News + Insights from the Legal Team at Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein

Published on: | by

We are proud to announce that partner Emma Quinn-Judge is being honored as one of the 2017 Top Women of the Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.  The annual award recognizes women lawyers for outstanding accomplishments in the legal community who have distinguished themselves as leaders.

Emma has a litigation practice focused on criminal defense, employment, and appeals.  In her criminal defense practice, Emma has represents individuals charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to murder and serious federal charges. Recently, Emma was co-counsel in a case where the jury found the client not guilty on two charges arising from a traffic stop in which police used excessive force in a local Massachusetts city. Emma has on numerous occasions helped clients get their charges dismissed altogether or substantially reduced.  She is also a strong advocate on sentencing and has helped clients in federal court receive below Guideline sentences.

In her employment practice, Emma represents employees in state and federal court, in administrative proceedings, and on appeal.  She has won substantial victories, both in court and in out-of-court settlements. Most recently, she represented the plaintiff in Charles v. City of Boston, and won a nearly $10.9 million jury verdict (now on appeal) for her client, a long-time City of Boston employee who experienced race discrimination and retaliation. She also provides advice and counseling to employees on a wide range of employment issues, including compensation, discrimination, harassment, and workplace disputes.

CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

Yesterday the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 2093, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). Last month the House unanimously passed a similar bill, H. 3680. The PWFA is headed to Governor Charlie Baker, who has indicated he will sign it.

What is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act?

The PWFA will amend Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination law (General Laws chapter 151B) to include pregnancy and related medical conditions (including breastfeeding) as protected categories. The law will also require employers to grant their employees reasonable accommodations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions if such accommodations do not cause an undue hardship on the employer. The law lists examples of the types of accommodations that might be required: more frequent breaks, time off to recover from childbirth, light duty, modification of equipment or seating, modified work schedules, and a private space for pumping breast milk. While the law allows employers to require medical documentation for some accommodations, employers are required to provide the following accommodations with no medical documentation: “(i) more frequent restroom, food or water breaks; (ii) seating; (iii) limits on lifting over 20 pounds; and (iv) private non-bathroom space for expressing breast milk.”  CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

Massachusetts is often lauded as one of the most progressive states in the country, and our state civil rights laws routinely provide broader protections than their federal counterparts. So it may come as a surprise that Massachusetts does not have a functional state counterpart to federal laws prohibiting discrimination in education like Title IX and Title VI.

Massachusetts has a law titled “Fair Educational Practices,” Mass. G. L. c. 151C.  That chapter contains provisions prohibiting educational institutions from doing the following:

  1. Discriminating against a U.S. citizen on the basis of race, religion, creed, color or national origin in the admission process;
  2. Retaliating against employees, students, or applicants for assisting in any proceeding under the law;
  3. Asking for the race, religion, color, or national origin of an applicant;
  4. Discriminating against someone seeking admission to a vocational school or post-bachelor’s degree program, or discriminating against such a student in the provision of benefits, privileges, or services based on the student’s  race, religion, creed, color, age, sex or national origin;
  5. Excluding students from admission because they are blind, deaf, or require a guide dog;
  6. Requesting information about, or to discriminate on the basis of a failure to provide information about, certain criminal records;
  7. Sexually harassing students.

CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

In the world of disciplinary hearings under Title IX, the process for students accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault on campus often begins this way: an accused student (the “respondent” in campus disciplinary parlance) is called into a meeting with a school administrator and informed of a disciplinary charge that could result in expulsion. At most schools, the information that the school provides about the actual charge consists of the date of the alleged event (or a range of dates); the identity of the complainant (the student who is making the accusation) and the provision of the student code that the respondent allegedly violated, or another summary description such as “non-consensual sexual conduct.” In practice, this information is often not sufficient to allow the respondent to identify the actions that the school is investigating, particularly where the allegations stem from a long-term romantic relationship with the complainant, much less to prepare a defense. It also may not give respondents adequate notice to allow them to evaluate whether they may face criminal charges, and make informed decisions about whether to waive their 5th Amendment right to remain silent by making statements during the school’s investigation.

CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

For over 40 years, Massachusetts has had an avenue of pretrial diversion in criminal cases, which allows young individuals accused of less-serious crimes to avoid a criminal record. Specifically, defendants under age 22 with no prior convictions who are charged in state District Court (or the Boston Municipal Court) can seek a diversion under Chapter 276A of the General Laws. (Sex offenses and certain other crimes are not eligible for pretrial diversion.) If the court agrees, the defendant’s arraignment can be postponed while the defendant participates in a “program” with an aim toward rehabilitation and preventing future offenses. A “program” can include any of a number of different things, including medical, psychological, or substance abuse treatment; education, training, or counseling; community service; or “other rehabilitative services.” After the defendant completes the program, the court may dismiss the charge without it ever showing up on his or her criminal record. CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

As I previously wrote , in December 2016 Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was changed to give law enforcement more expansive authority to conduct searches of computers. How the new procedural rule will interact with core constitutional values and established legal principles, as well as what the practical consequences of the rule are, remain open questions.

