Service Areas
Litigation
As trial attorneys, we resolve the most contentious problems our clients face, as efficiently as we can. We do so before trial, if possible, or at trial, if necessary. Posternak attorneys enjoy trying cases and regularly litigate a wide range of business disputes, employment issues, professional liability matters, insurance coverage and bad faith cases, and other civil suits. We encourage our clients to take an active role in the resolution of their cases. We believe that our clients ought to be involved in all significant aspects of a case and that a knowledgeable client’s input is critical to a successful outcome.
Our business trial attorneys litigate disputes involving contracts of all types, intellectual property issues, breaches of non-compete obligations, securities and real estate transactions, regulatory and non-regulatory health care concerns, environmental claims, bankruptcy proceedings, and many other kinds of commercial matters. Our employment attorneys navigate clients through the maze of statutory and non-statutory constraints on implementing employment decisions. Where necessary, we also represent clients against charges of discrimination before administrative agencies and courts.
Posternak is counsel of choice for the defense and trial of legal malpractice and other complex professional liability and errors and omissions cases. Posternak attorneys also have argued many of the most significant appellate decisions in legal malpractice and other professional liability areas. In addition to defending insureds, we regularly act for insurers as coverage counsel and as trial and appellate counsel in coverage and bad faith litigation. Posternak also handles the defense of complex product liability disputes, including cases arising out of the use of advanced medical devices.
- Prosecuted, in the federal court in Los Angeles, claims on behalf of the nation’s largest distributor of satellite television services involving the most critical aspects of the client’s distribution agreement.
- Represented a major consumer products manufacturer in an arbitration, in Chicago, challenging the client’s warranty responsibilities for millions of dollars of product.
- Defended a well-known local entrepreneur against a securities fraud class action claim.
- Defended a health care client in a case, tried in the Miami federal court, alleging damages arising from the client’s decision not to close on the purchase of a “turn-key” skilled nursing facility.
- Represent the world’s largest manufacturer of implantable medical devices in a variety of product liability cases involving pacemakers, neurological stimulators, coronary stents, drug pumps and other products, in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
- Argued the case in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court limited the duty owed by a primary insurance carrier to an excess carrier, in the conduct of settlement negotiations, to one of good faith, not of due care.
- Argued the case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that an insurance carrier issuing a claims-made policy is not required, under Rhode Island law, to show prejudice in order to deny coverage on the grounds of late notice.
- Handled the appeal in the seminal Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case which clarified the various elements that a legal malpractice plaintiff must establish at trial to prevail on his or her claim.
- Argued the appeal which established, in Massachusetts, the principle that an attorney is not liable for every mistake that may occur in his or her practice and cannot be held responsible for the damage that may result from such mistakes.
- Argued the 1983 case from which much of the law of attorney malpractice in Massachusetts developed. • Defended several environmental consulting firms against claims alleging errors and omissions in site assessments and remediations.
- Defeated an appeal by an abutter, a supermarket chain, from a decision in favor of our developer client allowing it to build a shopping center on Cape Cod with a rival supermarket as the anchor tenant.
