A superior court judge in Massachusetts has given the go-ahead to a convicted murderer's lawsuit against his former defense lawyer. 

Middlesex Superior Court Judge D. Lloyd MacDonald ruled that Daniel Leo Holland's suit against J.W. Carney, Jr. for libel and legal malpractice could go to trial.

Holland, who is serving a life sentence in prison for the 1998 murder of his estranged wife in Quincy, charges that Carney discussed his personal history and the pending case at a legal seminar and in a published section of "Hot Topics in Criminal Law for 2000," which also included more than 100 pages of documents obtained from Holland's public court file.

Holland, who fired Carney before the murder trial, is acting as his own attorney in the civil suit.  Holland contends in a 40-page complaint that Carney "maligned him in the eyes of the public" and divulged confidential information without consent to enhance the lawyer's professional reputation.  Carney retorts that Holland's conviction for fatally shooting and bludgeoning his wife made his former client impossible to defame.

In allowing the case to move forward, the judge ruled, "Holland cannot be considered libel-proof as a matter of law," because he had not been convicted of any crime when the seminar occurred and the book was published.

Holland is no stranger to litigation.  Weeks before his murder trial, he sued a local sheriff, accusing him of blocking a marriage between Holland and a prosecution witness.  Prosecutors had charged that Holland sought the marriage simply to take advantage of the law that provides that spouses cannot be forced to testify against each other.  That suit was eventually dropped.

In 2004, Holland's son became the first child in state history to "divorce" a parent.  Holland eventually agreed to relinquish all parental rights to the boy who was being raised by his mother's best friends.

--Source:  The Boston Globe