Opinion ID: 202957
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Instructions on Retaliation Claims

Text: Leary argues that the jury should have been instructed that his TRO against Dixon could not have been retaliatory as long as it was not baseless, even if he sought it for retaliatory purposes. The First Amendment protects an individual's right to petition the courts, but that right is not absolute. See Sahli v. Bull HN Info. Sys., 437 Mass. 696, 774 N.E.2d 1085, 1090 (2002). For example, in the labor and antitrust contexts, sham suits can lead to civil liability if those suits were both objectively baseless and subjectively motivated by an unlawful purpose. BE & K Constr. Co. v. NLRB, 536 U.S. 516, 531, 122 S.Ct. 2390, 153 L.Ed.2d 499 (2002) (citing Bill Johnson's Rests., Inc., v. NLRB, 461 U.S. 731, 103 S.Ct. 2161, 76 L.Ed.2d 277 (1983) and Prof'l Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc., 508 U.S. 49, 113 S.Ct. 1920, 123 L.Ed.2d 611 (1993)). [8] The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has held that sections 4(4) and 4(4A) do not reach employers' lawsuits if those suits have a legitimate basis in law and fact and there is no evidence that the employer's purpose is other than to stop conduct it reasonably believes to be contrary to law. Sahli, 774 N.E.2d at 1092. Further, it is not unusual for courts to consider the retaliatory nature of lawsuits in the context of Title VII. See, e.g., Berry v. Stevinson Chevrolet, 74 F.3d 980, 987 (10th Cir.1996) (upholding determination that defendants' baseless suit was retaliatory); Roberson v. Snow, 404 F.Supp.2d 79, 95 (D.D.C.2005) (finding that plaintiff failed to produce sufficient evidence that defendant's pressing of criminal charges was retaliatory). Against these background principles, there was no error in the instructions. The judge instructed the jury: [Dixon] claims that Mr. Leary, not  remember, he's got a right to go to court on the truth. She claims he went to court to interfere with her ability to be a police officer. . . . She claims that was untrue on Mr. Leary's part and that it was designed to retaliate, to interfere with her working as a police officer. The general guidance of the instruction was clear and correct; we do not require magic words. Johnson v. Spencer Press of Me., Inc., 364 F.3d 368, 378 (1st Cir.2004) (It is the district court's prerogative to craft the `particular verbiage' that it will use in its jury instructions.). The jury was asked to decide whether Leary's reason for going to court was true, which in the case of a TRO is equivalent to evaluating the objective reasonableness of his claimed fear. It was also asked whether Leary was acting with a retaliatory intent. This was enough.