(1) Fourth Amendment

The proposed changes may well fall afoul of the Fourth Amendment. As I have discussed in a previous blog post, the Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures. It does this by requiring the government to obtain a warrant before conducting most searches, by requiring those warrants to be supported by probable cause, and by requiring the warrants to be particular about the location to be searched and the items to be seized. CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

In December 2016, a federal policy-making body known as the Judicial Conference of the United States made it much easier for federal law enforcement to hack into private computers and mine personal data regardless of the computer’s location. It did this simply by changing Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The Supreme Court approved the changes in April 2016, and Congress recently declined to take steps to block or delay the changes. That means that the changes have now gone into effect, and law enforcement now will have a much easier time obtaining warrants to search computers—and possibly also have an easier time surviving constitutional challenges to those warrants.

What is Rule 41, And What Did the Change Do?

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 governs procedures related to search warrants and seizures. It governs what law enforcement must do in order to obtain and then execute a search warrant; what a magistrate judge must do to issue a warrant; and what a person must do to move for the return of property or suppression of evidence unlawfully obtained.

CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

At a time of increasingly public protests, the Supreme Judicial Court recently reaffirmed its commitment to protecting speech here in Massachusetts.  Under Masschusetts’s Anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation law (“Anti-SLAPP”), defendants can move to dismiss a lawsuit filed against them if that lawsuit targets their attempt to influence a government body or seek help from one.   It had always been clear that when a person attempts to influence the government on their own behalf – in other words, to vindicate their own interests – the statute protected that activity.  But in Cardno ChemRisk v. Cherri Foytlin et al., the Court made clear that the statute extends to citizens’ right to advocate not just for themselves, but also for others.

Massachusetts is one of twenty-eight states with Anti-SLAPP protection.  These statutes buttress a basic constitutional right:  The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  That means that every person has a right to influence government bodies – by, for example, protesting in the town square or testifying at a hearing – without fear of reprisal.  But citizens’ protests can often frustrate powerful, non-governmental interests.  And when they do, those powerful interests may use courts to try to stop or stifle the speech.  Anti-SLAPP statutes protect citizens from those suits. CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

About a year and a half ago we mentioned the Owen Labrie case in New Hampshire, where an 18-year-old senior at the St. Paul School was charged with a variety of crimes, including forcible sexual assault, of a 15-year-old at the school. To briefly review the case: Labrie was alleged to have been participating in a longstanding tradition, “senior salute,” where male seniors competed to see who could get sexual favors from the most underclassmen. The victim in the case alleged that Labrie had invited her out as part of the senior salute, then raped her in an attic in the school.In August 2015 a jury acquitted Labrie of the felony forcible sexual assault charge, but found him guilty of three misdemeanor counts of statutory rape, and the felony of using a computer to lure a minor for sex. The latter conviction requires Labrie to register for life as a sex offender.

Throughout the trial, there was criticism from some in the legal community about both the charges brought, and the way the case was being handled by Labrie’s lawyers. As news reports noted, Labrie fired at least three lawyers before settling on famous Boston criminal defense lawyer J.W. Carney and Worcester lawyer Samir Zaganjori, and rejected a number of plea deals that would have prevented him from having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. One article reported that a law-enforcement official involved in the case said that if Labrie had acknowledged wrongdoing and expressed regret he would have likely been sent into a sex-offender program without being convicted of any of the crimes with which he was charged. Former federal judge and Harvard Law School professor Nancy Gertner told a reporter, “This was a fundamentally ‘untriable’ case,” and indicated surprise that the defense had taken the case to trial. CONTINUE READING ›

Published on: | by

Over the last several years, the Massachusetts criminal justice system has been rocked by misconduct in state-run drug labs. First, and so far most significant, Annie Dookhan, a chemist at the Hinton State Lab in Jamaica Plain, tainted over 42,000 state convictions by employing several different scientific shortcuts to boost her efficiency and productivity. Rather than meticulously testing each sample to determine whether or not it contained cocaine, heroin, or other suspected drugs, her practices over several years included “dry-labbing,” or combining samples from different cases and testing them all at once, then recording the results under each case; fabricating records that she tested and calibrated lab equipment as required by protocol, in order to save time; and contaminating samples that tested negative with drugs so that they would test positive. The Supreme Judicial Court has addressed cases involving Dookhan several times already. As if this were not disturbing enough, a second chemist at a different state lab, Sonja Farak, undermined the integrity of thousands of drug cases in Western Massachusetts over 8 years by using methamphetamine, cocaine, and a variety of other drugs while at work; stealing and consuming both standard comparison drug samples and drugs that were seized by police; and using lab equipment to manufacture crack cocaine. Between Dookhan and Farak, prosecutors have (presumably unknowingly) used fabricated or unreliable evidence to convict or induce guilty pleas from thousands of people in Massachusetts. CONTINUE READING ›

Justia Lawyer Rating
Super Lawyers
Martindale-Hubbell
Best Lawyers
Best Law Firms
Contact Information
65A Atlantic Ave
Boston, MA 02110
Phone: 617-742-6020Fax: 617-742-3269Email: info@zalkindlaw.com

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include confidential or sensitive information in an email, text message, or voicemail. Although we will maintain the confidentiality of information sent to us by potential clients, we cannot control information that may be transmitted through insecure means. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2025, Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design