The Hanging Judge is the first novel by Judge Michael A. Ponsor of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Emma Quinn-Judge reviewed the book in the March 2014 edition of The Champion, the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Her review can be read here.
On March 7, 2014, Emma Quinn-Judge argued to the Massachusetts Appeals Court that the 2011 jury verdict awarding our client $1.1 million in punitive damages, which had been vacated by the trial judge, should be reinstated. She also argued a related appeal regarding the scope of the attorney’s fees provision in chapter 151B, the Massachusetts antidiscrimination law. A decision is not anticipated for several months.
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David Belfort, Inga Bernstein, Eugenia Guastaferri, Scott Connolly, and Peter Lauriat served as panelists at the MCLE discussion.
In February 2014, Inga Bernstein served on the faculty of a Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education program titled, “Proving & Valuing Damages in Employment Cases.” Ms. Bernstein spoke to an audience of attorneys about issues related to damages including how to maximize damages for employment plaintiffs in cases in court and before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
In February 2014, David Duncan and Rachel Stroup successfully obtained summary judgment for our clients, directors and shareholders of a small corporation, on breach of fiduciary duty claims brought by the plaintiff. Relying on Delaware law, Duncan and Stroup argued that the plaintiff filed too late because the statute of limitations began to run not when the action that allegedly injured the plaintiff was taken, but when the directors took the vote that led to that action. The Massachusetts Superior Court judge agreed and dismissed the plaintiff’s lawsuit in its entirety.
In February 2014, Norman Zalkind consulted on daughter and journalist Susan Zalkind’s cover story for Boston Magazine detailing her investigation into the connection between a grisly 2011 murder of three men and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Her story uncovers the failure of law enforcement officials to adequately investigate the 2011 murders until after the marathon bombings forced them to look more closely at Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his friend, Ibragim Todashev, who was killed by FBI agents in May 2013, moments before he was allegedly going to write a statement implicating himself and Tsarnaev in the Waltham murders. Zalkind asks the question: Could solving this case have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings?
Zalkind’s story was featured on This American Life on March 7, 2014. Zalkind appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and CNN’s “Legal View,” among other news programs, to discuss her investigation and story.
In January 2014, Inga Bernstein was quoted in a Boston Globe article discussing the Commonwealth’s attempts to keep secret settlement and severance agreements between it and its employees. The article reads in part:
“Boston employment lawyer Inga Bernstein said she was glad the courts ruled that government settlements can no longer be kept secret, because she thought it would expose important problems.
‘We expect [government employers] to follow the rules,’ said Bernstein, a partner at Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP. ‘And when the rules haven’t been followed they should correct them.
In January 2014, Norman Zalkind and Naomi Shatz won a required finding of not guilty at a bench trial on a felony animal abuse case. The judge agreed with Zalkind and Shatz that the Commonwealth had not present sufficient evidence for a trier of fact to find the defendant guilty of cruelty to an animal, and acquitted her of the charge.
In January 2014, Naomi Shatz and David Duncan won an appeal and rehearing with a student originally suspended from his graduate program for plagiarism. On appeal the school granted the student a new hearing based on significant procedural defects in the original hearing, and at the new hearing the student prevailed and his suspension was overturned.
On January 3, 2014 The National Law Journal ran a story spotlighting Ruskai v. Pistole, the firm’s case challenging the TSA’s policy of giving invasive full-body pat-downs to disabled passengers who alarm metal detectors. Inga Bernstein, lead counsel on the case, explains that basic Fourth Amendment law requires the court to balance the need for any search “against the intrusiveness of the search, and the [TSA’s] search is highly intrusive.” Bernstein also notes that the TSA’s policy disproportionately affects older passengers with metal joint implants, who are a significant portion of the passengers who alarm metal detectors, but that those passengers are not a heightened security risk. ““There’s no correlation between [their devices] alarming the system and the risk they present as a traveler,” Bernstein stated.
The full article can be found at The National Law Journal
On January 6, 2014 the Boston Business Journal ran an article on the case, describing the pat-downs Ruskai receives when she alarms metal detectors: “The TSA pat-downs Ruskai receives include her entire body, Bernstein said. Ruskai repeatedly is touched on her inner thighs, Bernstein said. ‘She objects to that,’ Bernstein said, adding that Ruskai’s breasts are touched and fingers are run on the inside of her waist band.”
Boston Lawyer Blog