Not spelling out in your agreements, even in informal agreements, where disputes can be resolved and what law will govern them can lead to some unhappy results. That is exactly the position that United Excel Corporation and its president, Ky Hornbaker, now find themselves.… Keep reading
In Part 1 I shared with you five commonly overlooked terms in executive separation agreements. Here are five more.
6. Release Timing. If the executive is excused from performing work or coming to the office well before her last day of employment, the company may want to have the executive sign an agreement close to the day the executive is notified about her separation because the company will remain exposed to liability for the period of time between the executive’s signing the separation agreement and her actual last day. In addition, I recommend having the executive sign a second release on her actual last day of employment – and make signing that second release contingent upon receiving any post-termination severance benefits.
7. Post-Termination Restrictive Covenants and the Integration Clause. Many agreements contain a boilerplate integration provision, reciting that the agreement is the entire agreement between the parties and that the executive is not relying on anything not contained in the written document. If the executive has signed a prior agreement containing restrictive covenants which are intended to survive termination of the executive’s employment, such a general integration clause could void the prior post-termination restrictive covenants. An alternative … Keep reading
As we have previously posted in Choice of Law in a Contract Can Be Critical, Ensuring Your Dispute Is Resolved in the Forum You Want Is Not Always Easy, and Selection of Forum Other Than Massachusetts May Not Avoid Wage Act Enforcement, choice of law and forum selection provisions should be conscious decisions made in the context of each specific contract. If in-house counsel do not carefully draft these provisions in their independent contractor or consulting agreements, they may be overlooking a possible means of avoiding or minimizing liability in Massachusetts under the so-called Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law (M.G.L. c. 149, §148B), the Massachusetts Weekly Payment of Wages Act (M.G.L. c. 149, §148) and/or the Massachusetts minimum wage and overtime laws. Because these statutes do not contain any explicit geographic restriction on their application, their applicability to non-Massachusetts residents performing work outside of Massachusetts for Massachusetts companies has been unsettled. (I have previously posted here and here on the staggering ramifications of misclassifying a worker as an independent contractor in Massachusetts.)
In Taylor v. Eastern Connection Operating, Inc., the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took up the issue of whether New York residents who perform … Keep reading
In my recent post, Ensuring Your Dispute is Resolved in the Forum You Want is Not Always Easy, I discussed various issues related to contractual forum selection clauses, i.e., clauses which dictate where parties can or must sue. If a contract does not have a forum selection clause, courts in each of the contracting parties’ home states might be able to exercise jurisdiction over a dispute. Further, and as many in-house counsel have experienced, the ultimate venue for litigation can create a substantial amount of leverage in favor of the home team and work to the detriment of the out-of-state party.
If you believe that your company is likely to be sued by another in some far off jurisdiction, consider the following advice:
If you know you are going to be in a fight, make sure to get in the first punch."
I can’t emphasize enough the importance in evaluating whether you are going to be sued – as opposed to whether you might be sued. If you do not see any way to avoid litigation, following the above rule can pay real dividends, as it did for one of my clients several years ago. In … Keep reading
In addition to having a choice of law provision in a contract (a topic on which I posted last week), many contracts also include what is commonly known as a forum selection clause. Such clauses can be extremely important and can have an impact that goes well beyond simply setting up one party as the “home team” and the other an outsider.
For instance, even if a contract has a choice of law provision calling for the law of New York to apply to all contract disputes, if a forum selection clause requires suit to be brought in Massachusetts, the procedural law of Massachusetts applies. Consequently, while New York law does not have a trustee process attachment rule like we have in Massachusetts, a plaintiff should be able to obtain a freeze on the defendant’s bank account as long as a showing is made that the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim. The logic behind this is that, freezing a bank account (known as a “trustee process attachment”) is governed by procedural law (Rule 4.2 of the Massachusetts Rules of Civil Procedure), not by substantive law. Alternatively, if a suit was … Keep reading
Before last week, a non-Massachusetts employer could insulate itself from employee claims under the Massachusetts Weekly Payment of Wages Act (“Wage Act”) simply by having its employees agree that all employment disputes be litigated in the employer’s home state. That all changed with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Melia v. Zenhire, Inc.
In that case, plaintiff Edward Melia, who worked and lived in Massachusetts, challenged the validity of a forum selection clause contained in his employment agreement requiring that any disputes related to his employment be litigated in New York. Melia’s claims against Zenhire included claims for unpaid wages, unpaid vacation and sick day wages, severance pay and unreimbursed expenses. Melia argued that the forum selection clause was a “special contract” prohibited by the Wage Act and against Massachusetts public policy. The SJC disagreed, determining that, due to comity amongst state courts, and in light of most states’ choice of law rules, there is a presumption that other jurisdictions would apply laws such as the Wage Act. As such, there was no public policy reason to invalidate a forum selection clause in an employment agreement.
The SJC did leave one opening for employees in this regard, in … Keep reading
