Attorney Emma Quinn-Judge speaks to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about recent retaliation case

Emma Quinn-Judge spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about Robinson v. Town of Marshfield, a case in which a jury found that a firefighter had been retaliated against for making complaints about discrimination his niece experienced in her job for the town. The case went to the Supreme Judicial Court on a question of whether the trial court judge had erroneously instructed the jury on the standard to be used in deciding retaliation cases, and the Court found that although the judge had mixed two different legal theories, the jury had applied the correct law. 

Attorney Quinn-Judge noted that in making its holding, “[t]he court in a couple of places says that a jury could have reasonably found that Robinson was engaging in protected activity when he complained about male firefighters being treated differently from his niece — even though he testified that he never referenced gender directly . . . That’s very important because most of the time when people make complaints, they’re not lawyers so they’re not going to HR and saying, ‘This is gender discrimination.’”

Read the full article here.