In a case handled by RJA Attorney Andrew Gambaccini, a federal judge last week dismissed federal civil rights claims against a police officer from the Fall River Police Department. The primary plaintiff’s allegations generally were that he was present in an apartment when members of the Fall River Vice Unit executed a search warrant and, during the warrant execution, he was kicked in the head
By Amaris Castillo | Lowell Sun DRACUT — There will be no disciplinary action for Deputy Police Chief David Chartrand and Sgt. Gregg Byam will be suspended for one day without pay over their administration of the Police Department’s evidence locker. The decisions end more than a year of controversy over the management of the evidence locker, which was the subject of a scathing September
The below article published in The Valley Patriot describes a recent RJA success in a MCAD lawsuit. A Lawrence police officer brought a discrimination complaint against the City of Lawrence and eight police supervisors, alleging that he was the victim of years of mistreatment based upon his ethnicity. Andrew Gambaccini of RJA represented the eight police supervisors and, in an eighty-five page response to the
RJA recently obtained a very significant settlement on behalf of a client who was injured in a motor vehicle accident. The accident was caused by another driver who entered an intersection after running a red light as our client, with a green light, entered the same intersection. The collision forced our client out of the intersection and into some vegetation off the road. While our
In a recent arbitration award, Reardon, Joyce & Akerson, P.C. (“RJA”) successfully represented a Springfield police officer in connection with a five day suspension. Prior to the five day suspension, the officer, who was not at that point a member of the Massachusetts Police Association Legal Defense Fund, had been suspended from his duties based upon various allegations, including that the officer had not been
In the case of Commonweatlh v. Maguire, 476 Mass. 156 (2017), the Supreme Judicial Court addressed the elements of the felony crime of Open and Gross Lewdness and Lascivious Behavior under G.L. c. 272, §16. Based upon a failure to prove that the defendant’s conduct of exposing his penis to several females sitting on a bench at the Hynes Convention Center subway platform produced either
In Commonwealth v. White, 475 Mass. 583, 59 N.E.3d 369 (2016), a Boston police detective investigated an armed robbery and shooting at a convenience store. His investigation led him to the defendant as one of the suspects. Visiting the defendant’s high school, the detective learned from one of the administrators that, under the school’s policy, she was holding the defendant’s cell phone. At the time,
A Massachusetts Environmental Police Officer (“EPO”) with the foresight to have joined the Massachusetts Police Association’s Legal Defense Fund found out just how valuable a resource the Fund is after being terminated from his EPO positon, and then being abandoned by his Union when he wanted to challenge that termination. Soleimani was sworn in by the Massachusetts Environmental Police (“MEP”) as an EPO in May
Recently, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the amendment in 2003 of the Commonwealth’s drunk driving law, G.L. c. 90, § 24, did not provide a reason for it to reverse its decision in Commonwealth v. Brazelton, 404 Mass. 783 (1989), that there is no right to counsel when a suspect must decide whether or not to take a breathalyzer to test whether they were
In a recent First Circuit decision concerning civil liability for police supervisors, Saldivar v. Racine, 818 F.3d 14 (2016), Reardon, Joyce & Akerson, P.C. (“RJA”) successfully represented the Fall River Chief of Police in a civil rights lawsuit in which the plaintiff, who sought $750,000.00 in damages, claimed that she had been assaulted and raped by a Fall River police officer. According to the plaintiff,
