Shivick’s Appellate Work Has Lasting Consequences: Massachusetts Debt Collection, Unauthorized Practice of Law, and Landlord Collection Abuse: A 2026 Update

Michael J. Shivick, Esq. Uncategorized

Some businesses do not merely bend the rules. They build a business model around hoping consumers and tenants do not know the rules exist. That is especially true in the overlap between landlord-tenant law, debt collection, and Housing Court. A landlord obtains or claims a debt. A property manager tries to prosecute a case. A…

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Massachusetts Landlord-Tenant Law Is Not Unfair: Ianello v. CMC and Tenant Rights Against Retaliation

Michael J. Shivick, Esq. Uncategorized

he simple facts of that case show a landlord who decided it was a one way street, trampling over the Legislature and Courts in the childish tantrum, and unilaterally effectuated a partial actual eviction of the tenant from that exercise/conference room by locking the door indefinitely – when the legal remedy was eviction for non-payment of rent after determination of the tenancy – which may in itself be insufficient to rebut the Anti-Retaliation law, M.G.L. c.186 s.18 and M.G.L. c.239 s.2A.

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Can a Massachusetts Landlord Force You Out? Constructive Eviction and Tenant Rights Massachusetts

Michael J. Shivick, Esq. Uncategorized

Not every eviction begins with a notice to quit. Sometimes the landlord does not file a summary process case. Sometimes there is no constable, no court date, and no execution. Sometimes the landlord does something more cowardly and more chaotic: the landlord makes the apartment so difficult, unsafe, unlivable, or intolerable that the tenant leaves….

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