August 2019


Imagine, an employee in your organization advises that they need to take leave pursuant to the Family and Medical Leave Act to recover from an upcoming surgical procedure. Your organization approves the leave and then you find out that while on leave and supposedly recovering from surgery, the employee goes on a family vacation to a far off beach resort. You are irate at what you perceive to be a blatant bait and switch and want to consider terminating the employee. Hopefully, you run all this by your General Counsel first because, depending on the circumstances, such termination could be deemed retaliatory and subject the company to a claim for substantial damages. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in DaPrato v. Massachusetts Water Resource Authority.

In that case, Richard A. DaPrato, who worked for the MWRA, was on FMLA leave recovering from foot surgery when he filed an application (signed by his surgeon) to extend his leave from March 20 to March 26. Shortly thereafter, DaPrato went on a family vacation to a Mexican beach resort. Approximately two weeks after returning from Mexico, the MWRA learned DaPrato had gone on vacation, reasoned that DaPrato had lied about his medical … Keep reading


In this installment of The In-House Advisor, we interview Paul Igoe, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Excelitas Technologies Corp., a Waltham, MA-headquartered manufacturer of high-performance, market-driven photonic innovations designed to meet the lighting, optronic, detection and optical technology needs of customers worldwide. Excelitas has 20 facilities worldwide and approximately 7,000 employees.

Prior to joining Excelitas in August 2018, for five and one-half years, Mr. Igoe served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of SS&C Technologies, Inc., a Windsor, Connecticut-headquartered provider of financial software and services. From 2009 to 2012, Mr. Igoe was Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Lydall, Inc., a Manchester, Connecticut-based manufacturer of filtration media and thermal/acoustical products.  From 2001 to 2009, Mr. Igoe served as Associate General Counsel and Assistant Secretary to Teradyne, Inc., a manufacturer of automatic test equipment for the semi-conductor industry headquartered in North Reading, Massachusetts.  Previous to his employment at Teradyne, Mr. Igoe was a Junior Partner in the Boston office of Wilmer Hale.

The In-House Advisor: What do you see as the main focus of your role as in-house counsel, and how do you see that role evolving over the next few … Keep reading