In Headquarters Hotel, LLC v. LBV Hotel, LLC, a court ruled that a buyer rejected an offer by refusing to execute a confidentiality agreement required by the seller as part of the offer under a right of first offer provision.
The buyer and seller are parties to a 129-year lease for the property at…
The press has reported on many government actions to help individuals and small businesses to weather the storm caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Massachusetts has taken additional steps directed at providing clarity for developers in these difficult times.
State Permit Applications:
Governor Baker has issued COVID-19, Order No. 17, which affects state permit applications…
Our former colleague and now Land Court Judge Robert Foster recently decided Neily v. Gray. That case concerns the rights of various owners in Lydia’s Island Road, a private way in Wareham leading to Onset Bay. Judge Foster determined that different owners had different rights in that way, depending on their chain of title. …
Over the years a number of clients have asked how to get out of joint ownership of a home or parcel of land when one party cannot buy out the other. The answer is a court proceeding called a “petition to partition” under G.L. c. 241.
When faced with a petition to partition courts…
The Massachusetts Court of Appeals recently held that a foreclosing lender must use reasonable efforts to get the best price and, when those efforts reveal the potential to develop the property to increase the sale price, the lender should take such potential into account and share it with prospective bidders.
Don’t get nervous lenders. The…
If you plan to rent your house this summer, be prepared for a change in the State Law effective July 1, 2019. On December 28, 2018, Governor Baker signed An Act Regulating and Insuring Short-Term Rentals which sets forth a comprehensive framework for the regulation of short-term rentals. The new law has several new requirements…
When the Conservation Commission refused to permit the construction of a house on her residential lot in a Falmouth subdivision, Janice Smyth decided to take action and sought damages for a regulatory taking of her land under the U.S. Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. She was successful initially, recovering damages of $640,000. But,…
The Boston Redevelopment Authority d/b/a Boston Planning and Development Agency has the right to challenge a foreclosure that purportedly terminated a covenant restricting the use of property to affordable housing.…
A Massachusetts regulation stating that no two digital billboards may be erected within 1,000 feet of one another set up a race between competing billboard companies that owned abutting land.…
In a satisfying win for Rackemann, the Appeals Court today upheld a Land Court decision that inland lot owners hold no easement rights over our clients’ waterfront property.
Loiselle v. Hickey concerns a large subdivision in Dennis with a number of ways leading to Cape Cod Bay. An earlier case between many of the same…
