Also see: Coronavirus lawsuits | Coronavirus crime
Stavros Papantoniadis, still behind bars as he awaits charges that he terrorized and beat employees at his Stash's pizza places in Dorchester and Roslindale, faces new charges that he defrauded a program meant to help small businesses stay afloat during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a lower-court judge's dismissal of a suit by several Boston University students over the move to online education, ruling that a state law passed last year specifically to bar such suits is constitutionally valid. Read more.
A recent report projected more than a $1-billiion decrease in property-tax revenue from downtown office buildings seeing a continuing drop in occupancy because a lot of people are still working at home. Scott Van Voorhis reports we're now seeing the first wave of that: A growing number of requests for tax abatements from downtown building owners who claim their buildings simply aren't worth what they were in the Before Times.
A man screaming about masks attacked a 69-year-old woman at the State Street Orange Line stop Wednesday afternoon, ripping her mask off, knocking her to the floor and trying to drag her to the tracks before a bystander intervened, Transit Police and WBZ report. Read more.
Florrie McCarthy, who says she worked 36 years as a registered nurse at Mass. General, charges the hospital fired her after rejecting her request for a medical exemption for a Covid-19 booster despite a letter from the hospital's own neurology department that it "could not rule" out her earlier Covid-19 shots for "neurological symptoms" she experienced after getting the first two vaccine shots. Read more.
A long-time nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center says she got the first of two required Covid-19 shots under pressure from hospital administrators - and with God's OK - then fell seriously ill, refused the second shot and was fired. Read more.
A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit by a nurse at Boston Medical Center over the way the hospital fired her after rejecting her request for a religious exemption to its requirement that all employees get vaccinated against Covid-19, saying her suit failed to provide very specific details on just what religious doctrines would have been violated by the shots. Read more.
A federal judge today dismissed a Milton Hospital office manager's suit over getting fired for refusing Covid-19 shots because the woman initially failed to provide any details about her religious beliefs and why those barred her from getting vaccinated, but that even after she did, she failed to prove her right to practice her religion outweighed the hospital's right to do everything it could to protect its patients and other staffers from a deadly pandemic. Read more.
The owners of 21 North End restaurants and the North End Chamber of Commerce yesterday sued the city over its 2022 fees for restaurants in the neighborhood that wanted to use public sidewalks and streets for patio seating - and its ban on such patios last year - alleging the Wu administration and a local residents' groups hate Italians for some reason. Read more.
Covid-19 particles in sewage from southern half of MWRA system, showing a spike, if nowhere as large as at the end of 2021. Source.
A federal judge yesterday dismissed most of a lawsuit by a Milton Hospital office manager who was fired when she refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Read more.
The State Police Association of Massachusetts went to court yesterday to try to overturn an arbitrator's ruling that it has no grounds to appeal the dismissal of 13 state troopers early last year after they refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Read more.
A Cincinnati staffing agency that provides temp nurses to hospitals has sued Steward Health Care Systems, which operates St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton and Carney Hospital in Dorchester, for the money it says the hospital system stopped paying for all of the health-care professionals funneled to Steward hospitals following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
The Boston Public Health Commission reports that starting Wednesday, the city will offer free Covid19 vaccinations noon to 6 p.m., Thursday through Saturday at the Bolling Building, 2300 Washington St. in Nubian Square and in the 2nd-floor Haymarket room at City Hall, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Mondays and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Although free, the city requests people register for the shots.
A federal judge today dismissed a Medfield man's legal attempt to block all Covid-19 shots in Massachusetts - and to have the state give him access to all autopsy reports dating to the start of the pandemic - saying neither had anything to do with his bid to get back into the Massachusetts School of Law in Andover after he was expelled for refusing a shot. Read more.
A former Revere man now living in Florida was sentenced this week to 29 months in federal prison for applying for - and getting - a $2.5 million Covid-19 payment for the 154 employees he didn't have in his Massachusetts painting company, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
A billing clerk at the Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center today sued Boston Medical Center, with which the Roslindale facility is affiliated, for firing her in 2021 after she refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Read more.
Miller high life on government money in LA, via Homeland Security.
A Manhattanite turned Miami glamazon who chronicled her pricey lifestyle on Instagram was sentenced to five years in federal prison today for a scheme in which she used other people's IDs to fraudulently obtain enough Covid-19 small-business and unemployment benefits - many via a scheme involving the Massachusetts RMV Web site - to support a lifestyle that included private-jet trips to Las Vegas and Los Angeles and a luxury apartment, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
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