Massachusetts Times
NOVEMBER 6, 2026
BOSTON
ENSE PETIT PLACIDAM SUB LIBERTATE QUIETEM · 1788

Dispute Terms

The Massachusetts Times · massachusettstimes.us Effective: October 16, 2026

In plain terms. The industry standard is a dispute clause built to make sure you never get your day in court: forced arbitration, class-action waivers, jury waivers, shortened deadlines, distant venues, and fee threats, buried where no one reads. This document is the standing repudiation of all of it. If we ever have a dispute, it goes to a real court, before a judge and — where the law provides one — a jury, on the law's own timetable, with your small-claims court and your home-jurisdiction protections intact. Before either of us files anything, the complaining side knocks: written notice and thirty days to make it right, both directions. Arbitration exists here only if you agree to it after a dispute arises, never as a toll charged for reading a newspaper. And the oldest rule of fair drafting is adopted against ourselves: where these terms can be read two ways, the reading in your favor governs.

Article 1 — What these terms govern

These Dispute Terms govern every dispute arising under the family of documents the Terms of Use name at their Article 1 — reading, services, purchases, memberships, licenses, and data — except where a signed instrument between the parties provides its own dispute article. The short dispute articles in the sibling documents incorporate this one; where any difference could be read between them, the provision more protective of the reader governs.

Article 2 — The Open Covenant, in full

These are covenants of the publisher, running to every reader, participant, buyer, member, and licensee:

  1. No forced arbitration. No document of this family requires arbitration as a condition of anything. There is no pre-dispute arbitration clause here, and there never will be.
  2. No class-action waiver. Nothing in these terms limits your right to proceed collectively where the law allows it.
  3. No jury ambush. Nothing in these terms waives a jury the law would otherwise provide.
  4. No shortened clock. No clause reduces the time the law gives you to bring a claim. The law's own limitations periods govern, extended as Article 5 provides, never contracted.
  5. No fee intimidation. No clause makes you pay the publisher's attorneys' fees merely for losing. Article 10 governs costs.
  6. No venue trap. Your small-claims court remains yours, and Article 4 keeps a reader from being dragged into a distant courtroom by us.
  7. No retroactive rewrite. The version of these terms in force when the events of a dispute occurred is the version that governs that dispute.
  8. The reader's canon. The plain-terms head of every document is made in good faith, and ambiguity anywhere in the family is read against the publisher, who drafted it, and in your favor.

Article 3 — Governing law

These terms, and every document of the family, are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules — except that nothing in this article displaces a protection of your own jurisdiction's law that cannot be waived, which you keep in full.

Article 4 — The forum

Disputes belong to the state and federal courts sitting in Massachusetts, and both sides consent to their jurisdiction, subject to three standing exceptions in your favor:

  1. Small claims. You may always proceed in your own small-claims court for any claim that qualifies there.
  2. Unwaivable home-forum rights. Where your jurisdiction's law gives you a non-waivable right to sue or be sued at home, that right stands.
  3. We come to you. Where the publisher brings a claim against an individual reader, member, or subscriber, that person may elect, within thirty days of service, to have it heard in the courts of their own home jurisdiction instead, and the publisher will honor the election.

Article 5 — The knock before the suit

Before either side files any claim, the complaining side delivers written notice — to the masthead desk listed at /masthead for notices to the publisher, or to the address you have provided for notices to you — stating what happened, what term it violates, and what would cure it. The other side then has thirty days to cure. No claim is filed during the cure window, and the window is not a trap: any limitations period that would expire during it is extended, by agreement, until thirty days after it closes.

Article 6 — A person reads it

Every dispute notice to the publisher is read by a person with authority to resolve it, and answered. Either side may request one good-faith conference — by phone or in writing — before filing, and the request is honored. None of this is a procedural gate that penalizes you for skipping it where urgency demands Article 9; it is the publisher's standing conduct.

Article 7 — Arbitration, only if you choose it

After a dispute has arisen, the parties may agree in writing to arbitrate it. Such an agreement is never a condition of service, never solicited as boilerplate, and never includes a class waiver or a confidentiality term that gags you about your own facts. Absent that post-dispute agreement in writing, no arbitration occurs.

Article 8 — Disputes about the record

A request to correct the record is not litigation and does not begin with lawyers: it follows the published standard at /corrections on this host, under the Correction Terms. A legal demand concerning published content goes to the masthead desk and receives the same conduct this document promises everywhere — a read by a person with authority, an answer, and the law's full protections for the press asserted without apology.

Article 9 — Urgent relief

Either side may seek emergency or injunctive relief from a court of competent jurisdiction to stop irreparable harm — infringement in progress, a safety threat, a breach of source protection — without first exhausting Articles 5 and 6. Seeking urgent relief does not waive the rest of these terms for the remainder of the dispute.

Article 10 — Costs and fees

Each side bears its own attorneys' fees and costs, except where a statute grants fees to a prevailing party — a grant these terms never strip from you — or where a court finds a claim or defense was brought in bad faith. No clause of any document in this family imposes the publisher's fees on a reader as a penalty for losing in good faith.

Article 11 — Changes

These terms carry their effective date at the top. A change takes effect no sooner than thirty days after posting with its new date, applies only to disputes whose events occur after it takes effect, and continued reading is never recited as consent. No change may remove a covenant of Article 2; a successor wishing not to honor the Covenant has no right to these terms at all.

Article 12 — The publisher, and general terms

The Massachusetts Times is published by The Massachusetts Times Company, a private, wholly American citizen-owned business based in the United States. If any provision here is held unenforceable, it is enforced to the extent the law allows and the rest stand — and severance works one way only: the striking of any part of Article 2 never revives arbitration, a class waiver, or any device the Covenant forbids. A right not exercised is not waived. You may not assign these terms; the publisher may assign them only to a successor that assumes the Covenant whole, and they bind and benefit that successor. Articles 2, 3, 4, 10, and this article survive any end of any agreement in the family. These Dispute Terms, with the family of documents the Terms of Use name, are the entire agreement about how disputes between us are resolved.

— End of the Dispute Terms —

These terms are part of the Terms that govern this publication.