373 results for 'court:"USDC Massachusetts"'.
J. Stearns partially denies a company and its CEO’s motion for summary judgment against their former national sales and business manager who is suing them for allegedly retaliating against her and violating the Massachusetts Wage Act. The manager engaged in protected conduct in Massachusetts and performed work she allegedly wasn’t paid for commissions earned in Massachusetts, so even though the company and its CEO are in Illinois and the manager is not a Massachusetts resident, she can bring a claim under the Massachusetts Wage Act.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Stearns, Filed On: April 11, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv10750, NOS: Civil Rights - Habeas Corpus, Categories: Employment, Jurisdiction, Employment Retaliation
J. Guzman finds a company director did not breach her fiduciary duties when she cut off her brother, the company creator’s, access to company accounts. The company creator is not a company shareholder or officer.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Guzman, Filed On: April 11, 2024, Case #: 4:21cv40060, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Fiduciary Duty, Defamation, Contract
J. Talwani denies an employer’s motion for summary judgment against its former employee’s retaliation claims. A reasonable jury could find the employee was fired under false pretenses, rather than placed on a performance improvement plan, as retaliation for making a False Claims Act complaint.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Talwani, Filed On: April 10, 2024, Case #: 1:11cv10790, NOS: Other Statutory Actions - Other Suits, Categories: Employment, False Claims, Whistleblowers
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J. Guzman finds that a company guilty of misappropriation of trade secrets committed misappropriation willfully and maliciously, but does not award exemplary damages even though they would be warranted. Punitive damages have already been awarded, so exemplary damages run the risk of being unfairly duplicative.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Guzman, Filed On: April 10, 2024, Case #: 4:21cv10572, NOS: Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA) - Property Rights, Categories: Trade Secrets, Damages, Business Practices
J. Young enters judgment in favor of University of Massachusetts officials against an RA who acted sexually inappropriately towards female college students and then sued the university after it took disciplinary action against him, including requiring him to take a remedial behavior class, forbidding him from contacting the victims and banning him from campus housing. While sharing unpopular opinions is sometimes necessarily permitted in university settings for educational discourse, universities also have a duty to protect their students from the misconduct of other students. The RA also touched at least one female student in a way that was unwanted when he touched her feet without consent.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Young, Filed On: April 9, 2024, Case #: 1:23cv12077, NOS: Education - Civil Rights, Categories: Education, Housing, First Amendment
J. Burroughs denies a Haitian politician’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, or a new trial, because he was required to pay more than $15 million in damages to the family members of and supporters of a man who he killed, some of whom he also tortured and attempted to kill. The expert testimony presented to the jury did not result in a miscarriage of justice.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Burroughs, Filed On: April 8, 2024, Case #: 1:17cv10477, NOS: Other Statutory Actions - Other Suits, Categories: Government, International Law, Assault
J. Talwani grants an employee’s cross-motion for summary judgment against her former employers, who are suing her for allegedly breaching non-compete, confidentiality and other agreements she made with them. The parties are under Chinese law, under which only senior personnel are bound by non-compete agreements.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Talwani, Filed On: March 31, 2024, Case #: 1:20cv11711, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Employment, Unfair Competition, Contract
J. Wolf denies a manufacturer’s motion for summary judgment against a consumer bringing a class action against it in response to its hand sanitizer bottles, which claim on their front label to kill 99.99% of germs, but clarify on their back labels that they kill 99.99% of many common harmful germs. There is enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find the manufacturer’s advertising of its hand sanitizer bottles deceptive and for the consumer to have suffered an economic loss as a result of the deceptive advertising.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Wolf, Filed On: March 29, 2024, Case #: 1:20cv11555, NOS: Other Fraud - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Trade, Consumer Law, False Advertising
J. Talwani denies in part an employer’s partial motion to dismiss claims brought against it by a former employee. While the employee fails to sufficiently allege that he was an employee under the terms of the Massachusetts Wage Act in August 2022, he sufficiently supports his claim related to a $100,000 non-discretionary bonus at this stage.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Talwani, Filed On: March 29, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv12051, NOS: Civil Rights - Habeas Corpus, Categories: Employment, Business Practices, Workers' Compensation
