Massachusetts News

For decades, a small group of plaintiffs lawyers have been pressing claims against companies that made and sold a synthetic estrogen known as diethylstilbestrol, or DES, which was prescribed to millions of pregnant women to ward off premature births and miscarriages from 1948 to 1971. 

Four sisters have a bond they’d rather not share. All of them have suffered from breast cancer. Not just bad luck, they say, or coincidence. The Melnick sisters blame a drug called Diethylstilbestrol, commonly known as DES.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $5 million to settle allegations that one of its highest-profile investment bankers tried to "improperly influence" research analysts days before Facebook Inc. went public in May.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor denied a defense motion to stay more than 10 suits he is overseeing against the New England Compounding Center, which supplied the steroids linked to an outbreak of fungal meningitis in September and October.

A Boston-based federal appeals court published a ruling Friday afternoon that has civil rights attorneys rejoicing. The topic: attorney fees.

Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren has launched two new television ads responding to criticism by Republican Sen. Scott Brown of her legal work in an asbestos-related case.

One pleasure of the Massachusetts Senate race is that we are all learning about the remunerative outside legal work on behalf of corporate defendants done by Harvard Law School's resident bankruptcy law expert. Let's just say she doesn't do this work pro bono. Everyone has to make a living, but Ms. Warren's legal moonlighting does raise a question or two about her posture as the tribune of the powerless little guy.

A federal judge has temporarily placed on hold a lawsuit attacking Netflix Inc. for failing to provide closed-captioning text for its web-only streaming video after the parties entered into settlement talks.