"Appeals court ruling reignites simmering feud between state trooper and two Boston police officers" by John R. Ellement | Globe Staff, February 15, 2013
A simmering law enforcement feud reignited Thursday, when an appeals court ruled State Police Trooper Anthony Dear may pursue a defamation lawsuit against two Boston police officers he says ended his career as a nightclub disc jockey in the city.
The lawsuit dates back to 2006, when Dear, with the approval of his State Police superiors, worked in the city and elsewhere as a nightclub disc jockey while the officers were assigned to the city’s Licensing Board.
Dear sued the two officers after the officers blamed overcrowding at a Boston nightspot on Thanksgiving 2006 on him and a company called Elite Productions. A Superior Court judge tossed out the lawsuit, ruling in 2007 that Boston police Sergeant John Devaney and Sergeant Detective Kevin McGill had absolute immunity against civil lawsuits for anything they wrote in a police report.
But in a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel, the Massachusetts Appeals Court said Thursday that the officers’ protection against civil lawsuits has limits, especially when Dear never had a chance to publicly confront accusations made against him in a police report filed with city licensing agencies.
“For the most part, the report does not contain witness statements, but the officers’ own speculation or recounting of unidentified hearsay,’’ Judge Scott K. Kafker wrote for the court. “As he was neither a party nor a witness at the proceeding, Dear had no opportunity to test the validity of the statements at the proceeding.’’
Dear, the court said, should be allowed to bring the civil lawsuit in front of a Suffolk Superior Court jury and let it decide if the information filed by police destroyed Dear’s entertainment career as he contends and whether he was harmed when he was subjected to an internal affairs investigation by State Police triggered by the Boston report....
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