Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Mass. attorney board rushes to racialize, shun 'overseer,' ignores word's ancient, biblical usages

A proposal published for public comment would change the name of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers to the "Board of Bar Oversight" to avoid connotations of slavery in the term "overseer."

The new name means the "BBO" will keep its popular initialism. The BBO was formed in 1974, so the "overseer" usage originated independently of the negative connotation. It seems what's changed in the last half century is sensitivity to language, for better and for worse.

Frederick Douglass
and grandson Joseph Douglass, 1894

Smithsonian NMAAHC
The BBO stated its reasoning:

The word "overseer" has a pernicious history in our country, tied inextricably to chattel slavery. On southern plantations, an overseer was the slaveowner's delegate in day-to-day governance, trusted to enforce order and obedience. Overseers were the most visible representatives of white supremacy. As defined in the Online Etymology Dictionary, an overseer was "one who has charge, under the owner or manager, of the work done on a plantation." In autobiographies by slaves such as Frederick Douglas [sic] and Solomon Northup ("Twelve Years a Slave"), overseers were described as heartless, brutal and cruel. They were an inevitable and indispensable product of an economy built on human chattel. As noted by University of Louisville president Neeli Bendapudi, "The term overseer is a racialized term. It hearkens back to American slavery and reminds us of the brutality of the conditions and treatment of black people during this time." We agree with this statement.

I don't. To "racialize" is "to give a racial character to: to categorize, marginalize, or regard according to race." I agree that Bendapudi racialized the term. The BBO did not, before now. But therein lies the power of a passive structure, "is ... racialized," allowing one to accuse without responsibility to prove.

The BBO moreover is almost irresponsibly selective in its sourcing. First, the Online Etymology Dictionary is a project of a Pennsylvania writer, Douglas Harper. It's good and interesting to read; I'm not meaning to denigrate Harper's labor of love. But I'm not sure any one person's internet project should be anyone else's first stop for denotation, especially in a legal context. The BBO's sourcing is on par at best with high-school-term-paper standards.

Second, "one who has charge ... of the work done on a plantation" is not exactly what the Online Etymology Dictionary says. Rather, here's the entry in full:

late 14c., "supervisor, superintendent, one who looks over," agent noun from oversee (v.). Specifically, "one who superintends workmen;" especially with reference to slavery, "one who has charge, under the owner or manager, of the work done on a plantation."

So it's not true, even in the source referenced, that "overseer" on its face is defined as, or means, a plantation supervisor. The meaning arises in the especial context of slavery.

Maybe I'm a little sensitive to the whole thing because I once served as an "overseer" in my church. The BBO doesn't mention that the word has any meaning outside of slavery, much less that it has ancient and Biblical origins.

Episkopos (ἐπίσκοπος) in Ancient Greek translates literally as onlooker, or overseer, and that's the word used in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Bible. Epi (ἐπί) is a preposition meaning on or upon, and skopos (σκοπός) means to watch or look intently. Skopos is used variously (and in the Iliad) to refer to a lookout, a guardian, or a spy or scout.

In Ancient Greece, an episkopos referred specifically to a kind of imperial agent sent by Athens to distant municipalities to make sure they paid their taxes (Balcer 1977). (An interesting point of historical-comparative legal studies is that having a highly functional tax system is a common feature of successful ancient civilizations, from the Greeks to the Aztecs.) 

In the Iliad (22:255), A.T. Murray translation, Homer refers to the gods as witness to an agreement, using episkopoi (ἐπίσκοποι), the plural, to refer back to the gods. Murray beefed up the translation to say "witnesses and guardians of our covenant," thus articulating the added connotation of safeguarding.

In the Odyssey, also the Murray translation, below, Homer used episkopos more abstractly to indicate a role of authority:

τὸν δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ Εὐρύαλος ἀπαμείβετο νείκεσέ τ᾽ ἄντην:
‘οὐ γάρ σ᾽ οὐδέ, ξεῖνε, δαήμονι φωτὶ ἐίσκω
160ἄθλων, οἷά τε πολλὰ μετ᾽ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται,
ἀλλὰ τῷ, ὅς θ᾽ ἅμα νηὶ πολυκλήιδι θαμίζων,
ἀρχὸς ναυτάων οἵ τε πρηκτῆρες ἔασιν,
φόρτου τε μνήμων καὶ ἐπίσκοπος ᾖσιν ὁδαίων
κερδέων θ᾽ ἁρπαλέων: οὐδ᾽ ἀθλητῆρι ἔοικας. 

Then again Euryalus made answer and taunted him to his face: "Nay verily, stranger, for I do not liken thee to a man that is skilled in contests, such as abound among men, but to one who, faring to and fro with his benched ship, is a captain of sailors who are merchantmen, one who is mindful of his freight, and has charge of a home-borne cargo, and the gains of his greed. Thou dost not look like an athlete."

In none of several English versions of this passage did I find episkopos translated directly. Poetically inclined translators such as Murray carried over the subject "captain" with either a pronoun or an implied subject. "Captain" here is "ἀρχὸς," or "chief." So it looks like Homer saw ἀρχὸς and ἐπίσκοπος as functionally equivalent in this context.

The New Testament accordingly uses episkopos several times to refer to church leaders. Indeed, "bishop" in English derives from the Greek episkopos—episcopus in Latin and obispo in Spanish.

