SJC’s Ruling in Commonwealth v. Grady Streamlines Objection Preservation but Demands Precision

July 12, 2016.

In Commonwealth v. Grady, 474 Mass. 715 (2016), the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a defendant’s objection at the motion in limine stage preserves appellate rights, eliminating the need for a renewed objection at trial, but only for issues specifically addressed in the pretrial motion. The court emphasized that any testimony falling outside the scope of the pretrial objection still requires a trial objection to preserve appellate review, reinforcing the importance of thorough and specific objections.

Our Take:

The SJC gives a welcome nod to pragmatism in Grady. The Court recognized the old rule as exalting form over substance. When you object in limine, making the same objection again just to preserve the issue serves little purpose. When the issue has been fully aired once, the Court says that’s enough. But the SJC is careful to point out that only your specific objection is preserved.  So you have to be thorough, and alert the court to your specific issue. A pretrial motion seeking to preclude Mr. Smith’s testimony on hearsay grounds won’t preserve an objection on relevance grounds. What will be interesting to see is how exacting the Court will be in examining the specificity of objections. The rulings against both Grady and Almele preview a strict approach. My suggestion is: when in doubt, object again. Nobody lost a favorable standard of review by objecting too many times.