Thursday, 4:30 PM
TV station, union battle over release of autopsy findings in firefighter deaths
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
A Suffolk Superior Court judge has barred WHDH-TV (Channel 7) from reporting on findings from the autopsies of the two firefighters who died in late August at a fire at a Chinese restaurant.
Judge Merita Hopkins granted a request by the Boston firefighters union, which said it learned this morning that the TV station intended to broadcast a report on the findings.
Paul J. Cahill, 55, of Scituate and Warren J. Payne, 53, of Newton were killed Aug. 29 in West Roxbury in what appeared at first to be a simple grease fire in the Tai Ho Mandarin and Cantonese Restaurant. Firefighters did not know that flames had been smoldering for an hour above a drop ceiling, which exploded in a ball of fire.
Paul Hynes, the lawyer for the union, said that state law prohibits anyone from reviewing the autopsy records except the next of kin.
"Clearly, that legal procedure has not been complied with in this case. There’s no way Channel 7 could have accessed these reports legally," he said.
Hynes said that if the autopsy results were made public, it would upset the families, who have not seen them.
Neither side said during the hearing what findings the station intended to highlight.
Jordana Glasgow, the lawyer for WHDH-TV, dismissed the union's argument that the dispute was a privacy matter.
She insisted that barring the station from reporting on the findings would be an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of the press.
She said the station did not have the actual reports but had learned some of their contents from confidential sources.
"It’s not a privacy case. It’s a prior restraint case," she said.
Hopkins said, "I reject the prior restraint argument. Even if it was judged a prior restraint on free speech, it's justified in this case."
WHDH-TV plans to appeal Hopkins's ruling tomorrow to a single justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court, according to a clerk to Hopkins.