Shepherd in 1 Peter 2:25
© Saint Mary's Press, licensed for non-commercial use
The First Epistle of Peter (2:25) (NIV) uses episkopos abstractly, as a metaphor for Jesus: "For 'you were like sheep going astray,' but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls" ("ἦτε γὰρ ὡς πρόβατα πλανώμενα· ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεστράφητε νῦν ἐπὶ τὸν ποιμένα καὶ ἐπίσκοπον τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν").  

Other usages are more concrete. In Acts 20:28 (NIV), Paul admonishes disciples: "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood" ("προσέχετε οὖν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ παντὶ τῷ ποιμνίῳ ἐν ὑμᾶς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἔθετο ἐπισκόπους ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος"). Similar usages appear in Philippians 1:1, 1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Titus 1:7, and Hebrews 13:17.

The BBO needs to be called out here for shoddy work (really, misspelling Frederick Douglass?) and results-oriented reasoning. The board is myopically intent on sacrificing a word on the pyre of cancel culture—a move indicative more of wanting to look righteous than of wanting to be righteous. I might rather, as a general rule, strive for education and enlightenment, at least as a first-order response.

Yet, as it happens, I agree with the BBO's conclusion and proposal. Despite the board's woke pandering, the risk is significant that "overseer" will import for some hearers a connotation that should be foreign to the board's role. For me, it's not about "racialization"; it's about relationship. 

When I moved to New England and started to learn the ropes of the local legal culture, I bristled at the term "Bar Overseers." To be fair to Massachusetts, I have had the same feeling in other jurisdictions about boards of attorney and judicial "discipline." 

"Overseer" and boy in Yazoo City, Miss., yarn mill, 1911.
U.S. Library of Congress

I fear that these words connote a top-down style of austere supervision, a system of the powerful and the powerless, that does not comport with a profession of mutually supportive equals (dare I say, a brethren, which is and should be gender encompassing). "Overseer" is suggestive of a dramatic power imbalance; the word was used not only in connection with slavery and plantations, but in the context of child labor in the early 20th century.

That doesn't mean that the time never comes when persistent or willful misconduct requires a firm response; the profession owes its highest duty to the public. But using terms such as "overseer" and "discipline" has the unintended consequence of encouraging officeholders to misunderstand their roles. Lawyering and judging are among jobs that endow persons with authority over others, whether through power, like policing, or through access to knowledge. Some people attracted to these jobs are prone to use, or abuse, their power for its own sake. Those same people might gravitate to a job such as "overseer" or arbiter of "discipline" for the wrong reasons.

I was more amenable to the term "overseer" in my church, because the biblical usage is, or should be, utterly alien to abuse of power. Similarly, a church speaks of spiritual "discipline" with only the affirmative connotation of accountability to God. As a church overseer, I felt the weight of guardianship in the term. Being an overseer was a stern reminder of my responsibilities to others and sometimes, too often, of my own duties and failures of spiritual discipline. Anyone truly called to church leadership is humbled by the call, not lured by empowerment.

Even so, when my board of overseers overhauled the church constitution, we changed to "elder" leadership. At the same time, we changed the governance model. We studied and prayed over many church governance models. The Bible says remarkably little about specifics, so the art of church governance becomes part spiritual endeavor and part sociological experiment. We designed a variation on governance that we believed would work well for our congregation, better, at least, than what we had in an aging constitution. 

"Elder" aligned better with our new model, which emphasizes biblical knowledge, experience, and mentorship. There's nothing technically deficient in the term "overseer" for our new model, and we were not afraid of "racialization." It was just semantics. Different Christian writers have committed to different terms, so those terms now carry connotations of the writers' observations and recommendations.

So connotation, like context, matters. And given the connotation of barbarism that even sometimes attaches to "overseer," especially in secular contexts, the BBO's modest proposal is sensible.

I simply would prefer that the proposal were backed by an evenhanded and honest analysis. Then we might be able to say, more modestly, that we are just pushing pause on "overseer": giving its deplorable connotation time to fade in our social consciousness, rather than committing a word of ancient import to the dustbin because of a modern-era abomination.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Observers comment on Assange extradition hearings


My thanks to Assange Defense Boston for organizing the Massachusetts State House rally on February 20 (above). Assange Defense Boston posted on X a couple of clips of me (below). Read more about "Me and Julian Assange" and see my images from the event.

Here (and embedded below) is a webinar from the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights about the February 20 and 21 hearings in the UK High Court of Justice. And here (and embedded below) are discussions of journalists, diplomats, and others who were in the room for parts of the hearings.





Friday, March 1, 2024

State high court simplifies anti-SLAPP, draws picture

Notwithstanding the merits of anti-SLAPP statutes—I've opined plenty, including a catalog of problems—the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (SJC) in recent years made a mess of the state anti-SLAPP law by creating an arcane procedure that befuddled and frustrated the lower courts.

Yesterday the SJC admitted the arcanity and clarified the procedure. I'll note that one thing I like about the Mass. law is that it has a focused trigger in petitioning activity; that's not changing. It'll take me some time to work through the 50 pages of the opinion. But to my delight, there's a picture! The SJC kindly created a flow chart:

The case is Bristol Asphalt Co. v. Rochester Bituminous Products, Inc. (Mass. Feb. 29, 2024). The court then helpfully applied the new framework in another case the same day, Columbia Plaza Associates v. Northeastern University (Mass. Feb. 29, 2023). (Temporary posting of new opinions.)

