Belanger v. Cuffe, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-051-13)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC‑11193 LISA SIEGEL BELANGER vs. BRIAN CUFFE & others.[1],[2] March 19, 2013. Supreme Judicial Court, Superintendence of inferior courts. Guardian. Conservator. Probate Court, Guardian. Lisa Siegel Belanger appeals from a judgment of a single justice of this court denying her petition pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3. We affirm. In May, 2011, the petitioner commenced actions in the Probate and Family Court seeking to have herself appointed guardian and conservator for her elderly father. In September, 2011, a judge appointed a temporary guardian and a temporary conservator but did not appoint the petitioner in either capacity. The temporary guardian and temporary conservator each thereafter took various actions in connection with their respective duties, and the temporary appointments have been extended several times. Additionally, several hearings have been held in the Probate and Family Court related to the petitioner’s father’s care. The petitioner filed her G. L. c. 211, § 3, petition in March, 2012, complaining about the temporary guardian, the temporary conservator, and several other individuals including, among others, an attorney representing her father and an attorney representing an elder services agency involved in her father’s care. The petitioner argued that the respondents had engaged in “unethical, unprofessional and unlawful conduct” resulting in “immeasurable irreparable harm” to her father. She asked the court to “restore” her father’s right to his family’s care and “to extricate the designated parties out of [her] father’s life.” She also appears to have been seeking relief from certain rulings of the trial court, such as an order requiring her, her husband, and their children to vacate her father’s home, where they were residing, and an order prohibiting her from contacting her father without the consent of the guardian. The single justice denied the petition without a hearing. In appealing from the single justice’s judgment, the petitioner argues that the single justice erred in treating the G. L. c. 211, § 3, petition as an “appeal” from interlocutory rulings of the trial court. Rather, the petition, in her view, constituted a new civil action filed in this court “as a court of original jurisdiction, as prescribed by G. L. c. 211, § 3.” While she is correct, technically speaking, that a G. L. c. 211, § 3, proceeding is not an appeal per se, that distinction is irrelevant to the outcome here. Regardless how the petitioner characterizes […]