The case involved a bank creditor suing to recover the proceeds of real estate that a debtor had fraudulently conveyed to his wife and then to the defendant (the wife's brother-in-law) to shield the asset from collection, after which the defendant sold the property to good-faith buyers and turned the net proceeds over to the debtor. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reversed the Superior Court's judgment for the bank and entered judgment for the defendant. The court held that the defendant was not personally liable, reasoning that under G.L.c. 109A the extent of a transferee's participation in the fraudulent scheme determines liability and that returning the proceeds to the debtor, as in Modin v. Hanron, was sufficient to discharge any obligation where participation was not substantially active. The sale to bona fide purchasers had already placed the property beyond the bank's reach.
The case involved a company president, as assignee of his bankrupt company's claims, suing a bank for wrongfully dishonoring 26 checks under the UCC (G.L. c. 106, § 4-402) and for unfair practices under G.L. c. 93A, § 11, after the bank exercised a set-off on a revolving loan secured by accounts receivable and inventory. A Superior Court judge awarded the face amount of the checks plus attorneys' fees, but the Supreme Judicial Court reversed that damages award on appeal. The court held that the bank's set-off came too late under UCC §§ 4-303 and 4-109 because the checks had already been posted, making the dishonor wrongful, and that the 93A claim was valid and assignable; however, the plaintiff could recover only nominal damages of $1 because no additional proximate consequential damages were shown, while upholding the award of attorneys' fees and costs.
The case concerned whether a plaintiff's tort lawsuit, arising from events in 1973 when he was thirteen, was barred by the statute of limitations after he filed it in 1980 at age twenty. The court held that the action was time-barred, ruling that the tolling of the limitations period during minority ended when the plaintiff turned eighteen in 1977 under the 1973 change in the age of majority, after which he had two years to sue. The core reasoning was that the 1973 statutes—one extending the tort limitations period to three years and one lowering the age of majority to eighteen—were to be applied according to their plain language without correlation between the two reforms, and that the resulting two-year period after reaching majority provided a reasonable time to file, consistent with due process. The court affirmed judgment for the defendants.
The case involved a town seeking to recover its costs of fighting a fire on the defendant corporation's land, where the defendants had allegedly dumped hundreds of thousands of used tires in violation of health regulations, creating a fire hazard. The town based its claims on common law tort liability for negligence and nuisance, as well as misrepresentation, and on two statutes: G. L. c. 266, § 8, and G. L. c. 111, § 145. The Superior Court dismissed the complaint under Mass. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), and the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. The court reasoned that there is no common law authority for a municipality to recover firefighting expenses incurred on private land, that the cited statutes do not authorize recovery in this situation, and that fire protection services are provided for the public benefit without expectation of compensation from property owners.
An employee of a subcontractor on a school renovation project fell from a ladder and was injured; after receiving workers' compensation benefits, he and his wife sued the general contractor for negligence. The contractor filed a third-party complaint against the subcontractor and its insurers, alleging an express contractual indemnity obligation arising from the subcontract's incorporation of the main contract's broad indemnity clause covering claims from concurrent negligence. The Superior Court dismissed the third-party complaint, but the Supreme Judicial Court reversed, holding that the subcontract language sufficiently imposed the same indemnity duties on the subcontractor as the contractor owed to the town, that such express agreements are valid and enforceable under Massachusetts law following the majority rule, and that the insurers' motions should be reconsidered on remand.
The case involved Becton, Dickinson & Co., a New Jersey-based manufacturer operating in multiple states, which sought an abatement of its Massachusetts foreign corporation excise tax for fiscal year 1968 after acquiring and integrating the Electrodyne division that made medical devices. The company argued that Electrodyne operated autonomously enough to warrant separate accounting for its income under G.L. c. 63, § 42, which would have shown a loss rather than the roughly $500,000 in Massachusetts income determined by the statutory three-factor apportionment formula in G.L. c. 63, § 38. The Appellate Tax Board ruled against the taxpayer on the merits, finding it engaged in a unitary business, and the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. The court held that common ownership, financing arrangements, and managerial oversight demonstrated mutual benefit and interdependence sufficient to meet the unitary business principle under the Due Process Clause, allowing apportionment of total income, and the taxpayer did not prove by clear evidence that the result was distortive or that the commissioner abused discretion in rejecting separate accounting.