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In February 2014, Norman Zalkind consulted on daughter and journalist Susan Zalkind’s cover story for Boston Magazine detailing her investigation into the connection between a grisly 2011 murder of three men and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Her story uncovers the failure of law enforcement officials to adequately investigate the 2011 murders until after the marathon bombings forced them to look more closely at Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his friend, Ibragim Todashev, who was killed by FBI agents in May 2013, moments before he was allegedly going to write a statement implicating himself and Tsarnaev in the Waltham murders. Zalkind asks the question: Could solving this case have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings?

Zalkind’s story was featured on This American Life on March 7, 2014. Zalkind appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and CNN’s “Legal View,” among other news programs, to discuss her investigation and story.

In January 2014, Inga Bernstein was quoted in a Boston Globe article discussing the Commonwealth’s attempts to keep secret settlement and severance agreements between it and its employees. The article reads in part:

“Boston employment lawyer Inga Bernstein said she was glad the courts ruled that government settlements can no longer be kept secret, because she thought it would expose important problems.

‘We expect [government employers] to follow the rules,’ said Bernstein, a partner at Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP. ‘And when the rules haven’t been followed they should correct them.

In January 2014, Norman Zalkind and Naomi Shatz won a required finding of not guilty at a bench trial on a felony animal abuse case. The judge agreed with Zalkind and Shatz that the Commonwealth had not present sufficient evidence for a trier of fact to find the defendant guilty of cruelty to an animal, and acquitted her of the charge.

In January 2014, Naomi Shatz and David Duncan won an appeal and rehearing with a student originally suspended from his graduate program for plagiarism. On appeal the school granted the student a new hearing based on significant procedural defects in the original hearing, and at the new hearing the student prevailed and his suspension was overturned.

On January 3, 2014 The National Law Journal ran a story spotlighting Ruskai v. Pistole, the firm’s case challenging the TSA’s policy of giving invasive full-body pat-downs to disabled passengers who alarm metal detectors. Inga Bernstein, lead counsel on the case, explains that basic Fourth Amendment law requires the court to balance the need for any search “against the intrusiveness of the search, and the [TSA’s] search is highly intrusive.” Bernstein also notes that the TSA’s policy disproportionately affects older passengers with metal joint implants, who are a significant portion of the passengers who alarm metal detectors, but that those passengers are not a heightened security risk. ““There’s no correlation between [their devices] alarming the system and the risk they present as a traveler,” Bernstein stated.

The full article can be found at The National Law Journal

On January 6, 2014 the Boston Business Journal ran an article on the case, describing the pat-downs Ruskai receives when she alarms metal detectors: “The TSA pat-downs Ruskai receives include her entire body, Bernstein said. Ruskai repeatedly is touched on her inner thighs, Bernstein said. ‘She objects to that,’ Bernstein said, adding that Ruskai’s breasts are touched and fingers are run on the inside of her waist band.”

Liza Lunt is featured in a January 2, 2014 Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly article discussing the First Circuit’s recent decision in U.S. v. Mensah, where the court held that a defendant’s equal protection rights were not violated by the prosecution’s peremptory challenge to two Asian potential jurors. Lunt, the president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is quoted as saying: “Getting more than one or two minority jurors is unusual . . . It’s often very hard to get a representative jury for your client if you are a defense lawyer in federal court in Boston. . . . This decision is going to make it even harder.” The full article is available here.

In January 2014, Zoraida Fernandez won a motion in federal court granting her client early termination of his supervised release on the grounds that he had been fully compliant with the conditions of probation, is a productive member of the community, and has no history of violence or being a danger to the community.

Rachel Stroup, who has been with the firm since 2006, became the firm’s newest partner as of January 2014.

In December 2013, Monica Shah won an arbitration award, including valuable real estate and six-figure monetary award, for a client who was in a longstanding contract dispute with his partner over a joint venture agreement to renovate and develop condominium units in the Boston area.

In a recent video interview with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Harvey Silverglate discusses the importance of defending free speech and academic freedom on campus.

Watch the video here.