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2382CV00389Up to date

Materna, Beth et al vs. Marina Bay Residences, LLC et al

Superior Court·Norfolk County·Last checked Jul 25, 2026, 7:59 PM·View on masscourts.org ↗

01— Where things stand right now

This is a putative tenant class action over years of water leaks, mold, and a two-year façade reconstruction project at the Meriel Marina Bay apartments in Quincy. After a long detour caused by the removed original plaintiff and his wife filing dozens of pro se motions, the case is back on the rails: the parties stipulated to a Fourth Amended Complaint (allowed April 8, 2026), Marina Bay Residences answered it on April 17, 2026, and the court has set a new schedule running fact discovery through October 31, 2026 and a class-certification hearing in June 2027.

Meanwhile, non-party Sandra Fernandez is still pursuing an appeal of the order denying her intervention, and the trial court has now refused to pay for her hearing transcript.

02— Background

The case owner's account — not part of the court record.

Dany Abouelkhier was originally the lead plaintiff in this case. After he and his wife, Sandra Fernandez, had a falling out with their attorney, Jonathan Sweet of Keches Law Group, the court — at a March 2025 hearing before Judge Leighton — allowed Keches to withdraw from representing Abouelkhier, severed his individual claims (together with the landlord’s counterclaim against him for unpaid rent) into the separate case 2582CV00364, and substituted fellow Meriel Marina Bay tenant Beth Materna as the putative class representative.

03— The case in a nutshell

Meriel Marina Bay is a 352-unit “luxury” waterfront apartment complex in Quincy that opened in 2018. According to the complaint, water started getting into the building envelope almost immediately, and by 2019–2021 the owner had found interior leaks, mold, and structural damage to balcony supports.

The owner sued its own builder and architect in a separate case (2182CV01044) over the defects, and then ran a massive repair project — stripping and replacing the entire exterior façade of both buildings — from about November 2022 to late 2024.

Tenant Beth Materna, suing on behalf of everyone who lived there during that project, says the landlord and property manager knew about the leaks and mold and knew a two-year construction siege was coming, and rented and renewed apartments anyway without telling anyone. She brings claims for breach of lease, breach of the warranty of habitability, interference with quiet enjoyment (c. 186 §14), negligent and intentional misrepresentation, nuisance, retaliation (c. 186 §18), and unfair/deceptive practices under c. 93A — plus an allegation that the defendants secretly recorded tenant phone calls.

Notably, the plaintiff quotes the owner’s own words from its construction-defect lawsuit back at it: “serious repeated water intrusions,” “widespread leaks,” “irreparably damaged” structure, and an admission that “every day of [the] repair and remediation work impacts every one of its valuable tenants in the 352 residential units.”

04— Who's involved
05— What's happening now

The case is squarely in the pleading-and-discovery phase again after a long derailment. On February 3, 2026 the judge allowed a joint motion resetting the tracking order — that motion candidly told the court the case had been “sidetracked and effectively stayed” by the former plaintiff and his wife serving “nearly 200 pro se motions.”

The parties then agreed, by stipulation, that Materna could file a Fourth Amended Complaint. Judge Connolly allowed it on April 8, 2026, and Marina Bay Residences filed a detailed 21-page answer on April 17, 2026.

That answer is worth reading closely: the owner admits a lot of the physical history — water intrusion discovered in winter 2018, interior leaks in 2019, mold found in fall 2020, balcony structural damage in May 2021, the façade replacement from November 2022 to 2024, and that the work “impacted every one of the units.” What it denies is the legal and moral punchline: that anyone was misled, that the apartments were unfit, or that the tenants were harmed. It also says affected tenants got rent concessions, that the gym closed for only two days, and that Materna’s original lease actually dates to February 2020, not 2023.

On a separate track, Sandra Fernandez’s appeal of the intervention denial is pending (2025-P-1463, consolidated with her earlier appeal). She asked the trial court to pay for the transcript of the June 3, 2025 intervention hearing. Judge Connolly denied it without prejudice in February, then denied the renewed request on March 24, 2026 — telling her she can buy the transcript herself and bluntly stating in the endorsement that Fernandez and Abouelkhier “obstructed the progress of that case by filing dozens and dozens of frivolous Motions,” and that severing them into 2582CV00364 preserved their claims, which they “declined” to pursue there.

06— What's next

The schedule the court approved runs: motions to amend/join parties by March 31, 2026 (done), fact discovery closing October 31, 2026, plaintiff’s expert disclosures November 30, 2026, defendants’ January 29, 2027, expert discovery March 12, 2027, the class certification motion served April 9, 2027, and a certification hearing set for June 2027. Summary judgment motions come 30 days after the certification ruling.

So the next real work is document exchange and depositions, including expert depositions the court authorized. Bozzuto and Barrett will also need to answer the Fourth Amended Complaint if they haven’t already.

On the appeal side, the Appeals Court has Fernandez’s consolidated appeal, and the trial court has now refused to fund her transcript — expect her either to buy it, proceed without it, or take another run at the issue. The Appeals Court has already warned that dismissal under M.A.C. 19.0 could start if she misses status-report deadlines.

07— Reading between the lines

The core case is a serious one, and the plaintiff’s lawyers found the best possible weapon: the landlord’s own sworn words from its lawsuit against its builder. When the owner has already told a court there were “widespread leaks,” “irreparably damaged” structure, and daily impact on “every one” of 352 units, it becomes very hard to tell the tenants nothing was wrong. That’s why the complaint bolds those quotes on nearly every page — it’s smart, and it’s legitimate.

Marina Bay’s answer is the mirror image of that strategy: admit the engineering facts (which are undeniable and already on record in the other case) and fight hard on the legal bridge — no misrepresentation, no unfitness, no damages, rent concessions were given, individualized issues make class treatment inappropriate. It also throws in a long list of affirmative defenses including economic loss rule, Rule 9(b) particularity, waiver, unclean hands, and failure to mitigate. That’s standard defense practice, though the sheer volume of boilerplate defenses is the usual shotgun approach.

The most striking thing in this record isn’t the merits — it’s the collateral war. Judge Connolly’s March 24, 2026 endorsement says out loud what the docket already screams: dozens upon dozens of pro se filings from the removed plaintiff and his wife brought a complex class action to a standstill for months. The court’s response — omnibus procedural orders, a leave-to-file requirement for non-parties, marking them INACTIVE, and now refusing to spend Commonwealth money on a transcript she doesn’t need — reads as a judge who has run out of patience.

To be fair to Fernandez: appealing a denial of intervention is a real right, and her renewed transcript motion was actually well-targeted (it narrowed the request to a single hearing and explained why she needed it). But the court’s answer was that there was no evidentiary hearing and the written record already contains the reasoning, so there’s nothing the tape would add. And the Appeals Court has twice refused her related requests, with a single justice finding no meritorious appellate issue.

What this looks like, on the whole: the actual class case is finally being litigated normally by three sets of experienced lawyers on an agreed schedule, while a parallel, largely unsuccessful pro se campaign runs alongside it. If the class gets certified in 2027, the leverage swings hard toward the tenants — which is exactly why the defense is signaling early that certification is where it will make its stand.

A candid read, not legal advice.
08— The record, translated

Newest first — the plain-English reading leads; the court's wording follows.