The court's unofficial top technocrat, Chief Justice Scott L. Kafker authored both opinions. The court affirmed in both cases, denying the anti-SLAPP motion to strike in Bristol Asphalt and granting it in Columbia Plaza, so the lower courts waded their way to correct conclusions despite the mire.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Consultant panning contractor was not 'improper' interference with lucrative reno deal, court holds

Rawpixel CC0 1.0
An architect whom homeowners hired to review their bills in multimillion-dollar renovation did not tortiously interfere with the reno contract when he advised them to terminate and hire another contractor, the Massachusetts Appeals Court held yesterday.

The devil in the details here is the element "improper" in the tort of interference. The same element, or the same concept, lives at the heart of many a business tort, and it's a difficult line to find. Indeed, the Appeals Court wrote that "improper" "has proved difficult to capture in a universal standard."

Interference with contract in Massachusetts law requires a contract or prospective business relation, knowing inducement to break the contract, interference by "improper motive or means," and harm to the plaintiff as a proximate result. Here, the architect told the homeowners they were being overbilled and urged them to terminate the renovation contract and hire a contractor the architect recommended. They did, and the terminated contractor sued the architect for interference with contract.

The fact pattern is common for generating interference claims, as the very job of the defendant is, in a sense, interference, that is, to run interference between consulting client and its contractor. Only "improper" was in dispute, and the plaintiff-contractor could not show evidence that measured up.

The plaintiff disputed the veracity and quality of the defendant's consultation and advice. But worst case, the court reasoned, the plaintiff might persuade a jury to find negligence or gross negligence. That can't be the basis of an interference claim, because then the interference tort would make actionable every negligent infliction of economic loss. 

The negligence tort usually requires a physical infliction of loss or harm. Business torts are exceptional in this regard, but they are predicated on a strong duty relationship, such as contract or fiduciary obligation. The plaintiff-architect and defendant-contractor here were not in privity of contract.

The court looked to an earlier case in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had allowed interference predicated on deceit or intentional misrepresentation. That can suffice to support interference. But there was no evidence here of deceit. So the court pondered what improper means short of that standard.

The court leaned heavily on the Second Restatement of Torts, which suggested, besides deceit, threats, defamation, or other conduct "innately wrongful, [and] predatory in character." Inversely, the Second Restatement advises that no interference liability can arise from "truthful information" or "honest advice within the scope of a request for advice."

The latter standard fit, the court opined. And the Restatement comments elaborated, "[N]o more than good faith is required," regardless of competence. "The rule as to honest advice applies to protect the public and private interests in freedom of communication and friendly intercourse," affording latitude especially to "the lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, the banker, the investment, marriage or other counselor, and the efficiency expert."

The court affirmed the superior court award of summary judgment to the defendant.

There's unfortunately one point of confusion reiterated in the court's opinion. The court correctly pointed to a line of Massachusetts cases approving of "actual malice" as supporting interference claims in the context of employment, when a disgruntled terminated worker claims interference against a supervisor or corporate officer for interfering with the worker's employment contract. In this context, the courts defined "actual malice" as "spiteful, malignant purpose unrelated to a legitimate corporate interest."

Common law malice
That's not what "actual malice" means, at least in the civil context. "Actual malice" generally is a stand-in for reckless indifference and is distinguishable from "common law malice," which represents spite, ill will, or hatred. It's been observed many times that "actual malice" is unfortunately named, and it would be better had there been a different term from the start. Common law malice can be evidence of actual malice, but certainly is not required. The difference can be confusing to jurors.

The Massachusetts precedents on interference in the employment context seem to have misused the term "actual malice" to refer to common law malice. OK, I guess, as long as we all know that malevolence is the one that can evidences tortious interference.

I have some doubts, by the way, about the correctness of the Massachusetts cases that apply the interference tort in fact patterns involving a fellow worker as defendant. A basic rule of interference is that one cannot be said to have interfered tortiously with a contract to which one is a party. If the defendant was clearly acting within the scope of employment, that is, as an agent of the employer, then I don't see that a tortious interference claim can arise, and there's no need to analyze impropriety. But then, I guess, the threshold requirement overlaps with the "unrelated to a corporate legitimate interest" piece of the impropriety test.

The case is Cutting Edge Homes, Inc. v. Mayer, No. 23-P-388 (Mass. App. Ct. Feb. 27, 2024) (temp. slip op. posted). Justice John C. Englander wrote the opinion of a unanimous panel that also comprised Justices Ditkoff and Walsh.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Parks group challenges soccer stadium under state constitutional right to environmental conservation

A Boston lawsuit pits parks against soccer, tying in knots fans of both such as me.

The Emerald Necklace Conservancy on February 20 sued the City of Boston and Boston Unity Soccer Partners to stop the redevelopment of White Stadium to host a women's professional soccer team.

What's compelling about the case as a matter of urban redevelopment arises from the fact that a stadium is already there. The conservancy is not trying to get rid of it. Though there is tentative objection to the footprint of the redevelopment project in Franklin Park, the complaint focuses on the repurposing of the stadium for the benefit of private investors, to the exclusion of public use.

Everyone agrees that White Stadium is in sore need of refurbishment. The 1945 construction has a storied history going back to Black Panther rallies in the 1960s. Its present state of deterioration for age is evident. Naturally, local government is keen to link arms with private investment. Boston Unity makes a heckuva pitch (pun intended) in a town willing and able to support an entrant in the expanding National Women's Soccer League.

Site plan in complaint exhibit.

However, the project, which Boston Unity characterizes as "a first-of-its-kind public/private partnership," will exclude the public from the redeveloped area on game days. That includes the expulsion of local high school times for their 10 to 12 games per year, according to the Dorchester Reporter. At the same time, city officials say other stadium uses, such as a track, might see more public use. 

The conservancy and residents say that the project has been moving too fast for them to study and comment, and that the headlong rush violates article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution.

