Thursday, 4:30 PM
Judge: Killer can sue former lawyer
By Jonathan Saltzman, GLOBE STAFF
A convicted murderer can sue his former lawyer for libel for discussing the defendant’s personal history at a legal seminar and writing about it in a book before the case went to trial, a judge has ruled.
Middlesex Superior Court Judge D. Lloyd Macdonald said the suit by Daniel Leo Holland can go to trial on charges that J..W. Carney Jr. libeled his onetime client and committed legal malpractice for sharing information that Holland provided for his defense.
Carney discussed the pending case at a 2000 seminar by the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education Inc. and focused on it in a section of ‘‘Hot Topics in Criminal Law 2000.’’
Holland, who is serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of his estranged wife in Quincy, contends that Carney defamed him by deleting references to a family history of mental illness and concentrating on his problems with alcohol and drugs.
Holland fired Carney before the case went to trial in May 2001. The civil suit does not address the murder conviction, which Holland is appealing.
