SJC: courts can issue abuse prevention orders against out-of-staters
By Globe Staff
In what one lawyer described as a victory for battered women, the state's highest court has ruled that a Massachusetts court can issue a domestic abuse prevention order against someone who lives outside of the state.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the case of a woman who returned to Massachusetts and sought an order protecting her from her domestic partner, a man who was living in Florida.
The court, in the case Caplan v. Donovan, said that allowing the court to issue such an order furthers the Commonwealth's "important public policy goal" of protecting people from devastating family violence.
It said that requiring the woman to return to Florida to get an abuse prevention order or requiring her to wait for her alleged abuser to follow her to Massachusetts and commit a new abuse were "unpalatable choices."
The court, in an opinion written by Judge Margot Botsford, noted that other jurisdictions had made similar rulings.
The ruling is good news for battered women, said Claire Laporte, an attorney who represented Jane Doe Inc. and the Domestic Violence Council, organizations that filed a friend of the court brief in the case.
"It gives the Massachusetts court the ability to issue a restraining order in a situation where a victim has fled from another state. The Massachusetts court can create a zone of protection around that person," she said.