That's another eyebrow-raising point in the story. Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution is worth a read:

The people shall have the right to clean air and water, freedom from excessive and unnecessary noise, and the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic qualities of their environment; and the protection of the people in their right to the conservation, development and utilization of the agricultural, mineral, forest, water, air and other natural resources is hereby declared to be a public purpose.

The general court shall have the power to enact legislation necessary or expedient to protect such rights.

In the furtherance of the foregoing powers, the general court shall have the power to provide for the taking, upon payment of just compensation therefor, or for the acquisition by purchase or otherwise, of lands and easements or such other interests therein as may be deemed necessary to accomplish these purposes.

Lands and easements taken or acquired for such purposes shall not be used for other purposes or otherwise disposed of except by laws enacted by a two thirds vote, taken by yeas and nays, of each branch of the general court.

Voters approved Article 97 in 1972. That's the same year as the federal Clean Water Act, and about halfway in between the Clean Air Act and Love Canal.

The "right to a clean environment" is a hallmark of contemporary human rights discussion, sometimes grouped in with "third generation" human rights. In this sense, notionally, Massachusetts was ahead of its time.

But like statutory expressions of environmentalism, Article 97 was not understood to ground an affirmative right, rather a negative right to prevent government from repurposing conserved land without legislative approval. The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) entertained the constraint of Article 97 in cases in 2005 and 2013, but didn't find that the local governments in those cases had dedicated land to public purposes. The SJC did constrain local government in a 2017 case. 

The 2013 and 2017 cases might prove instructive in the White Stadium matter if the case progresses. In Mahajan v. Department of Environmental Protection (Mass. 2013), the court distinguished land taken for "conservation, development and utilization of the agricultural, mineral, forest, water, air and other natural resources," which triggers Article 97, from land taken urban renewal, that is, "for the purpose of eliminating decadent, substandard or blighted open conditions." In that case, the Boston Redevelopment Authority was able to commit a part of Long Wharf in Boston Harbor to a private redevelopment project without legislative approval under Article 97.

In Smith v. Westfield (Mass. 2016), the court decided that the City of Westfield had dedicated a parcel of land, 5.3 acres comprising a playground and two little-league baseball fields, to serve as a park, so was constrained by Article 97 before the city could build a school there.

In Smith, the court opined that Article 97 would attach only "there is a clear and unequivocal intent to dedicate the land permanently as a public park and where the public accepts such use by actually using the land as a public park." The court also acknowledged that the analysis fact intensive.

On the face of it, Smith looks like the better fit with Emerald Necklace. The land is clearly dedicated to park use and has been used as a park. The baseball fields and playground in Smith show that a recreational use can include a structure, such as the stadium.

At the same time, there's a viable counterargument in the re- of the White Stadium redevelopment. The city will argue, I expect, that it's not changing the purpose of the land, i.e., its dedication to recreation. A stadium is and will remain. The city is just improving the land to do recreation better.

The problem then boils down to that "first-of-its-kind public/private partnership": whether the private end of the partnership means that the land is being "otherwise disposed of" within the meaning of Article 97.

I've written about transparency and accountability in foreign development specifically amid the challenges of privatization and quasi-privatization. So it's fascinating, if it shouldn't be surprising, to see this problem arise in my own backyard. I wonder as well whether there ever might be a future for Article 97's purported "right to clean air and water" that amounts to more than a procedural hurdle in property development.

See more about Boston's remarkable 1,100-acre Emerald Necklace park system, designed by architect Frederick Law Olmsted, with Will Lange on PBS in 2014.

The case is Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Inc. v. City of Boston, No. 2484CV00477 (filed as 24-0477) (Mass. Super. Ct. filed Feb. 20, 2024). Emerald Necklace asked for a temporary injunction. Hat tip @ Madeline Lyskawa, Law360 (subscription).

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Assange Defense Boston rallies at State House

The Boston Committee of Assange Defense rallied today at the Massachusetts State House.

At the rally today, I spoke about my experience with freedom-of-information law and read parts of a letter from U.S. law professors to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. The letter asks the U.S. Department of Justice to drop Espionage Act charges against Assange and abandon the request for his extradition from the UK. 

Freedom of the Press Foundation has more on the letter. My comments were based on, and the text of the letter can be found in, my February 16, 2024, post, "Me and Julian Assange."

The High Court in London heard arguments today that Assange should have a right to appeal to the courts over his extradition, which the British government has approved. Read more about today's proceeding from Jill Lawless at AP News. The case continues in the High Court tomorrow.  Protestors crowded on the street outside the London courthouse today.

Photos and videos by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The sun shines at the Massachusetts State House.












The group sets up.











The crowd grows.












Committee organizer Susan McLucas introduces the cause.












Victor Wallace speaks.












A letter in support is read from U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).













A speaker decries government secrecy. The s***-word might have been used.













A woman speaks to the intolerable cruelty of U.S. federal prisons.












Committee organizer Paula Iasella says that Assange is hardly alone in aggressive national security accountability, citing John Young's Cryptome.














Hart, legislative counsel, talks public service career

Attorney Kevin Hart speaks to students today, Feb. 20, at UMass Law School about his career path in public service in Massachusetts state government, and earlier, in the Town of Bridgewater.

Hart is now chief counsel for the Joint Committee on Transportation in the Massachusetts legislature. He graduated from UMass Law in 2015. He came to UMass Law with a BA from Stonehill College and an MPA from the Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University.

