Legal News

Tardy Filing Costs Kin of Mob Hit Victims $8.5M Award

By Matthew Heller, Editor

A federal appeals court judge has lashed out at his colleagues for overturning an $8.5 million award to the families of two men who were killed by notorious Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger during his "unholy alliance" with the FBI.

James "Whitey" Bulger

Edward Halloran, a Bulger associate, and an innocent bystander, Michael Donahue, were gunned down in May 1982 by Bulger and an unidentified accomplice. Their families filed claims against the government more than 18 years later alleging a rogue FBI agent, John Connolly, had tipped Bulger off that Halloran was cooperating with the FBI in a murder investigation.

At least 11 lawsuits have been filed over crimes, most of them murders, that Bulger committed while Connolly provided protection to him and sidekick Stephen "Rifleman" Flemmi in return for their help with FBI investigations of the Boston Mafia.

But last week, Halloran's widow and Donahue's widow and three sons suffered the same fate as most of the other plaintiffs as the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said their claims were time-barred under the two-year statute of limitations.

The "mechanical operation" of statutes of limitation "may at times have seemingly harsh consequences, but the amelioration of such consequences is a matter for Congress rather than for the courts," a 2-1 majority of the court ruled in reversing a trial judge's award of $8.4 million in wrongful-death damages to the families.

In a dissent, Judge Juan R. Torruella said the decision was "an unjust outcome which rewards official uncontrolled wickedness." He also blasted his colleagues for applying the statute of limitations so rigidly in the FBI/Bulger suits.

"Our cases on this topic exhibit an arguably gratuitous hostility to FTCA [Federal Tort Claims Act] claimants," he said, and

may give the impression of counseling ... that injured parties should bring their claims as soon as they learn of uncorroborated speculation in the papers or even the mere "rumor of a claim," for fear of later discovering their claims to be forever barred.

Attorneys for the Halloran and Donahue families cited the dissent in saying they will petition the entire six-judge 1st Circuit for a new hearing. "It's a clear injustice," William E. Christie, who represents the Hallorans, told The Boston Globe.

All the suits alleging the government enabled Bulger's reign of terror as boss of the Winter Hill Gang have faced a similar problem - the FBI's involvement in the underlying crime was not disclosed until many years after the event. In only one case has the 1st Circuit ruled that the claims were not time-barred.

The Halloran family filed their FTCA claim Sept. 25, 2000 and the Donahues filed theirs March 29, 2001. According to the 1st Circuit majority, they knew or should have known of their injuries more than two years earlier, when newspapers publicized court testimony in which Flemmi confirmed that Connolly had warned him of Halloran's work as an informant.

But Torruella stressed that "the Donahue and Halloran estates were not similarly situated to the families of other Bulger victims who have raised claims before this court" because the government had initially prosecuted Jimmy Flynn, a Bulger associate who had a beef with Halloran, for the murders.

Even though Flynn was acquitted, he said, the families "had no reason to suspect that the government's insistence that Flynn was the gunman was a sham, and that in fact the government itself bore a great deal of the responsibility for the murders."

Torruella said the clock on the claims did not start running before Sept. 15, 1999, when a trial judge who heard a criminal case against Bulger and Flemmi issued a "comprehensive opinion" that details the FBI's role in the Halloran shooting.

At least two other FBI/Bulger cases are still pending before the 1st Circuit. Bulger is now one of the FBI's Most Wanted fugitives.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

Full post as published by On Point News on February 14, 2011 (boomark / email).