A nearly eight-year legal battle has ended in victory for a former chairwoman of the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board who had alleged that former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick wrongfully terminated her in 2014.
Saundra Edwards won damages of more than $820,000 Wednesday in her whistleblower lawsuit filed against the Commonwealth in Essex Superior Court, according to court records. The jury awarded Edwards $443,512 in back pay, $327,030 in retirement benefits, and $50,000 for emotional distress, according to court documents.
Patrick was initially accused of defamation in the suit because he told reporters after he fired Edwards that he had disapproved of her interference in a case before the registry that involved his brother-in-law. But in 2017, the Supreme Judicial Court dismissed the defamation claim, finding that Edwards had failed to prove that Patrick’s statements were made with “actual malice.”
Philip J. Gordon, an attorney for Edwards, said her firing had consequences that still affect her.
“It ruined her career. I mean, destroyed her,” Gordon said in an interview Thursday night. “She’s been years without work. Her name is everywhere in the papers, obviously. When Deval Patrick speaks, everybody picks that up. She’s even on his Wikipedia page. So finding work, for her, was impossible.”
Edwards was “over the moon” after the jury’s verdict was announced, Gordon said.
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