Hart was the second teaching assistant I hired at UMass Law in Torts I and Torts II. (The first is doing well too.) He wrote a characteristically excellent research paper on the modern inutility of the historical negligent-delivery-of-telecommunication cause of action.

I'm not saying that my teaching causes meteoric career success. I'm just observing correlation.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Mass. high court nominee brings tort law experience

Justice Wolohojian
Mass.gov

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey Wednesday announced the nomination of Massachusetts Appeals Court Justice Gabrielle R. Wolohojian to the Supreme Judicial Court

UPDATE, Feb. 29: The justice was confirmed

Justice Wolohojian practiced with Big Law on "product liability cases, consumer class actions, false advertising claims, and other business and consumer transactions," according to her official bio. Governor Deval Patrick appointed her to the Appeals Court in 2008. She has a Ph.D. from Oxford and a J.D. from Columbia.

For Law360 (subscription), Julie Manganis reported as well:

Outside her legal work, Justice Wolohojian is ... a violinist who has performed with the Boston Civic Symphony for 35 years, and has served as president of the organization's board. She also serves as an overseer of a radio program called "From the Top," which features children performing classical music.

Justice Wolohojian has authored several Appeals Court opinions that I've featured here on The Savory Tort, all sound.

There's been a fuss in the media over Justice Wolohojian once having been in a long-term relationship with the Governor. The relationship ended before the Governor was elected, and she is now with another partner. Governor Healey said nothing about the issue in the nomination announcement. Law360 and other media have reported that the bar and executive officials are "shrug[ging] off" the personal relationship as immaterial. I concur; Justice Wolohojian's bona fides are unimpeachable.

UPDATE, Feb. 29: 

Yesterday the justice was confirmed 6-1 by the Governor's Council. For Law360, Julie Manganis reported of the dissenting vote:

The lone member who voted against Justice Wolohojian, District 8 Councilor Tara Jacobs, said she still has "some concerns around the recusal situation," but said she was also troubled by the selection process, calling it "insular."

From an inclusion standpoint, it just felt very exclusionary in that you couldn't have a more insider nominee," said Jacobs, "and so I have concerns about that in terms of how it might dissuade people from applying who are not inside a network like that."

Jacobs also said she had another concern after meeting with Justice Wolohojian.

"My perception is she has breathed rarefied air from the time she was young, [in] her education and through her career, and my perception from that is she intellectualizes the marginalized community's struggle in a way that feels very much like a bubble of privilege and detached from the struggle itself, so I do have a concern whether justice is best represented through that lens," Jacobs said.

Mass. High Court Nominee Who Dated Gov. Confirmed 6-1 (Feb. 28, 2024) (subscription).

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Consumer-unfriendly designs resist right to repair

The nation is in the grip of a battle over right-to-repair laws. I'm a fan.

Right to repair ensures consumers' ability to repair, or to have repaired, the products they own without having to go back to the original manufacturer. Corporations in the tech era have sought to lock down their products and the business of servicing them, both to profit from service and to protect intellectual property. The behavior is anti-competitive and monopolistic, which is to say, it's how things work in America.

Consumers can be kept out of products, and independent repairers can be driven out of business, by legal and design mechanisms. Legally, a consumer might be barred from repairing a product by contractual clauses in product sale and warranty or by clickwrap terms and conditions of software. Right to repair laws are effective to fight back against these limitations.

Product design can exclude consumers from repair access, too, and this is the more challenging problem. Makers always claim that design limitations on repair are incidental or required for the integrity of the product. A car's onboard computer might be accessible only with a proprietary interface, a measure the carmakers says is necessary to protect the consumer from hacking. A cell phone might break when it's not pried opened properly, an inconvenience the maker says is necessary to pack safely the features consumers want into so small a space.

More than half the states had right to repair on the legislative docket in 2023, the National Conference of State Legislatures counted, with new enactments in California, Colorado, New York, and Minnesota. NPR reported recently on the latest from Michigan. The White House and Europe are on board, and Apple seems to have gauged the winds and decided to play nice

Apple's strategy is not the norm. Despite the popularity of right to repair and its obvious essentiality for a free market, right to repair has been elusive. Carmakers have been especially resistant.

Massachusetts adopted right to repair by voter initiative in 2012. The legislature came on board the next year. Carmakers resisted at every turn. Voters were compelled in 2020, despite deceptive industry political tactics, to approve another initiative that expressly expanded the law to apply to automobile telematics, that is, cars' onboard diagnostic data. 

Carmakers continue to resist, tying the law up in litigation, with claims such as federal preemption (this blog in July 2022). Federal regulators initially sided with carmakers, but in recent months, pressured and shamed by Massachusetts senators and the White House, have grown indecisive and tried to plot a middle course. The problem is exacerbated with electric vehicles, as carmakers resist right to repair by leveraging the Administration's wish to transition inventory.

In carmakers' latest fit of passive-aggressive resistance to right to repair, they're refusing to include features such as internet connectivity in states such as Massachusetts. If we insist that carmakers share, then they'll pack up their toys and go home.

A car cabin air filter usually is easily accessible behind the glove box.
Not on the 2023 Nissan Versa. (Generic image.)

Matt Woolner via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
I believe I saw for myself last weekend evidence of carmaker resistance-by-design to right to repair. 

My family acquired a 2023 Nissan Versa last year. The dealer purchase and the car itself have been nothing but a series of frustrations and disappointments. The seller was deceptive in pricing and failed to provide standard equipment; I might write about those issues another time. I am shopping for counsel now to bring a design-defect claim against Nissan: also a story for another time. My advice in short: don't buy a Nissan.

