
Your company has decided to establish a presence on the internet and you and other company employees have worked diligently on the graphics and have made sure that the site is attractive and functional. Before you go live, there is one more thing to think about and that is; the language at the bottom of the page. We have all…