Boston Globe April 7, 2003: Lawsuit seeks halt to court repairs

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

(http://www.boston.com/news/globe/)

Lawsuit seeks halt to court repairs

Coakley, others say work creates asbestos danger

By Saltzman, Globe Staff | April 7, 2006

Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley and several other high-ranking

officials at the J. Sullivan Courthouse in Cambridge plan to file a

lawsuit today against the head of the state's trial courts, alleging that he

broke a promise not to do any repairs in the building that could dislodge

cancer-causing asbestos until occupants were moved.

In a sharply worded affidavit, Coakley wrote that Chief Justice A.

Mulligan pledged in May not to renovate the building until about 300 employees,

including 85 in her office, and approximately 350 detainees at the Cambridge

jail were relocated. The move is scheduled for the summer of 2007.

Coakley said she learned on Tuesday, however, that Mulligan had authorized

replacing cables in balky elevators starting today, work that a lawyer for

alarmed courthouse employees says could dislodge flaking asbestos inside the

shafts.

In addition, Coakley said, officials learned, partly through a records

request, that officials removed asbestos in recent months, including three

barrels

of the material yesterday.

Coakley, who is running for state attorney general, said that workers at the

22-story courthouse already have a higher risk of mesothelioma, a deadly

cancer, because of exposure to asbestos fireproofing, and that work in the

elevators will only increase it.

She and several other officials at the courthouse, including J.

Sullivan, the Middlesex Superior Court clerk-magistrate for whom the 1969

building

is named, will ask a state judge today to issue a temporary restraining

order to halt repairs.

''It is only as an absolute last resort that I have authorized counsel to go

into court to stop this work, " wrote Coakley, who has been the top

prosecutor in Middlesex County since 1999.

She had urged Mulligan to be up front about his plans for renovations in the

building, she wrote, but ''these requests seem to have been ignored. "

A. Milne, a lawyer representing courthouse employees and several

attorney associations in the suit, said Mulligan's actions were

''unfathomable. "

Mulligan declined to comment because the case is pending, said Joan Kenney,

a spokeswoman for the judiciary.

The courthouse on Thorndike Street houses Middlesex Superior Court,

Cambridge District Court, the district attorney's office, and the jail.

Workers have long complained about the building for its slow elevators,

winter drafts, rainwater leaks, and summer swelters.

The complaints gained urgency in late 2004 after an occupational health

specialist toured the courthouse and found what she called potentially

hazardous

asbestos in numerous locations.

Milne hired the specialist after the state prepared to remove asbestos from

the elevator shafts, a project then expected to cost about $14.3 million.

In January 2005, the Massachusetts trial attorneys' association voted to sue

the state, if necessary, to force the evacuation of judges, court workers,

and detainees from the building before renovations. But no suit was filed.

After a study of conditions in the building by the Massachusetts Bar

Association, Mulligan and B. Perini, commissioner of the Division of

Capital

Asset Management, agreed last May to relocate all occupants before removing

asbestos and renovating the courthouse.

The suit is scheduled to be filed in Middlesex Superior Court.

The plaintiffs are expected to be represented by a lawyer from the office of

Attorney General F. Reilly, the former Middlesex district attorney

whom Coakley hopes to succeed.

Saltzman can be reached at _jsaltzman@..._

(mailto:jsaltzman@...) .

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