A Suffolk Superior Court choose has granted the state’s suspended hashish chief’s request to delay a gathering together with her boss which may have resulted in her firing.
According to courtroom data, a gathering scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday between Cannabis Control Commission Chair Shannon O’Brien and Treasurer Deb Goldberg should wait till the outcomes of an ongoing investigation are made obtainable to O’Brien’s attorneys and investigators are made obtainable for cross-examination.
“Having carefully considered the information before me, the motion for a temporary restraining order is allowed,” Associate Justice of the Superior Court Debra Squires-Lee wrote in her ruling. “Goldberg, in her official capacity as Treasurer and Receiver General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is hereby enjoined from holding the hearing scheduled for Dec. 5.”
O’Brien was unceremoniously faraway from her submit in September and suspended, with pay, at Goldberg’s route and with no cause provided to the general public. Weeks later, O’Brien sued to have herself reinstated, citing a scarcity of due course of or rationalization for her elimination. Court motion was subsequently delayed, at O’Brien’s request, after Goldberg agreed to fulfill together with her about her suspension.
It was later revealed an investigation into O’Brien’s conduct had proven proof sufficient to persuade the Treasurer, based on courtroom filings, that the Chair made “racially, ethnically, culturally insensitive statements” to her fellow commissioners and CCC workers.
The listening to blocked by the courtroom would have ostensibly given O’Brien the prospect to answer the investigation, nevertheless her attorneys argued the investigator wasn’t going to be obtainable for questioning, a second investigation remains to be ongoing, and that they weren’t ready.
Lawyers for Goldberg argued towards any additional delay, telling the courtroom that not holding the listening to harms the individuals of Massachusetts, who proceed to pay O’Brien’s $181,722-a-year wage with out the good thing about her work.
Postponing the listening to, based on Squires-Lee, doesn’t hurt the taxpayers, since Tuesday’s assembly was simply the primary in what is certain to be a prolonged back-and-forth course of, and delay does forestall O’Brien from being “irreparably harmed” by assembly earlier than her attorneys are ready to defend her.
“There is no similar harm risk to Goldberg from a brief postponement. Requiring Goldberg to delay the hearing, provide O’Brien Investigator 2’s report, and reschedule the hearing when the Investigators are available for cross-examination does no appreciable harm to Goldberg,” the affiliate justice wrote.
However, the choose did level out that though she was in favor of permitting for some delay, that from her studying of the regulation — no matter how lengthy it takes for the events concerned to fulfill and have a listening to — it’s plainly as much as Goldberg to resolve whether or not or not O’Brien retains her job.
“I also note that the statute makes clear that the determination of whether O’Brien meets the criteria for removal is Goldberg’s to make, and it is unlikely that O’Brien may persuade me that she has a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” she wrote.
The choose ordered her clerk to schedule a listening to on O’Brien’s authentic preliminary injunction to be held in 10 days, with a responses due from attorneys representing each events due within the days main as much as the listening to.
Todd & Weld, the high-profile Boston regulation agency representing Goldberg, didn’t return a request for remark by press time.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”