M.B. v. T.E., decided Aug. 11 by the Appeals Court of Massachusetts (Justices Vickie Henry, Kenneth Desmond & John Englander), reverses a harassment prevention order issued under Mass. General Laws ch. 258E; the factual backstory:
In apparent retaliation for T.E.'s cooperation with a Federal drug prosecution, a third party, S.B., established "whosarat.com," a website dedicated to identifying and posting personal information about government informants. This situation and harassment by S.B. has, quite understandably, caused T.E. considerable distress. {Any stress that T.E. has experienced, of course, would not justify his harassing someone else.} T.E. believes that because certain details known only to the police appeared on the website, a particular police department must be providing his information to the website.
M.B. is a police officer of that department, shares the same last name as S.B., and is his distant relative. T.E. theorized that M.B. and the police department are part of a conspiracy to harass him. He sent a series of emails to the department's Chief about the situation, some of which were intemperate and counterproductive, and some of which M.B. perceived as a threat.
M.B. sought and received a harassment prevention order against T.E., but the appellate court vacated the order. The statute authorizes such orders based on a finding of "[three] or more acts of willful and malicious conduct aimed at a specific person committed with the intent to cause fear, intimidation, abuse or damage to property and that does in fact cause fear, intimidation, abuse or damage to property," and the appellate court concluded that such acts were not sufficiently shown:
