He won at trial but skipped one filing - it cost him more than half
A fired cop won $800,000 at trial - then lost more than half on appeal because he never updated his complaint.
The First Circuit ruled on September 21, 2026, that $500,000 in damages should not have reached the jury because the officer's original lawsuit did not cover the conduct that generated them.
Here is the backstory. The officer, a detective with the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, police department, was terminated in May 2018. An internal investigation found he kept using a confidential informant to track down a burglary suspect - even after the informant told him he planned to hurt the man. The informant found the suspect and attacked him with a machete. The officer, assigned to investigate that very attack, did not tell colleagues about his own role.
Text messages on the informant's phone gave the game away. The Middlesex County District Attorney's Office sent a Brady letter - a formal warning that the officer's credibility issues would be disclosed in any future case where he testified. The mayor fired him.
The officer fought back on two fronts. He filed a federal lawsuit alleging the real reason for his termination was retaliation - he had written to the mayor accusing the department of selective discipline. He also took the termination to arbitration under his union's collective bargaining agreement.
The arbitrator partly agreed. Three years after the firing, the arbitrator ordered...
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