Murray v. Justices of Mun. Court of City of Boston

• Decision Date: 23 June 1919
• Citation: 233 Mass. 186,123 N.E. 682
• Parties: MURRAY v. JUSTICES OF MUNICIPAL COURT OF CITY OF BOSTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

233 Mass. 186

123 N.E. 682

MURRAY

v.JUSTICES OF MUNICIPAL COURT OF CITY OF BOSTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

June 23, 1919.

Report from Supreme Judicial Court, Suffolk County.

Petition for writ of certiorari by Thomas P. Murray against the Justices of the Municipal Court of the City of Boston. Case reported. Petition dismissed.

Frederick W. Mansfield and Edmund R. Mansfield, both of Boston, for petitioner.

Henry C. Attwill, Atty. Gen., and Max L. Levenson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondents.

RUGG, C. J.

The petitioner was removed from his employment as assistant engineer at the Boston State Hospital after hearing had in conformity to the civil service law. Thereafter he filed a petition in the municipal court for the city of Boston under St. 1918, c. 247, § 3. It there is enacted that a person removed from such employment may file a petition praying that the action of the officer or board in making such removal may be reviewed by the court, and that after appropriate notice the court shall ‘review such action, hear the witnesses, and shall affirm said order unless it shall appear that it was made without proper cause or in bad faith, in which case said order shall be reversed and the petitioner be reinstated. * * *’ The return shows that the judge who heard the petition among other matters found that the order of removal was made in good faith. Other findings and rulings are in these words:

‘As to the specifications assigned under the head of ‘Incompetence,’ while I should not have arrived on a careful consideration of the entire evidence presented at the public hearing, at the conclusion reached by the trustees, but should on this evidence have found that these charges were not sustained, yet I find, if the trustees believed the testimony of the chief engineer, and the evidence offered in corroboration thereof, in preference to that offered by the petitioner in refutation thereof, that evidence taken by itself was sufficient to justify a finding that said charges of incompetence had been sustained. I find that the testimony of the chief engineer was fairly and honestly given, that in giving it he was actuated by no improper or unworthy motive, that he honestly believed the charges which he had preferred against the petitioner to be true, that in giving his evidence he showed no bias or hostility toward the petitioner, and that his testimony was believed by the board of trustees and in the main formed the basis of the decision at which in good faith they arrived, that the petitioner should be discharged. I rule that under the law the burden is on the petitioner to establish affirmatively by a fair preponderance of evidence that in removing him the trustees acted either in bad faith or without proper cause, and that this burden has not been...