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2583CV00969Up to date

Fernandez, Sandra vs. Keches law group et al

Superior Court·Plymouth County·Last checked Jul 25, 2026, 8:05 PM·View on masscourts.org ↗

01— Where things stand right now

Sandra Fernandez, representing herself, is suing her former lawyers (Keches Law Group and attorney Jonathan Sweet) for malpractice and related claims. The defendants have a Rule 12(c) motion pending that asks the judge to throw out the entire complaint, and discovery is essentially paused while that motion is decided.

The hearing on that dismissal motion was set for June 4, 2026, but Fernandez filed an emergency motion the day before saying she is out of state getting medical treatment. Judge Donatelle allowed the continuance without objection from the defense, so the case-deciding hearing has been pushed off and needs a new date.

02— The case in a nutshell

Sandra Fernandez was a tenant at the “Meriel Marina Bay” luxury apartments in Quincy. She hired Keches Law Group in April 2023 over water intrusion problems, and Keches then rolled her claim into a class action on behalf of many tenants against the landlord, Marina Bay Residences, LLC.

That relationship blew up. The landlord filed a counterclaim for roughly $68,000 in unpaid rent against only Fernandez and Dany Abouelkhier; they fired Keches; and the Norfolk Superior Court removed Abouelkhier as class representative and severed their individual claims into a separate case.

Fernandez blames Keches for that outcome and, in October 2025, sued the firm and Sweet in Plymouth Superior Court for legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, fraud, invasion of privacy, defamation, unjust enrichment, conversion, Chapter 93A, and emotional distress.

Keches has answered and moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing there is no case here at all: she lost no legal rights when her claims were merely severed, she then let those claims die by refusing to participate, and this suit is a continuation of what a Norfolk judge already called a “campaign of harassment.”

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

The case is stuck at the threshold stage: does the complaint even state a claim?

In February 2026 the defense served, and in March filed as a Rule 9A package, a motion for judgment on the pleadings plus a motion to stay discovery. Their memorandum argues (1) Fernandez suffered no legally recognizable harm because the Norfolk court expressly preserved all her rights in the severed action, (2) any loss came from her own refusal to participate — which led to dismissal of her claims and judgment against her on the rent counterclaim in February 2026, and (3) each individual count is legally defective, invoking the litigation privilege for the fraud/defamation/privacy claims and Rule 9(b) for fraud.

Fernandez’s opposition argues the motion improperly relies on outside facts and disputed issues (consent, whether the individual fee agreement was superseded, scope of authorization) that need discovery, and that the “vexatious litigant” rhetoric is legally irrelevant at the pleading stage.

The defense reply then accused her opposition of containing fabricated case quotations — it says quotes attributed to Jarosz, Flynn v. Wallace, and Blanchard don’t exist in those opinions — and suggests she used an AI tool to write the brief. That is a serious accusation sitting in the record right now.

On discovery, Fernandez filed a “limited opposition” saying she was fine with a temporary pause but objected to the motion’s factual characterizations, including calling Abouelkhier her husband. The hearing set for June 4, 2026 was continued at her request based on out-of-state medical treatment, supported by her sworn affidavit.

05— What's next

The court needs to set a new date for the hearing on the motion for judgment on the pleadings; Fernandez asked for something after July 15, 2026, but the docket doesn’t show a rescheduled date yet.

After that hearing, Judge Donatelle will rule. Realistically there are three paths: the whole complaint is dismissed (and the court could separately consider the defense’s fee request), some counts survive and the case moves into real discovery, or Fernandez is given leave to amend, which she requested in the alternative.

Discovery is effectively frozen in the meantime. If dismissal comes, expect an appeal attempt given this plaintiff’s filing history.

06— Reading between the lines

This is a former-client-versus-former-lawyer fight where the underlying dispute has already gone badly for the plaintiff, and that history is doing a lot of the work.

Keches’s strategy is clear and pretty standard for a firm facing this kind of suit: kill it at the pleadings, freeze discovery so it costs them almost nothing, and lean hard on a prior judge’s written findings that the plaintiff’s litigation conduct has been vexatious. Their strongest legal point isn’t the name-calling — it’s the causation argument: the Norfolk court expressly said her rights were preserved, and her claims died because she filed a paper refusing to be treated as a party. That is a real problem for a malpractice claim, which requires actual damages.

That said, the defense isn’t playing it perfectly clean either. Fernandez has a fair point that an “emergency” motion in November 2025 to get a nearly two-month extension, filed one day after counsel appeared and after she’d already offered 20 days, was not much of an emergency. And a motion to stay discovery is often unnecessary when the other side already told you in writing she’d pause voluntarily — filing it anyway, with extra unflattering factual assertions attached, looks like record-building.

On Fernandez’s side, some of her filings are legitimate and well-aimed: Rule 12(c) really does limit the court to the pleadings, and “she’s a vexatious litigant” is not itself a ground for dismissal. But the reply’s allegation that her opposition contains invented case quotations, if the judge verifies it, is damaging in a way no procedural argument fixes — it undercuts her credibility on everything else.

The continuance itself appears to be a legitimate request: it was sworn under oath, promptly filed, and the defense didn’t object. Still, it comes on the eve of the one hearing that could end her case, and she asked to push it more than six weeks. Whether the delay is medical necessity or convenient timing, only she knows; the record supports the medical explanation and nothing contradicts it.

Bottom line: the defense has the momentum and the better procedural posture, and Fernandez is fighting to get past the pleadings so she can reach discovery. She needs the judge to find at least one count that stands on the face of the complaint alone.

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

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