Carol Head’s practice spans a broad range of commercial and constitutional litigation in state and federal courts and in arbitration. Her clients range from individuals and local companies to international corporations. She has handled all aspects of complex commercial litigation, from discovery and dispositive motions to trial and appeal.
Carol currently represents a Fortune 100 company in multidistrict litigation, pending in the Southern District of New York and courts in six states, asserting investor claims for losses resulting from the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. In one recent case, she successfully argued that the New York Supreme Court should dismiss the complaint in its entirety.
Carol represents media companies in cases involving the First Amendment, defamation and access to public records, as well as commercial litigation. She argued before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that the Copyright Act pre-empted tortious interference and unfair competition claims brought against a Boston Globe subsidiary. Curtis v. Herb Chambers I-95 Inc. and Globe Specialty Products Inc., 458 Mass. 674 (2011).
Active in pro bono work, Carol represented the Disability Law Center in litigation against the Massachusetts Department of Correction concerning the isolation of seriously mentally ill prisoners for up to 23 hours a day. After five years of litigation, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts approved a settlement in April 2012 that results in systemic reforms, including a mental health classification system and two maximum security mental health treatment units as alternatives to segregation. She was part of a team that helped establish that the Massachusetts Constitution requires a more demanding review of the infringement of a prisoner’s exercise of religious beliefs than the United States Constitution. Rasheed v. Commissioner of Correction, 446 Mass. 463 (2006). Through the ACLU of Massachusetts, she defended criminal defense lawyers against a district attorney’s motion for a gag order to prevent them from speaking about their client’s vacated conviction. She obtained recognition, from a Berlin library, of a Holocaust survivor’s ownership rights to music composed by a family member killed by the Nazis in World War II.
Prior to joining the firm, Carol clerked for Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (2002–2004) and Judge Ronald R. Lagueux of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island (2001–2002). As a law student, she interned at the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney’s Office. Before law school, she worked as a policy analyst in the Rhode Island General Treasurer’s Office.
