Media & Entertainment Law

Under the Open Meeting Law, e-mail can be a double-edged sword

Posted on March 18, 2010
On Beacon Hill and in municipal buildings across the state, government officials are getting the message that e-mail can be a double-edged sword, writes State House reporter Dan Ring in The Republican of Springfield.

Towns prepare for substantial changes in Open Meeting Law

Posted on March 18, 2010
"The state's Open Meeting Law requires that meetings of governmental boards and committees be conducted in sessions open to the public, with few exceptions which are strictly limited. The goal of the law is to eliminate as much of the secrecy around discussions and decisions of public policy, by requiring that discussion to be done in a public meeting...

Boston Lawyer Wins Libel Case for Former V.I. Judge

Posted on March 17, 2010
A former Superior Court judge in the U.S. Virgin Islands won a $240,000 libel verdict this week against the Virgin Islands Daily News. The former judge, Leon Kendall, was represented in the lawsuit by Howard Cooper, the Boston lawyer who in 2005 won a $2...

Legislature to Hold Hearing on Reporters' Shield Bill

Posted on February 18, 2010
Massachusetts remains one of the minority of states without a shield law to protect journalists' confidential sources. That could change if a bill to be heard by the legislature next week becomes law. The bill, House Bill 1650, would prohibit courts and government agencies from forcing members of the news media to reveal their news sources...

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SJC Affirms Public's Right to View Jury Selection

Posted on February 17, 2010
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued an important decision today underscoring the right of the public and the press to sit in on jury selection in criminal cases. The opinion, Commonwealth v. Cohen, concludes that even a partial closure of the courtroom -- with some family members and non-parties allowed in -- can violate both the First Amendment rights of the public and press and the Sixth Amendment rights of the defendant...

Survey of Media Access to Mass. Courts

Posted on February 08, 2010
The Judiciary/Media Committee of the Supreme Judicial Court is considering revisions to the Guidelines on the Public's Right of Access to Judicial Proceedings and Records. In order to evaluate whether the guidelines should be amended or expanded and what other initiatives the committee might wish to pursue, the committee is asking members of the news media to complete a survey on media access to the courts...

Scott Brown's Short-lived Bill for a Reporters' Shield

Posted on January 28, 2010
Although various groups have lobbied for a reporters' shield law in Massachusetts, the state remains without one. But in 2005, just a year after he was elected to the state Senate, U.S. Sen.-elect Scott Brown made an aborted attempt to change that.As the Senate took up debate on the state budget on May 23, 2005, Brown  and former Sen...

Implications of SJC's Open Meeting Ruling

Posted on January 18, 2010
Reporter Kendall Hatch has a piece in The Metrowest Daily News considering the long-term implications of the Supreme Judicial Court's recent ruling in the open meeting law case, District Attorney for the Northern District v. School Committee of Wayland, which I previously blogged about here...

Mass. High Court Affirms Fair Report Privilege

Posted on January 07, 2010
The Supreme Judicial Court today issued a major ruling for members of the news media, affirming a broad immunity from libel for journalists who report fairly and accurately on official government actions and statements. The opinion in Howell v. Enterprise dismisses a defamation suit brought by a former employee of the town of Abington against The Enterprise newspaper in Brockton after it reported that he had used town computers to access pornography...

SJC Rules in Key Open Meeting Case

Posted on December 31, 2009
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today issued its ruling in a key open meeting law case, District Attorney for the Northern District v. School Committee of Wayland. The SJC ruled that the School Committee violated the law when it met in a closed session to discuss the performance evaluation of Wayland's superintendent of schools and when it exchanged private e-mails regarding the evaluation in advance of the meeting...

State Orders Release of Parking Scofflaws' Names

Posted on December 29, 2009
The Massachusetts Secretary of State's office has ruled that the public has a right to know the names, addresses and amounts owed of the top 10 parking scofflaws in the town of Watertown. In a Dec. 24 letter published by the Wicked Local Watertown Blog, state Supervisor of Public Records Alan N...

SJC Gives Judges More Leeway to Explain Themselves

Posted on December 08, 2009
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announced a new judicial conduct rule today that slightly eases restrictions on state court judges' ability to explain their decisions to the public. Although the SJC did not adopt the more liberal rule changes recommended by an ad hoc study committee it appointed in 2008, it nevertheless clarified that judges may issue supplemental memoranda to explain their decisions without violating judicial ethics...

Podcast: The Right to Counsel in Civil Cases

Posted on November 18, 2009
The Supreme Court's 1963 decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, guaranteed that criminal defendants unable to afford their own lawyer would have one appointed at the public's expense. Should there be a corollary right in certain types of civil cases that involve basic human needs, such as when a person faces eviction from a home or the loss of parental rights? California recently made history by enacting a pilot program to appoint lawyers in certain civil cases and other pilot programs are underway elsewhere in the country...

Standard-Times Asks DA to Probe Wareham Meetings

Posted on November 11, 2009
From the Standard-Times: The Standard-Times has asked the Plymouth County district attorney to investigate the Board of Selectmen's heavy use of executive sessions in the hiring of a new town administrator.In response, Assistant District Attorney Mary Lee on Wednesday sent a letter to the town's legal counsel, asking for explanations and for minutes of all meetings involved with the search, both public and private...

