Libel suit against lawyer allowed to proceed

A convicted murderer can sue his former defense 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 one time 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," published by the organization.

Holland, who is serving a life sentence in prison 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 in anticipation of a defense hinging on substance abuse.

Holland fired Carney before the case went to trial in May 2001, and the civil suit does not address the murder conviction, which Holland is appealing. Rather, Holland contends in a 40-page complaint prepared without a lawyer that Carney ``maligned him in the eyes of the public" and divulged confidential information to enhance the lawyer's professional reputation.

Carney, one of the best-known criminal lawyers in the state, asked the judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that Holland's conviction for fatally shooting and bludgeoning Elizabeth Holland made his former client impossible to defame.

``Holland cannot be considered libel-proof as a matter of law," the judge ruled, because he had not been convicted of any crime when the seminar occurred and the book was published.

The judge made the ruling Aug. 30, and it was reported yesterday by Massachusetts Law Brief, a legal affairs website.

Carney declined to comment yesterday. In an August 2005 response to the suit, he called Holland's allegation ``wholly insubstantial, frivolous, and not advanced in good faith."

Carney, whose high-profile clients have included the Brookline abortion clinic killer John C. Salvi, addressed Holland's alcohol and drug history at the seminar and in a section of the book dealing with the ``diminished capacity" murder defense. The section included a 30-page first-person account by Holland, as well as more than 100 pages of documents obtained from Holland's public court file.

Holland says he never gave Carney permission to use the documents, which bear his name.

Robert M. Griffin, a defense lawyer and a former Suffolk prosecutor, said Carney is a meticulous lawyer who would have undoubtedly gotten Holland's permission to discuss the pending case and write about it.

``If Carney pulls out a consent form that's signed by [Holland], that's the end of his lawsuit," said Griffin. ``I think it's just sour grapes on the defendant's part."

But Paul J. Martinek, a lawyer and editor-in-chief of Massachusetts Law Brief, said that even if Holland loses his suit, ``He certainly has succeeded in embarrassing a prominent lawyer and making his life difficult."

Holland is serving a sentence of life without parole for shooting Elizabeth Holland on Oct. 13, 1998, with a .22-caliber rifle and then beating her with the stock of the weapon in her home. A Norfolk Superior Court jury deliberated for about six hours before convicting him.

The case has led to other unusual civil litigation.

Weeks before the case went to trial, Holland sued Norfolk Sheriff Michael Bellotti, accusing him of blocking his attempt to remarry a prosecution witness. Prosecutors had said Holland wanted to marry Brenda Hewey because spouses cannot be forced to testify against each other. Holland later dropped the suit.

In addition, Holland's son, Patrick, in 2004 became the first child in state history to ``divorce" a parent after Daniel Holland agreed to relinquish all parental rights to the boy, who was 14 at the time and being raised by a New Hampshire couple who were his mother's best friends.