The Massachusetts Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court's order to extend an attorney-plaintiff's protective order against a defendant, finding she was denied a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

The case of Idris I. v. Hazel H.—which are pseudonyms for the parties—came before Cambridge District Court Judge Ina R. Howard-Hogan to decide if the abuse prevention order should be continued after a different judge issued the ex parte order in March 2021.

The plaintiff, a retired attorney, claimed that the defendant "mentally, sexually, and physically abused him" for several years, and he received a "series of strange and menacing messages on his work and personal numbers from numbers [he did] not know," the appellate court's opinion said.