Help Support the Bar Foundation's 45th Anniversary

Posted on November 11, 2009
The Massachusetts Bar Foundation is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. I am honored to serve as a trustee of this important charitable organization, which is dedicated to ensuring equal access to justice and to enhancing the administration of justice and understanding of the law...

Podcast: E-mail and the 4th Amendment

Posted on November 05, 2009
Does the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extend to e-mail and data stored in "the cloud"? Surprisingly, the question remains unsettled in the courts. On this week's legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the extent to which e-mail and other online data are protected in both the criminal and civil contexts...

SJC To Hear Key Open Meeting Case

Posted on October 28, 2009
An important case interpreting the Massachusetts open meeting law comes up for argument before the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday. The case, District Attorney v. Wayland School Committee, presents the question of whether a school committee violated the law when it met in closed session to discuss the performance evaluation of the school superintendent...

Anti-SLAPP Case Comes Before SJC Monday

Posted on October 28, 2009
A case that could decide whether the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute applies to journalists comes up for argument Monday before the Supreme Judicial Court. The case, Fustolo v. Hollander, involves a libel lawsuit filed by real estate developer Steven C...

Debt to Town No Reason to Deny Records Request

Posted on October 19, 2009
Can a town deny a public-records request on the grounds that the requester still owes money for an earlier request?No, according to a ruling made by Alan Cote, the Massachusetts supervisor of public records. As reported by the Brockton Enterprise, Cote has decided that Rockland Town Administrator Allan Chiocca was wrong to deny a resident's public records request for the reason that he still owed the town payment for past requests...

The Week's Open Meeting Law News

Posted on October 18, 2009
Some items in the news this week regarding the Massachusetts open meeting law:A Cape Cod Times editorial calls for the state legislature to put teeth in the open meeting and public records laws. "Pick up the phone and call your state senator and representative...

Podcast: The FTC?s Blogger Guidelines

Posted on October 16, 2009
This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we try to sort fact from fiction regarding the Federal Trade Commission's new guidelines on product endorsements and reviews by bloggers. The FTC wants bloggers to disclose free products or payments they receive from companies for reviewing their products...

Jury Verdict in Noonan v. Staples

Posted on October 12, 2009
Remember Noonan v. Staples? That was the 1st Circuit decision I described as the most dangerous libel decision in decades. In it, the court upended the bedrock principle of libel law that truth is an absolute defense. It said that even a true statement can be subject to a libel lawsuit if it was said with actual malice...

Under Pressure, Selectmen Meet in Public -- Sort Of

Posted on October 07, 2009
The board of selectmen in Charlton, Mass., should be commended for conducting its evaluation of the town administrator in an open meeting. It did not have a lot of choice, as the Telegram & Gazette reports. Complaints filed by the newspaper against the town last year resulted in a ruling by the Worcester County district attorney that the selectmen violated the open meeting law in 2007 and 2008 when it conducted the administrator's evaluations behind closed doors...

Legislation Would Help Save the Paper Boy (and Girl)

Posted on October 06, 2009
Massachusetts state Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg of Northampton said today he would file a bill to help save the jobs of newspaper carriers. His statement followed the announcement earlier in the day that Northampton's newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and its sibling paper, the Greenfield Recorder, would end their long-standing custom of having boys and girls deliver the newspaper to neighborhood homes...

Mass. Judge Slams Blogger's Special Treatment

Posted on September 11, 2009
A federal prosecutor's decision to let prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan off the hook for a marijuana bust was condemned yesterday by a federal magistrate judge in Boston as unjustified favoritism. But finding that he was without power to override the prosecutor's decision, the magistrate judge dismissed the charges nonetheless...

Fellowships for Freelance Legal Journalists

Posted on September 11, 2009
Passing on the following announcement:Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will award four Carnegie/Newhouse School Legal Reporting Fellowships to support freelance journalists reporting on legal issues.The $3,000 awards include paid student research assistants for each reporting fellow, which will give Newhouse students practical experience covering law and the courts...

Podcast: 'Crowdsourcing' Patent Reviews

Posted on August 17, 2009
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is understaffed and overwhelmed. Could the answer to its problems lie in crowdsourcing the patent-review process? Could crowdsourcing result in better patents?This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we look at the Peer-to-Patent system, an innovative pilot project run jointly by the USPTO and the Center for Patent Innovations, a research and development arm of New York Law School's Institute for Information Law & Property...

Two Distortions of the Open Meeting Law

Posted on July 30, 2009
How's that old saying go about the devil quoting the Bible for his own ends? The same, it seems, can be said about public officials and the open meeting law, as two items in the news today illustrate.First is a story from the Worcester Telegram about the Dudley Board of Selectmen's decision to reprimand the town's fire chief for supposedly violating the open meeting law...

Ethics Bill Weakens Open Meeting Law

Posted on June 26, 2009
The Massachusetts legislature yesterday unanimously approved a major ethics bill and Gov. Deval Patrick last night indicated he would sign it. Few members of the public realize that contained within this bill is a major overhaul of the state's open meeting law...

Gov?s ad plan riles newspaper group

Posted on April 09, 2009
Coverage of this week's legislative hearing on public notices: Gov?s ad plan riles newspaper group. See also this editorial from Gatehouse News: Don't reduce access to state contract information.

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