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Author Archives: George Bourguignon

Author Archives: George Bourguignon

My attorney tells me I must provide information to the other side in my civil suit and I don’t want to provide it, what should I do?

9 January 2024 Answer: Hand it over; or expect to face the consequences. It is common for litigants to not want to share information with their adversary, but that is required under our system of law, at least for relevant and requested information.  Mass. R. Civ. P.  There are serious consequences for not turning over […]

I just learned that my attorney is facing an ethics charge, what should I do?

21 December 2023 Answer: Learn the ethics complaint process (timeline), the likelihood of suspension occurring in your attorney’s case, and consider changing counsel, and do all this right away. There is a process to an ethics complaint.  It can take a while.  There are a few stages of ‘investigation.’  If it gets to the serious […]

Rely on a clerk’s legal advice to your peril.

28 September 2023 Clerks are an integral part of the legal process.  They are the front line and affect a lot more than you think.  Lawyers and (pro se, that means self-represented) litigants alike interface with clerks regularly and frequently.  Despite the exclusively legal subject matter they deal with and the multitude of legal, and […]

Measure twice and cut once, they say, and this applies with restraining orders.

22 September 2023 Someone is harassing/abusing you and you want to seek some sort of order from a court, typically called by people a “restraining order.”  You head down to court without any advice from an attorney, because hey, who needs that, and fill out some documents the clerk hands you after asking you a […]

Life is not fair in the world of consumer protection.

11 September 2023 You have been the victim of an unfair business practice and it has caused you damage.  The kind of act that evokes the response, “ouhh, that is mean” when you describe to another of how this business conducted itself.  You seek assistance from an attorney to address the matter and he tells […]

Sanctions for spoliation are getting serious.

29 August 2023 Spoliation is the destruction of material that can be used as evidence in a (civil) court case, either intentionally or negligently.  Destruction of even potential evidence, in other words, even before a lawsuit is filed, can be considered spoliation.  The typical mischief at hand today in our ever increasing electronic world is […]

I am a public employee and I think I might have been fired for my first amendment expressions, what can I do and what do I have to prove?

24 February 2023 Answer: You can bring a claim in court, and what you have to prove is to meet the burden shifting test enunciated in a 1977 United States Supreme Court decision named Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle. The Mt. Healthy standard was just applied to a recent case […]

My adversary in a civil action in Connecticut just sought to withdraw his jury claim, what does this mean and what should I do?

23 February 2023 Answer: It means that the other party made a jury claim earlier in the case and paid $400.00 for it and the case was set for jury and now they want it to be tried in front of a judge instead (and they also may want their $400 returned).  What to do […]

I sued someone and they responded in their answer with sidestepping, indirect statements that neither admitted nor denied my allegations, what can I do?

22 February 2023 Answer: Move to strike the offensive responses and have them deemed admitted.  Alternatively, you may simply regard them as admitted and proceed accordingly. It is common for defendants of claims when answering the complaint to provide evasive responses to many of the allegations when they really should just expressly admit them.  In […]

Settlement of class actions is tricky business.

7 February 2023 As a general matter, settlement of a class action, either before or after a class is certified, requires court approval.  The concern is that the named parties collude to settle the matter at the expense of the purported class.  In more specific words, that the plaintiff will improperly use the threat of […]