My latest micro-frustration was over the cabin air filter. A passenger car's cabin air filter is almost invariably located behind the glove box and easily changeable by the owner. No longer in the 2023 Versa.

Even removal of the glove box first requires the extraction of six screws; the box's latch assembly comes out too, along with two of the screws. It's not easy to replace later. 

Behind the glove box there is ample room for a cabin air filter; it's not there. Rather, a lower side panel in the passenger compartment also must then be removed. The plastic pins for the side panel are not made for repeated removal. So repeated access to the filter seems to ensure that the interior plastic walls will need replacement, too, in time.

Finally, one can reach the filter, though removing it from a too-small access window means squeezing it, thereby diminishing the integrity of the new filter one puts in.

I can imagine no good reason for the relocation of the filter than to make it more difficult for consumers to replace it themselves. And for those who don't and do take the car to a Nissan service provider, the now more involved operation, especially removal and replacement of the glove box, will increase the labor cost. Win-win for Nissan.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Makers are doubling down on consumer-resistant designs.

I want to replace the faulty charging port on my more-than-two-year-old Google Pixel 3 cell phone. One would think it an easy and foreseeably necessary operation to replace an essential external port with pins and contacts that bend, break, and degrade over time, faster than the electronics they serve. 

But I've read online that it's nearly impossible for an amateur such as me to pry the phone open, to access the port's plug-in, without shattering an interior glass panel. Why? To sell me a Pixel 8, I suspect.

Resistance to right to repair through deliberate design will be much harder for consumers to fight than mere terms and conditions or even proprietary codes. Physical design limitations are difficult to detect and disallow. Industry capture of regulators doesn't help.

Right to repair might have won the battle of public opinion, but it's far from becoming consumers' reality.

Friday, January 26, 2024

Law immunizes school social worker in teen's suicide

PickPik
A public school social worker is immune from liability in the suicide of a 16-year-old boy, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in the fall in a case at the border of the common law "suicide rule" and the law of sovereign immunity.

A student at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, the troubled teen committed suicide at his home while on summer break in 2018. The teen had been under the care of a licensed clinical social worker on contract with the school district.

Six weeks before the teen's death, his girlfriend, another student at the high school, had told the social worker that the boy was drinking and weeping, exhibiting suicidal behavior, and in crisis. According to the plaintiff's allegations, the social worker assured the girlfriend that the teen would get the care he needed and that the social worker would inform the boy's parents.

The social worker met with the boy subsequently, but did not contact his parents. The girlfriend alleged that she would have contacted the parents had she not been assured that the social worker would, and that the social worker's failure appropriately to respond legally caused the teen to take his own life.

The "suicide rule."  It is sometimes said that American common law has a "suicide rule," which is expressed variably as a rule of duty, causation, or scope of liability. Under the rule, a person does not have a legal duty to prevent the suicide of another. In causal terms, an actor's failure to prevent the suicide of another cannot be deemed the legal cause of the suicide, because the intentional, in some jurisdictions criminal, suicidal act is a superseding proximate cause.

It is widely understood, however, that the suicide rule is not really a rule. That is, it's not an absolute. Rather the rule simply recognizes that non-liability is the result that courts most often reach in analyses of duty, causation, or scope of liability on the fact pattern of a decedent's family claiming wrongful death against someone who knew of the decedent's suicidal potential and failed to prevent the death. (Read more in Death case against Robinhood tests common law disfavor for liability upon negligence leading to suicide (Feb. 9, 2021).)

Massachusetts courts have demonstrated especial receptivity to liability arguments contrary to the suicide rule. In 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled "no duty" in a student-suicide case against MIT, but proffered an analysis that signaled leniency to the plaintiff's theory. Then in 2019, the SJC let a student-suicide case proceed against Harvard University. Reading the map of this forking road, the Appeals Court rejected liability for an innkeeper in the suicide of a guest in 2022.

Massachusetts also was home to the infamous case of Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy, which was never litigated in its civil dimension. Roy's family alleged that Carter actively encouraged Roy to commit suicide. The case demonstrates that the line between failure to prevent a suicide and assistance in committing suicide is sometimes uncomfortably fine.

Sovereign immunity.  The three cases from 2018, 2019, and 2022 all bore on the instant matter from Acton. But the Acton case also added a new wrinkle: the peculiar causation rule of the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act.

Sovereign immunity usually protects a governmental defendant, such as a public school, from liability in a case that otherwise would test the suicide rule. State and federal tort claims acts waive sovereign immunity in many personal injury lawsuits. But the waiver comes with big exceptions.

Suicide cases typically fail for either one of two exceptions. First, tort claims acts, including the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), disallow liability predicated on an affirmative duty, that is, a failure to act affirmatively, rather than on an allegedly tortious action. Wrongful death complainants in suicide cases often allege the defendant's failure to intervene, and that allegation doesn't make the cut. FTCA liability can arise from an unreasonable "omission" of action. The line between such an omission and a failure to act affirmatively is fine and not material here, so I will conflate the two as immunized inaction.

Second, sovereign immunity waivers, including the FTCA, disallow liability for officials insofar as they exercise the discretion that it is their job to exercise. This exception for "discretionary function immunity" can be challenging to navigate, but is critical to prevent every governmental decision from collapsing into a tort case. If a government official makes a poor policy choice, the remedy should be in civil service accountability or at the ballot box, not in the courtroom. The tort system should be reserved for actions that effect injury by contravening social and legal norms. (Learn more with Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority, SCOTUSbrief (Jan. 13, 2019).)

