The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today a three-story mixed-use extension to buildings along Hereford Street are OK despite what it said some glaring errors by a lower-court judge and the city Zoning Board of Appeal, because the project complies with the neighborhood's groundwater zoning. Read more.
A financing company that had a lien on a Revere resident's car is suing Revere because it let a local tow firm sell it off after police seized it without ever notifying the company - a practice a federal judge told the city a year ago was unconstitutional. Read more.
The federal government today accused a Dorchester man who runs a series of "sober homes" in Dorchester, Roxbury and Lynn of violating the federal Fair Housing Act through sexual harassment and intimidation over a five-year period. Read more.
A father/son team that proposed a marijuana shop in a former industrial building in an industrial zone at East 1st and K streets in South Boston has sued the Zoning Board of Appeal, alleging a "vocal minority" of South Boston residents used their political heft to turn the board against the project despite its approval by the Boston Cannabis Board and support from other South Boston residents. Read more.
A federal judge in Boston this week dismissed failed Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai's $50-million lawsuit against Marty Walsh and former Police Commissioner Bill Evans over the city's handling of the rally he and a few of his fellow rightists held at the Parkman Bandstand in 2017, the week after a Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA ended with an anti-Nazi protester's murder. Read more.
Ayyadurai said he used his advanced visualization knowledge to create this dotted-line conspiracy chart that he filed in court.
A federal judge today formally dismissed most of repeat Senate loser Shiva Ayyadurai's increasingly conspiracy-drenched lawsuit against state elections officials and a national association of election officers, but kept alive what the judge considers the most interesting legal question of the suit: Whether Twitter colluded with those officials to permanently ban him from the platform, in possible violation of his First Amendment rights. Read more.
The Mexican government, which has failed to stop an unceasing supply of illegal, high-powered weaponry from entering the country, is trying another tack: Suing American gun makers and a Billerica-based gun wholesale in Boston federal court. Read more.
A woman who says she was forced to undergo a body cavity search each time after she and her daughter returned to Logan from trips to the Dominican Republic is now suing Customs and Border Patrol. Read more.
A student at UMass Boston and one at UMass Lowell yesterday sued over their schools' requirements they get vaccinated against Covid-19 or be barred from campus this fall, saying the requirement violates their constitutional rights and that it's just not fair that they have to get what they consider risky shots when professors don't, especially since, they claim, masks and social distancing are just as good as shots. Read more.
A federal jury ruled today that a Lowell cop did not use excessive force in arresting Leonitus Jabir Bey following a traffic stop in 2019 and so he gets nothing, rather than the $9 million - payable in cash - he had demanded. Read more.
A MassHealth manager who compared people filing complaints about the maskless to Germans turning Jews in to the Nazis says MassHealth had no right to fire her for what she said in her off hours and is suing to get her job back, plus damages. Read more.
Trial is set to start Wednesday over a multi-million-dollar federal lawsuit a Lowell man filed against a Lowell police officer over the way he was arrested for negligent operation and resisting arrest in 2019 - but first the judge in the case will ask prospective jurors whether they feel they can be impartial in a case brought by a man believes he "is a Moorish American national not fully subject to the laws of the United States." Read more.
Today's council meeting opened with an invocation by Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B'nai Torah in West Roxbury.
A federal judge ruled today that Salem-based Satanists can continue to press their claim that the way the Boston City Council picks clergy members to start its Wednesday meetings - but not them - violates the Constitution's ban on the establishment of religion. Read more.
A New England Law student got a personalized lesson in federal constitutional, contract, sex-discrimination and "standing" law today when a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit that argued his "unconditional scholarship" to the Stuart Street school meant he doesn't have to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Read more.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that State Police can't withhold documents from a man just because he's serving a life sentence without parole for a 2012 murder. Read more.
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reports a federal bankruptcy judge in Boston has appointed a trustee to oversee the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of CrimsonBikes on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge as it seeks to deal with three creditors - an e-commerce provider, a Boston-based non-profit developer and a customer who pre-paid for a bike he says he never got. Read more.
A federal judge today refused to let Shiva Ayyadurai fire his lawyers from his case against the Secretary of State's office and said his attempt to do so and hire a new lawyer the day before he was supposed to file an amended complaint to bring Twitter into the case is the latest in a pattern of failing to obey court rules and the judge has had quite enough. Read more.
A federal judge today gave preliminary approval to a deal between mobility activists and Boston, which agreed that over the next ten years it will install and repair a total of 15,000 handicap ramps that people in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues can actually use. Read more.
Arthur Leon, who has been battling construction of an 18-unit condo building on Harrison Avenue since it was first proposed in 2011, is now suing several insurance companies for not helping to pay for his legal struggles over the building, which is on land entirely surrounded by a large industrial building he owns. Read more.
A federal judge today withdrew his approval of the system BPS used to offer admission to the three exam schools, saying he was misled by a transcript of text messages by School Committee members that left out the "Westie whites" comments. Read more.
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