On the Fid Guru Blog, Euclid Fiduciary’s Daniel Aronowitz has an excellent deep dive on the question of jury trials in breach of fiduciary duty litigation under ERISA, asking the questions of, first, whether they are really coming and, two, if so, is that a good or a bad thing (his take clearly appears to
So there is an interesting article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly on the rise of so-called “nuclear” verdicts in Massachusetts, or in other words, what we used to just call – with much less hyperbole – runaway jury verdicts. (By the way, can we do away with the marketing campaign to label large verdicts nuclear; runaway
Twenty years or so ago, I represented an insurer in a $20 million insurance bad faith and Chapter 93A claim in which one of the key issues was whether the insurer was right to rely on the advice of a terrific lawyer, Tom Burns (the Burns in the Boston firm Burns and Levinson), who had
There is a lot of discussion on whether lawyers should be required to have at least a certain degree of competency with technology as a core skill set, on a par with, for instance, the rules of evidence. Personally, I am not convinced of the need for any formal requirement: technology is so embedded in any efficient provision of legal services to a client and in any interaction with essentially any business client of any size, that simple economics are going to eventually drive to the margins any lawyer who cannot, on a day in, day out basis, engage with technology on an at least marginally competent level. In other words, there is no need to regulate the profession to ensure such competence, as the marketplace for legal services will do it for state bars and any other regulator: slowly but surely, lawyers who are not technologically proficient will be sidelined by the invisible hand of the market, regardless of what any professional licensure group does or does not do with regard to ensuring professional competence in the area of technology.
Continue Reading Uber, Behavioral Economics, Choice Architecture and Trial Work
Honestly, I couldn’t really care one whit about the little locker room stare down between Roger Goodell and Tom Brady. Its just sports. A spinning teacher of mine once looked out at the class the day after a playoff or Super Bowl loss by the Patriots (I forget which) and said, in the middle of
One of my favorite kid friendly, safe for work jokes:
Q: Moose walks into a bar. What’s he say?
A: Ouch.
If you like that one, how about this one:
Q:Woman buys an expensive seat at the ballpark. What’s she say?
A: Get me a class action lawyer!
And if you like that one, you
This caught my eye, partly because I sat on a panel recently discussing the fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege in the context of ERISA litigation. This, in this case, is a Bloomberg BNA ethics webinar on “Attorney-Client Privilege and Work Product Doctrine Issues,” which includes, of particular note to me, “[t]he surprising
One should never underestimate the fundamental role that procedural and related tactical issues play in a case, and how they impact the very question of whether a plaintiff will ever be able to have a judge or jury rule on the merits of a case. Procedural barriers to prosecuting particular claims can be the end
One of the great advantages a Massachusetts ERISA litigator has is that our federal magistrate judges are very good with ERISA issues, which is something that is well illustrated by this decision on the scope of the fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege in ERISA litigation. In Kenney v. State Street, the magistrate judge
I don’t want to turn this into a sports law blog, or – heaven forbid – an NFL blog (heaven knows, there are more than enough of those), but the latest work of the Washington Post on player injuries was too good to ignore. I promise, after this one, I will go back to ERISA