These exceptions ordinarily would preclude liability on the facts of the Acton case, insofar as the plaintiffs claimed that the social worker failed to prevent the teen's suicide or committed a kind of malpractice in the the provision of counseling, leading to the suicide. The former theory would fail as inaction, and the latter theory would fail as disagreement over the social worker's discretionary choices.

However, Massachusetts statutes are rarely ordinary, and the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act (MTCA) is not co-extensive with the FTCA.

Under its section 10(b), The MTCA provides for discretionary function immunity similarly to the FTCA. Another section, 10(j), provides a potent state immunity not found in the FTCA and characterized as a rule of causation. (Read more in Court denies police immunity under state tort claims act in death of intoxicated man in protective custody (July 22, 2022).) The court in the Acton case did not reach the section 10(b) issue and dismissed the claims against the social-worker defendant under section 10(j).

Section 10(j) on its face recognizes the possibility of a claim "based on an act or failure to act to prevent or diminish the harmful consequences of a condition or situation, including the violent or tortious conduct of a third person" (my emphasis). But the section disclaims liability when the third-party conduct "is not originally caused by the public employer or any other person acting on behalf of the public employer."

The magic happens in the phrase "originally caused." And if you're expecting that that phrase has a well honed technical meaning, prepare to be disappointed.

Historically, common law courts sometimes tried to distinguish mere (pre-)"conditions" from "causes." The famous tort scholar William Prosser wrote in the 20th century on the futility of that semantic wrangling. He opined, and American common law tort in the 20th century recognized, that the salient distinction the courts had been chasing is between scientific causes and legal causes. Even if we can determine scientifically that a butterfly flapping its wings caused a tsunami, we do not necessarily conclude that the butterfly is responsible for the tsunami to a degree that would satisfy legal standards. (Read more in State supreme court upends causation in tort law, promising plenty post-pandemic work for lawyers (Feb. 28, 2021).)

Not every actor who exerts causal force along the chain of events that ends with personal injury is thereby legally responsible for that injury. Tort law employs the term "proximate cause" in an effort to parse the timeline and trace back legal responsibility only so far. Of course, once we acknowledge that ours is a problem of degree, we always will have to wrestle with "how much is too much?"

Like common law courts historically, the legislators who drafted MTCA section 10(j) likely were after this same distinction, even if they might have drawn the line in a different place from the courts. And it's likely they would have drawn the line closer to the injury, that is, more stringently against plaintiff claims. So in a suicide case, a Massachusetts court is likelier than otherwise to find the suicide rule alive and well when the intentional violent act of taking one's own life intervenes between state actor and death.

Thus was the outcome in the Acton case. And fairly so. Whatever the social worker failed to do when the decedent teen was still in school, it strains credulity to assert an intact causal chain leading from her response to the girlfriend's alarm all the way to the boy's suicide on summer break six weeks later. It's plausible that the social worker's response was a cause, and that the suicide might have been averted in a counterfactual world in which the social worker reacted more aggressively. But the social worker's response looks like a small sail on the sea of complex causal forces that resulted in the tragedy of a suicide.

Accordingly, the court concluded that, legally, for the purpose of section 10(j), "[the boy's] suicide was the result of his own state of mind and not the failures of [the social worker]."

In its own text, section 10(j) enumerates some exceptions, but the court held that none applied. The plaintiff argued for the applicability of an exception when a state defendant makes "explicit and specific assurances of safety or assistance, beyond general representations that investigation or assistance will be or has been undertaken, ... to the direct victim or a member of his family or household." Regardless of whether the social worker's assurances to the decedent's girlfriend qualified as sufficiently specific, the girlfriend was not a member of the boy's family or household, the court observed.

The plaintiff argued also for the applicability of an exception "for negligent medical or other therapeutic treatment received by the patient [decedent] from [the state defendant]." Regardless whether the counseling relationship qualified the boy as a "patient" under this provision, the court opined that the plaintiff's theory comprised wholly a claim of failure to inform the parents, and not, as the plaintiff expressly alleged, a theory of negligent medical treatment that would qualify for the 10(j) exception.

To my mind, the court might have gotten it wrong on this latter score. In the final pages of the decision, the court dealt separately with the plaintiff's claim of negligent treatment. Briefly discussing the MIT and innkeeper cases, the court recognized that the plaintiff's argument for a duty relationship between social worker and student that would contravene the suicide rule "has some force." Then, summarily, the court declined to resolve the issue, finding the negligent treatment claim subsumed by the 10(j) analysis.

The court could have reached the same conclusion by finding an insufficient factual basis for the plaintiff's claim of negligent treatment. Or by blocking the negligent treatment claim with discretionary function immunity under section 10(b). Or the court could have allowed the plaintiff to attempt to develop the factual record to support the complaint on the negligence theory. It's likely the plaintiff could not and would have succumbed to a later defense motion for summary judgment.

In applying section 10(j), the court wrote that "the amended complaint does not allege that [the social worker] was negligent in ... 'treatment.'" Yet in discussing the negligence claim just two paragraphs later, the court wrote that the plaintiff "contends that '[the social worker's] negligence, carelessness and/or unskillful interactions with and/or failure to provide [the boy] with the degree of care of the average qualified practitioner ... were direct and proximate causes of ... death.'"

Then the court referred back to its 10(j) analysis to reject the latter contention. I have not read the pleadings or arguments in the case, so I might be missing something. The plaintiff's clumsy use of "and/or" legal-ese doesn't scream expert drafting. But in the court's opinion, the logic looks circular and iffy.

