Notes from the practice.

A small business owner's guide to bad faith claims in Pennsylvania. Most small business owners buy commercial insurance hoping never to use it. When the time comes to file a claim — a water main breaks, a fire damages inventory, a customer is injured — the assumption is that the policy will do what it was sold to do. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not. And when an insurer denies, delays, or underpays a legitimate claim, Pennsylvania law gives the policyholder more lever

Five seller disclosure traps worth knowing about. Pennsylvania law requires sellers of residential real estate to deliver a written disclosure statement to buyers before the agreement of sale is signed. The form looks routine — most buyers glance at it once and sign. That is a mistake. The disclosure is one of the most important documents in the transaction, and the issues it does not resolve almost always become the issues the parties end up fighting over after closing. Five

What Pennsylvania employers need to get right. Severance agreements look straightforward. The employer pays the departing employee something — a few weeks of salary, sometimes more — in exchange for a release of claims and a few standard promises about confidentiality and non-disparagement. Most small businesses pull a template from a prior matter, fill in the names and numbers, and send it out. That approach has gotten more expensive over the last few years. Federal law, sta