CIVIL LITIGATION
Experienced and Forceful Litigators
Our practice balances the highest-caliber litigation skills with an ability to solve complex disputes in the most efficient and cost effective manner available. We conduct trials and arbitrations/mediations, using creative strategies to open windows of opportunity that resolve problems without the necessity of lengthy, expensive proceedings.
Trial, Arbitration and Mediation Expertise
Our attorneys have extensive experience both in state and federal trial and appellate courts in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and in arbitration and mediation forums. Our attorneys have also served as court appointed Masters, mediators, arbitrators and receivers.
Business Litigation
We represent plaintiffs and defendants in litigation involving business disputes including:
- Contracts
- Purchase agreements
- Employees
- Competitors
- Partnerships and joint ventures
- Lenders
- Borrowers
- Family-owned businesses
Real Estate, Land Use and Municipal Litigation
We provide counsel to clients in real estate and municipal disputes, including the following:
- Development rights
- Zoning
- Contract litigation
- Real estate tax
- Municipal contracts
Commercial Property Management
We handle all types of litigation matters facing commercial property owners and managers.
Bankruptcy
We represent parties involved in bankruptcy litigation, including creditors, claimants and other interested parties.
Partner-Stockholder
Our practice representing partners and owners of privately held corporations and partnerships in disputes by and among owners includes:
- Law firms
- Accountants
- Real estate partnership
- Investment partnerships
- Small business owners
- Family businesses
Health & Human Services
We work with a broad spectrum of health and human service providers involved in commercial and regulatory litigation.
Employment
We represent clients in a wide range of employment law disputes, including non-competition and non-disclosure disputes, claims for wrongful termination and discrimination.
Probate
We represent parties in Probate Court disputes including:
- Trustees
- Beneficiaries
- Family members
- Claimants
- Fiduciaries
Personal Injury
We represent plaintiffs and defendants in cases involving personal injury including:
- Premises liability
- Malpractice
- Product liability
- Negligence
- Accidents
Insurance
We advocate for coverage in cases which may be covered by insurance including:
- Directors and officers
- Nonprofit associations
- Commercial general liability
- Umbrella
We have had great success challenging an insurer’s initial decision to deny coverage and defending claims, at the insurer’s expense, where an insurance company has issued a “reservation of rights.”
Fair Housing
We represent nonprofit providers, developers and quasi-public agencies facing neighborhood opposition to the siting of group homes and other facilities.
Pro Bono/Public Service
In keeping with our longstanding commitment to cases in the public interest, we are active in pro bono and public service litigation. We work closely with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the Boston Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), and other nonprofit advocacy groups.
Representative Litigation
- Representation of general partners in real estate partnerships against claims by investors of breach of fiduciary duty.
- Representation of a large commercial taxpayer which asserted in a case against a municipality that the taxpayer’s property had been unfairly assessed in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual property taxes. We successfully argued that the client had been unlawfully singled out for adverse treatment. The case settled and the client was not required to pay the disputed tax.
- Representation of partner in real estate project in obtaining injunction against co-partner from bidding to purchase the project at a foreclosure sale alleging that doing so was a breach of his fiduciary duty to the client.
- Representation of private club and institutional property owner in Boston successfully challenging the effort of an abutter to redevelop adjacent property inconsistent with the clients’ property rights and applicable zoning.
- Representation of owner of hotel against claim that he obtained ownership in breach of his fiduciary duty to a minority shareholder.
- Successful defense of a celebrity chef in a lawsuit brought by a former partner alleging violations of the chef’s fiduciary duty as partner.
- Representation of a quarry supplying aggregate materials for the Big Dig which was in danger of being shut down by a local municipality. We successfully persuaded the municipality to discontinue their efforts to close the quarry, based on a pre-existing consent order governing the operation of the quarry.
- Representation of a national health care REIT in developing a regional strategy for dealing with a chain of distressed nursing homes.
- Representation of a consortium of Massachusetts community hospitals challenging the State’s refusal to reimburse disproportionate share hospitals in accordance with Medicaid law.
- Representation of a national software company in bankruptcy of customer to enforce the intellectual property rights of the company.
- Representation, over a twenty-year period, of public housing authorities in cases involving tenants and employees, asbestos property damage, civil rights, land use issues, overcharges by utilities, and fraud and overcharges by contractors.
- Representation of affordable housing owners in challenges to the expiration and non-renewal of project-based federal subsidies.
- Representation of a software company whose intellectual property rights were threatened when an officer of the company left the company and sought to use software developed by him while he was employed. The firm successfully prohibited any use of the client’s software by obtaining a federal court injunction.
- Representation of a nonprofit client in a copyright infringement dispute concerning dissemination of a newsletter.
- Representation of class of employees of a large resort hotel in Western Massachusetts regarding the misappropriation of gratuities and service charges by the hotel owners.
- Representation of an executive of a major pharmaceutical company in obtaining the dismissal of a suit against her in response to allegations of gender discrimination, including recovering our client’s attorneys’ fees incurred.
- Obtaining dismissal of a discrimination claim by a former employee based on evidence presented that the employee was properly terminated for misconduct and was not discriminated against based on race or disability, and that plaintiff failed to cooperate with discovery.
- Filing of an amicus curiae brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of twenty-five civil rights groups supporting the constitutional right of same-sex couples to civil marriage.
- Representation of a Haitian-American couple who were victims of a racially motivated assault.
- Challenge of termination of professional license by Homeland Security on unspecified, undisclosed claimed grounds of national security.
- Representation of patriarch of family business being sued by his children for breach of fiduciary duty after they were fired for misappropriation of assets.