J. Kelley grants a recruiting firm’s motion for default judgment against a supplier that agreed to provide an engineer to the firm’s client, but then knowingly provided an imposter, requiring the client to have a forensic audit performed when they realized an imposter had been hired. The recruiting firm paid over $55,000 to cover the audit as a way to work towards maintaining a positive relationship with the client. The recruiting firm makes a plausible showing for all of its claims, including breach of contract, tortious interference and deceptive trade practices.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Kelley, Filed On: March 27, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv11871, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Damages, Interference With Contract, Contract
J. Burroughs denies a convenience store chain’s motion for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial after a brother and sister sued it for discriminating against them based on their disabilities and a jury found that the chain had discriminated against the brother and awarded him damages. The chain claims that the brother didn’t suffer any damages, but damages do not have to be financial, and he suffered a significant loss of independence and autonomy and the joy that such autonomy gave him, through having to switch from in-person shopping to shopping online due to the chain’s failure to make its store more easily wheelchair-navigable.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Burroughs, Filed On: March 26, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv10046, NOS: Amer w/Disabilities - Other - Civil Rights, Categories: Ada / Rehabilitation Act, Damages
J. Mastroianni grants in part the motions to dismiss filed by a city and public school officials against the victims and representatives of victims of sexual assault on the city’s public high school campus. The victims and their representatives fail to adequately substantiate that the school officials violated their substantive due process rights by failing to prevent other students from sexually assaulting them, but the victims and their representatives do adequately support a Title IX claim based on school officials’ failure to take appropriate remedial actions, such as properly investigating three of the victims’ reported incidents of being sexually assaulted.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Mastroianni, Filed On: March 25, 2024, Case #: 3:22cv11701, NOS: Education - Civil Rights, Categories: Education, Municipal Law, Assault
J. Kelley denies two medical companies’ motion to dismiss a class action brought against them by an employee for alleged unpaid wages and other damages. Defendants required plaintiff to work during meal breaks and failed to pay the employee and others situated similarly a mandatory hour of premium pay per day where he was required to work during a meal break, failed to factor shift differentials into calculations of overtime pay and failed to provide accurate, itemized wage statements.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Kelley, Filed On: March 25, 2024, Case #: 1:23cv11585, NOS: Other Labor Litigation - Labor, Categories: Employment, Damages, Class Action
J. Casper denies a man with a criminal past’s motion to dismiss claims brought against him by a website owner, who the former criminal sent threatening emails to and published critical content about after the webmaster published information about his criminal history. The webmaster met the burden of showing he has plausibly suffered more than $75,000 in damages.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Casper, Filed On: March 25, 2024, Case #: 1:23cv10134, NOS: Assault, Libel, & Slander - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Public Record, Damages, Defamation
J. Burroughs denies a software company and two of its executives’ motion to dismiss a class action brought against them by a retirement trust for allegedly making false and misleading statements about demand for, and sales of, the company’s software. While forward-looking comments are not actionable, false statements made about the present are.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Burroughs, Filed On: March 25, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv10321, NOS: Securities/Commodities/Exchange - Other Suits, Categories: Fraud, Securities, Class Action
J. Sorokin allows the federal government’s motion for summary judgment against a food retailer suing it for disqualifying the retailer from participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program based on the retailer’s alleged trafficking of benefits. The retailer provides generalized explanations, rather than references to the specific data the government relies upon, to dispute the government’s evidence that the retailer is trafficking, and its approach is insufficient against the government’s data.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Sorokin, Filed On: March 25, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv10184, NOS: Administrative Procedure Act/Review or Appeal of Agency Decision - Other Suits, Categories: Evidence, Consumer Law, Federalism