The case is Paradis v. Frost (Mass. App. Ct. Sept. 22, 2023). Justice Maureen E. Walsh wrote the unanimous opinion of the panel that also comprised Justices Blake and Hershfang.

Postscript. Regarding the death in this case and the family's decision to litigate in wrongful death: The family wrote on GoFundMe in 2018 that their life insurance would not cover their funerary costs, I suspect because the policy excluded coverage for suicide. The fundraising yielded $15,450 for the family.

The case raised awareness and spurred discussion of teen suicide and suicide prevention (e.g., Boston Globe (Dec. 16, 2018) (subscription), NPR Morning Edition (Dec. 15, 2019)). At the same time, sadly, the alarm raised by the decedent's girlfriend, then a high school sophomore, was informed already by the experience of four prior student deaths by suicide in the preceding two years at the same school, WGBH reported

Advice on teen suicide warning signs and prevention can be found at, inter alia, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Northwestern Medicine, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Plaintiff drops privacy suit that stretched to claim against UMass Medical in nationwide data breach

UMass Chan Medical School
Mass. Office of Travel & Tourism via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0
Until six days ago, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School was defending a privacy suit over a data breach, though the plaintiff liability theories looked thin.

There doesn't seem to be any dispute over the fact of the data breach. UMass Chan was just one of hundreds of organizations nationwide implicated in a breach affecting tens of millions. According to electronic security firm Emsisoft (which has a commercial interest in higher numbers), the breach affected more than 2,700 organizations and the data of more than 94 millions persons (last updated Jan. 18, 2024).

The vulnerability for all of these organizations was a file transfer platform called MOVEit, a product of publicly traded, Burlington, Mass.-based Progress Software Corp. UMass Chan used MOVEit to transfer personal information to other state agencies and programs. Hackers obtained and published the data of more than 134,000 persons, including recipients of state supplemental income and elder services.

According to state officials, WBUR reported, the "exposed data varies by person, but in each case includes the person's name and at least one other piece of information like date of birth, mailing address, protected health information like diagnosis and treatment details, Social Security number, and financial account information." The commonwealth notified affected persons and offered free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

The complaint filed in federal court in September 2023 sought class action certification. The named plaintiff blamed UMass Chan for weak security and delayed notification resulting in a fraudulent attempt to use her debit card. Wednesday last week, the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed without prejudice, meaning the case might not yet be over.

The articulated causes of action, though, were a stretch. That's not to say that the putative plaintiffs suffered no injury. The problem rather is that the law in most states, including Massachusetts, and at the federal level still fails to define data privacy wrongs in a manner on par with the law of Europe and most of the rest of the world.

There was no statutory cause of action in the UMass Chan complaint. The diversity complaint alleged counts of negligence, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment.

Negligence has not been a productive vein for privacy plaintiffs, who lack the usually prerequisite physical injury. Massachusetts cracks open the door more than most other states to negligence actions based on lesser injury claims, such as emotional distress or economic loss. But it's not a wide opening.

Privacy actions in state law meanwhile are problematic because American common law has not yet well established the nature of the plaintiff's loss according to conventional understandings of injury. Indeed, federal courts disagree over when a statutory state privacy action supplies the "injury-in-fact" standing required by the federal Constitution. 

The named plaintiff in the UMass Chan case hastened to emphasize her contractual relationship with UMass Chan as a service provider, in an effort to anchor the negligence claim within a strong relationship of duty to get through the Massachusetts doorway. She described the identity risk of the debit-card incident to establish economic loss at least.

It's not clear that the pleading could have pushed over the hurdles to negligence recovery. I have advocated for the evolution of common law tort to close the gap in recognition of privacy violations in U.S. law, similarly to how UK courts developed the "misuse of private information" tort in common law to complement transposition of EU data protection. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court could do that; certification would be required here in a federal case. But the trend in American data privacy law rather has been for the courts to wait on legislators to move the ball forward.

The other liability theories were a stretch, too. In contract, the plaintiff alleged herself a third-party beneficiary of data sharing agreements between UMass Chan and its state partners. Third parties can claim rights in a contract, but the proof is stringent. Contract law also raises a damages problem. The plaintiff here was not seeking specific performance, and it's not clear that any recovery in contract law would exceed the remediation the commonwealth already offered.

The equitable claim of unjust enrichment theorized essentially that UMass Chan benefited financially by cheaping out on security. That's creative, but a plaintiff in equity usually wants back something she lost to the defendant. A differential in the cost of contract services is speculative, and it's an attenuated causal chain to allege detriment to UMass Chan clients.

Privacy plaintiffs in the United States have seen some success using laws that predate contemporary data breach. But those theories won't work here. Massachusetts once had a leading data regulatory system for its requirements of secure data management. But the law is now well worn and has not kept up with other states, California being the model. Critically, the Massachusetts regs don't provide for private enforcement.

Some plaintiffs have found success with the dated (1986) Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But a federal CFAA claim would be leveled properly against the hacker. The alleged culpability of UMass Chan is more accident than abuse.

American privacy plaintiffs flailing to state wrongs in litigation unfortunately is common and will continue as long as the United States lacks a comprehensive approach to data protection. I wrote 10 years ago already that American expectations in data privacy had outpaced legal entitlements.

The pivotal factor in whether MOVEit breach victims find any relief is likely to be the state where they and their defendants are located. Perhaps the case will push commonwealth legislators at last to act on a bill such as the proposed Massachusetts Information Privacy and Security Act (see, e.g., Mass. Tech. Leadership Council).

The case is Suarez v. The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (D. Mass. filed Sept. 18, 2023).