Another Father was Punished for Doing What Judge Langlois Suggested

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Another Father Was Punished for Doing What Judge Langlois Suggested

SJC Dismissed Suit Without Looking at Evidence

January 9, 2001

Another father was turned down summarily without a trial by the Supreme Judicial Court last May for doing what Judge Langlois suggested to Ken Newell. The father was also ordered to pay $16,000 to his former wife for her attorney fees.

This father had sued his wife in Superior Court for lying in the Probate & Family Court but he didn’t even get a chance to explain the facts of the case to the SJC. He had sued for malicious prosecution exactly as Judge Langlois recommended to Newell. This father will be back in Superior Court tomorrow to contest the matter of fees. He fears he may have to go to jail for his inability to pay the $16,000.

All of that is happening to the father who was featured in our December issue, Zed McLarnon, even though he can prove that the tapes of his court hearing in the Probate Court in Cambridge were altered by insiders in the court who are friends of his wife. He can also prove that someone removed documents from the files and changed the records in other ways.

When McLarnon sued his former wife in a civil complaint in Superior Court over a year ago, the trial judge used a new, obscure statute to dismiss the suit without even holding a trial and listening to the evidence. When the father appealed to the Appeals Court, the SJC took the very unusual step of taking the suit on its own motion, thus bypassing the normal procedures.

The new law which the courts used against McLarnon was enacted to prevent large real estate developers from bringing suits which are used to intimidate homeowners who are opposed to their developments. Such a law was enacted by our legislature in 1994 over Gov. Weld’s veto after being proposed a few years earlier by a Colorado professor. It’s known as the “anti-SLAPP” law because the suits by large developers against small homeowners are known as SLAPP suits

The SJC admitted that it had previously recognized that, “SLAPP suits have been characterized as ‘generally meritless suits brought by large private interests to deter common citizens from exercising their political or legal rights or to punish them for doing so.’” But the court went on, nevertheless, to apply the statute against this lone father who is not “large” and who had brought a suit which was not “meritless.” The court also acknowledged that other states have required that the statute be used only when the case involves matters of “public concern.” This case involved only matters between this man and woman, yet the court applied the statute against the man.

Obviously, any father must be extremely cautious about suing for damages in Superior Court, not only because of the extreme effort and attorney fees that it will take, but more important, because the courts have shown they will be prone to award attorney fees against him and put him in jail if he cannot pay them.

The lawyer who represented McLarnon before the SJC, Gregory Hession, says, “This decision basically puts a perjury protection program in place for women who abuse the 209A restraining order law. There must be a means of legal redress when the abuse protection law becomes a means to manipulate the court system and improperly gain a legal advantage by wrongly claiming ‘abuse.’”

Clearly, the feminist SJC, which is controlled by Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, is not concerned about the rights of innocent children who need to see both of their parents.

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