“Don’t take the law into your own hands: you take ’em to court.” We have all heard that familiar catch-phrase from the TV show People’s Court. But, People’s Court was not actually a “court” – it was a binding arbitration between the parties. (By the way, in cases where the plaintiff won, the producer paid the judgment. But, that’s a story for another day.) So, what is arbitration? What is mediation? How are they different from a court trial? Mediation and arbitration are two types of alternative dispute...

We often receive calls from employees who feel they have been discriminated against or harassed at work.  In many cases, they believe they have been the victim of unfair treatment by a manager.  Sometimes, they assert that they have been treated differently than other employees. Most employees who are not members of unions are “at-will.”  This means that the employee can quit his job whenever he wants, and that the employer can terminate the employee’s job whenever it wants.  Employees in union shops are usually governed by...

Spend a few minutes some time in a courtroom when lawyers are arguing to a judge or jury. You will hear, all too frequently, common threads of lawyer speak, words that aren’t generally heard in your living room or when you are talking with friends and at work. When did you last tell someone (your spouse? your business associate?) that what he did was egregious – or that she was making no sense because she was missing a prong in her explanation or reasoning of some matter?  When did you last refer to someone you just met as your brother...

When someone asks me what kind of law that I practice, I answer “civil litigation.” The response is usually a puzzled-then-accepting-without-questioning look or the question: “What is that?” The civil legal arena covers a broad area that does not include criminal or family law. Beauregard, Burke & Franco has handled the whole gamut of civil cases. There’s the classic personal injury suit, be it a motor vehicle accident, or a slip and fall; or an employment case, which can include contract disputes, wrongful termination, and...

Forty years of civil litigation – jury trials in major personal injury and death cases, court challenges to government officials who abuse their powers over public employees, taking business and commercial disputes to trial, and dealing with the wide variety of clients involved in these cases – has taught me lessons worth passing on to you who engage in reading blogs. First – do not be bamboozled (not a legal term) by yellow page ads, advertising on the sides of buses, highway billboards, or flashy issues of the Boston publication “Super...