This case concerned contractors and subcontractors who performed renovations on leased property but were not paid, leading them to file mechanic's liens under G.L. c. 254 on both the tenant's leasehold interest and the owner's fee interest. The trial judge upheld liens against the leasehold but rejected claims against the fee; on appeal, the court reversed in part. The court held that the contractors established valid liens on the owner's fee interest because the lease demonstrated the owner's consent to the work, but the subcontractors did not qualify for such liens. Any liens on the leasehold interest terminated upon the tenant's surrender of the premises to the owner.
This case concerns Samuel J. Lieberman's efforts to obtain documents produced by Fremont Investment & Loan in an Attorney General enforcement action alleging unfair mortgage lending practices, where those documents were subject to a protective order. Lieberman filed a separate action under the public records law seeking access and also moved to intervene in the original enforcement action. The court affirmed the dismissal of the public records action on the grounds that the statute does not override judicial authority to issue protective orders or address separation-of-powers concerns. It vacated the denial of the intervention motion and remanded for further proceedings, noting that the public records law lacks explicit provisions addressing protective orders and that courts retain traditional control over litigation materials.
This case concerns the ownership of a federal tax refund from a joint return filed by spouses, where only the husband earned income, in the context of the husband's chapter 7 bankruptcy. The trustee claimed the full refund for the estate, while the wife asserted an interest in it. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, answering certified questions, held that the wife has a property interest in the refund if she would have been entitled to one on separate returns, with the extent determined by her contributions (payments or credits) and her hypothetical separate tax liability. The court rejected approaches like equal division or pure income attribution, instead applying a separate-filings rule adjusted for actual contributions to the payments that generated the refund.
The case involved the conviction of the defendant for first-degree murder on a theory of deliberate premeditation after he shot his cousin, a rival in the drug trade, following threats and an altercation. The defendant appealed his conviction and the denial of his motion for a new trial, arguing that hearsay statements were improperly admitted, the prosecutor engaged in improper cross-examination and closing argument, his waiver of the right to testify was invalid, and his counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to impeach a witness or object to arguments. The court affirmed the conviction and the denial of the new trial motion after reviewing the record. It reasoned that the statements at issue were not hearsay or were cumulative of other evidence, the prosecutor's conduct was proper, the waiver was valid with no indication of dispute, counsel's performance met standards, and there was no basis to exercise the court's power under G. L. c. 278, § 33E to reduce the verdict.
In this case, the defendant was convicted in 2005 of second-degree murder based on the 1985 death of her twenty-one-month-old daughter from blunt force abdominal trauma that led to organ failure. The defendant appealed, arguing among other things that the evidence was insufficient to prove malice. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, after reviewing the facts in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, concluded that the evidence did not support a finding of malice under any of its prongs because the defendant could not have known of a plain and strong likelihood of death from the victim's symptoms. The court therefore reversed the conviction without addressing the other appellate issues raised.
In Commonwealth v. Carnes, the defendant was convicted in Superior Court of four counts of first-degree murder (on theories of deliberate premeditation and felony-murder), three counts of armed robbery, and related firearms and larceny offenses arising from the December 2005 shooting deaths of four men in a Dorchester basement. On appeal, the defendant challenged the denial of motions to suppress his statements, the sufficiency of evidence for joint-venture instructions on the robbery and firearms charges, the admission of telephone-record summary charts, and the handling of jury deliberations (including dismissal of a deliberating juror, refusal to declare deliberations "due and thorough," and failure to inquire into alleged juror misconduct or declare a mistrial). The Supreme Judicial Court rejected each claim, affirmed the convictions after plenary review under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, and concluded that the trial record presented no error warranting relief.