Jay Livingstone

Attorney Profile

James (Jay) Livingstone serves as Of Counsel for Regan Strom, P.C. He has a diverse complex litigation practice primarily representing individuals in a broad variety of disputes against larger corporations as well as representing criminal defendants.

For more than twenty-five years, Jay has focused his practice on complex business and employment litigation matters as well as criminal cases. He has a particular focus litigating class actions, and he has successfully litigated class actions on behalf of thousands of individuals for wage and hour cases, helping them to collectively recover millions of dollars.

In 2019, Jay was co-lead counsel on the landmark employment case Sullivan v. Sleepy’s, which clarified rules regarding the payment of inside sales employees in Massachusetts. Prior to the decision, a myriad of Massachusetts-based businesses — such as car dealerships and furniture stores — were improperly compensating their employees by withholding overtime payments. Sleepy’s ultimately led Massachusetts employers to return tens of millions of dollars to employees across the state.

In addition to his class action practice, Jay regularly brings cases on behalf of individuals for claims involving independent contractor misclassification, wage violations, workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation, wrongful termination, fraud, breach of contract and more. Jay has secured numerous large settlements and judgments on behalf of his individual clients.

Jay is licensed to practice law in Massachusetts as well as the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In addition, he has successfully obtained awards for his clients in various arbitration settings, including with AAA (American Arbitration Association).

Jay is the author of the LexisNexis Practice Guide for Massachusetts OUI Law, which he updates annually.

Prior to working at Regan Strom, Jay served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office. There, he represented the Commonwealth in Middlesex Superior Court as well as in District Courts and Juvenile Courts throughout the County. Jay also successfully argued several appeals before the Massachusetts Court of Appeals.

Before joining the District Attorney’s Office, he worked in private practice as an Associate, first at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP in Washington, D.C., and later at Nystrom, Beckman & Paris LLP in Boston, where he handled complex civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense cases in state and federal courts. Between his work at those firms, he worked in the Attorney General’s Office in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands as the Chief of the Civil Division where he represented the Commonwealth in local and federal courts.

In June 2013, he was first elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives to represent the Eighth Suffolk District, which is comprised of parts of Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, and the West End in Boston. He continues to serve in this role.

Jay graduated with a B.A. from University of Connecticut cum laude and a J.D. from George Washington Law School with High Honors.

Representative Cases

• Secured a multi-million dollar settlement for a class of over one hundred wait-staff workers at a state-wide chain of banquet facilities.
• Secured millions of dollars in several class-action lawsuits against automobile dealers and retail stores who were not paying their sales people overtime or Sunday/holiday pay.
• Won six-figure jury verdict in federal court in fraud case involving hundreds of acres of Arizona farmland.
• Won six-figure jury verdict in Suffolk Superior Court on behalf of two car salesmen who were not properly paid overtime.
• Co-lead counsel for trial in a business dispute in which his client secured a $1.9 million judgment under 93A for unfair business practices in Suffolk Superior Court.

In the News

“Trump-backed Ohio Senate candidate shredded documents as he faced a lawsuit accusing him of wage theft,” Business Insider

“A GOP Senate Candidate Blames ‘Liberal’ Judges for His Labor Violations. Just One Problem With That.” Mother Jones