Eric P. Magnuson

Eric co-chairs the firm’s Business Litigation Practice Group. He was named a 2024 “Go To Business Litigation Lawyer” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and is regularly quoted by the publication on civil procedure, evidentiary practice, and fiduciary law. He chairs the firm’s Professional Responsibility Committee and serves on its AI Committee. He is Senior Editor of the BLS Blog and serves on the Massachusetts Advisory Council of the New England Legal Foundation.

Eric served as Executive Note Editor of the Arizona Law Review.

Outside the office, Eric competes in the National Ultra Endurance (NUE) mountain-bike series, where he won the Epic Series Masters championship in 2022 and 2024.

Representative Experience

Commercial Litigation

• Reading Co-operative Bank v. Suffolk Construction Company, Inc., 464 Mass. 543 (2013). Served as trial and appellate counsel for a bank pursuing claims under Article 9 of the UCC. Prevailed at trial and on appeal, securing a nearly $8 million judgment. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly named the decision one of the most important commercial decisions of the year.
• Unibank for Savings v. 999 Private Jet, LLC, 31 F.4th 1 (1st Cir. 2022). Represented Unibank in a dispute over a promissory note secured by a Gulfstream aircraft. Prevailed on appeal, securing affirmance of summary judgment against an intervenor asserting an alleged superior security interest.
• Formulatrix, Inc. v. Rigaku Automation, Inc., No. CV 15-12725-JGD, 2018 WL 5723149 (D. Mass. Nov. 1, 2018). Represented defendants and counterclaimants in litigation arising from a customer support agreement involving complex contractual and related claims. Prevailed at the motion-to-dismiss stage and on summary judgment.
• OpenRisk, LLC v. Roston, 90 Mass. App. Ct. 1107 (2016). Represented defendants sued for alleged trade-secret misappropriation. Secured dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction, rejecting the theory that a defendant can be subject to jurisdiction based on the forum contacts of alleged co-conspirators. The dismissal was affirmed on appeal.
• Monette v. Citation Insurance Company, No. 2084CV2626-BLS1 (2023). Secured summary judgment for an insurer in a putative class action challenging estimating practices for homeowners policies under G.L. c. 175 and c. 93A. The plaintiff withdrew the appeal, and final judgment entered.

Insurance Class Action

Served as lead briefing counsel in a series of class actions and appeals shaping Massachusetts automobile insurance law.

• Cubberley v. The Commerce Insurance Company, 495 Mass. 289 (2025). Prevailed in a putative class action on two questions of first impression: whether the Commissioner of Insurance exceeded his statutory authority by approving an exclusion of diminished-value damages in the standard automobile policy, and whether a third-party claimant must obtain a judgment against the insured before suing the insurer for breach of contract.
• Parsons v. The Commerce Insurance Company, No. 2084CV00659-BLS2, 2025 WL 1707080 (Mass. Super. June 17, 2025). Defeated class certification in action alleging improper total-loss valuations affecting more than 125,000 claimants and asserting damages of up to $64 million.
• Ercolini v. The Commerce Insurance Company(consolidated with McGilloway v. Safety Insurance Company, 488 Mass. 610 (2021)). Following the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that automobile owners could recover inherent diminished value damages, defeated class certification on remand.
• Ramirez v. The Commerce Insurance Company, 91 Mass. App. Ct. 144 (2017). Secured summary judgment, affirmed on appeal, in a putative class action seeking recovery of sales tax on behalf of third-party claimants.