Brown v. Entin
BRISTOL SUPERIOR COURT No. 1773CV00235
MASSACHUSETTS APPEALS COURT No. 21-P-70
In February of 2022, a panel of judges from the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed a Superior Court judgment entered in our clients’ favor following a five-day bench trial in June of 2019. The case centered upon a boundary dispute whereby both neighboring parties laid claim to the same four acres of land. The Superior Court determined that the disputed land had been erroneously deeded twice, first to our clients’ predecessor-in-title and then to the defendants’ predecessor-in-title some 12 years later. Hence, our clients held title to any overlapping land in the two deeds according to the old adage “first in time, first in right.” The Court went on to determine that the proper boundary lines described in our clients’ deed were those drawn by their expert surveyor, Robert Staples, PE.
Although the Superior Court rejected a number of objections to the judgment that the defendants raised after trial, the defendants decided to press on with a full appeal of the judgment to the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Thus, our clients were forced to incur substantial legal expenses on an appellate brief and oral argument in the Appeals Court. In its decision, the Appeals Court not only affirmed our clients’ judgment, but agreed that the defendants’ appeal was frivolous and entirely without merit, entitling our clients to the reimbursement of their attorney’s fees on appeal. The Court went on to award our clients $37,227.50 in fees – just $200 less than the total requested by our firm via motion.
Given the fairly infrequent nature of attorney’s fees being awarded for frivolity in the Appeals Court, and the sizeable amount of the award, our victory was recently featured in an article by Massachusetts Lawyers Week – check it out below!
A special thanks goes to appellate attorney extraordinaire Kevin Powers of Foxborough, who assisted our firm in the preparation of its appellate brief and presentation at oral argument.