Mark Whitney was recently quoted in an article appearing in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly concerning severance agreements and their impact of release language on equity rights of senior executives. The article entitled “Severance terms extinguished exec’s right to shares, options” discussed a recent Massachusetts Appeals Court decision which ruled against a former executive of a software company.
In MacDonald v. Jenzabar, Inc., et al., the court found that the broad terms of a severance agreement acted to extinguish the former executive’s rights to valuable stock options and preferred shares. A copy of the court’s opinion may be found here. The MLW article may be found here (subscription required).