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Lenox Farms Limited Partnership v. Frommer, Sandra

Housing Court·Metro South Housing Court·Last checked Jul 25, 2026, 8:03 PM·View on masscourts.org ↗

01— Where things stand right now

Lenox Farms won a preliminary injunction in March 2026 barring Sandra Frommer from living at 550 Liberty Street, Apt. 905 in Braintree. She didn’t leave, so the landlord filed a contempt complaint. At the July 14, 2026 show-cause hearing she did not appear; the judge found service proper, denied all seven of her pending motions, took the contempt under advisement, and asked the landlord to submit a proposed order — which it filed on July 17, 2026 asking the court to find her in contempt and issue an execution for possession within 30 days.

02— The case in a nutshell

Lenox Farms Limited Partnership owns/manages an apartment complex at 550 Liberty Street in Braintree. It says the only person authorized to live in Apartment 905 under a written lease is Mohamed Kassem, and that Sandra Frommer moved in and stayed there without the landlord’s permission.

Instead of a normal eviction (summary process), the landlord filed a civil complaint in Housing Court in January 2026 asking for an injunction ordering Frommer out. On March 17, 2026 the judge granted that injunction.

Frommer, representing herself, says she is not a squatter: she claims she paid by check, got keys from management, lived openly there for a long time with her minor child, used the pool and gym with management’s blessing, and that management even asked for her son’s information to add him to the lease. She argues the court never got proper jurisdiction over her because she was never served with a summons, and that the landlord is using an injunction to do an end-run around the eviction statute.

She has appealed and repeatedly asked for stays. Every stay request has been denied, both in the Housing Court and by a single justice of the Appeals Court. Now the landlord is pressing a contempt case because she still hasn’t moved out.

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

The injunction phase is over and the enforcement phase is here. Since March, Frommer has filed a barrage of motions — motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, motions to vacate the injunction as “void,” multiple emergency stay motions, a request that the judge rule on the papers with written findings, and a “notice of non-attribution” insisting her filings not be lumped in with any related docket.

All of it has been denied. A single justice of the Appeals Court denied her petition and stay on March 30, 2026, saying she hadn’t shown legal error or a likelihood of success on appeal. Her Appeals Court appeal (2026-P-0420) is still open, but in May the court rejected her informal brief as non-conforming (a pagination problem) and gave her until May 29 to fix it.

Meanwhile the landlord filed a contempt complaint on June 1, 2026 because she still hadn’t left. A constable tried in-hand service three times in late April/early May, then left the papers at the apartment and mailed a copy.

At the July 14, 2026 show-cause contempt hearing, only the landlord appeared. The judge found that constable service satisfied Rule 65.3(e), denied all seven of Frommer’s outstanding motions because she failed to appear, took the contempt itself under advisement, and directed the landlord to submit a proposed order. The landlord filed that proposed order on July 17 — asking the court to declare her in contempt, enter judgment for the landlord, and issue an execution for possession within 30 days. It also states an unpaid use-and-occupancy balance over $99,358.

05— What's next

The immediate question is whether Judge Sherring signs some version of the landlord’s proposed order. The docket shows the contempt was taken under advisement on July 14 and the proposed order was filed July 17, so a written contempt ruling is the next expected event.

If the judge adopts the proposed order, an execution for possession would issue (the landlord asked for it within 30 days), which is the document that lets a constable or sheriff physically remove her. Judges often modify proposed orders rather than sign them verbatim, so the exact terms and effective date aren’t a given.

Separately, the Appeals Court appeal from the March 17 injunction remains open, and its fate likely depends on whether Frommer cured the brief defects the clerk flagged in May. Nothing in this docket shows a new hearing date scheduled.

06— Reading between the lines

Read the record plainly: the landlord has won essentially every contested point, and Frommer has lost every stay request in two different courts.

The landlord’s strategy is aggressive but not unusual for an alleged unauthorized occupant — skip summary process, sue in equity, get an injunction ordering the person out, then enforce it with contempt. Frommer’s legal objection to that route (that G.L. c. 239 summary process is the exclusive path and equity shouldn’t be used as a shortcut eviction) is a genuine, non-frivolous argument, and so is her point that findings from a summary process case she was barred from joining shouldn’t bind her. Those are real issues. She just hasn’t persuaded anyone yet.

Her factual story is also more substantive than the label “squatter” suggests. The affidavit describes payment by check to a named management employee, keys, months of open occupancy, pool sign-ins, and an email exchange where management asked for her son’s birthdate to add him to the lease. If that’s provable, it complicates the landlord’s clean narrative.

But the way she’s litigating is hurting her badly. The volume of overlapping emergency motions — several saying nearly the same thing — reads less like focused advocacy and more like an attempt to bury the case in paper and buy time. One of her filings even contains a stray line of drafting instructions (“Here is your refined, Housing Court–appropriate, senior-litigator version of that section”), which suggests the briefs were assembled quickly, likely with AI help, without careful review. And the fatal move was not showing up on July 14: the judge denied all seven motions for non-appearance alone, meaning her best arguments were never heard on the merits at the hearing that mattered.

The service fight is also close to spent. She swore she was never served; the constable’s return documents three in-hand attempts and then last-and-usual service plus mailing, and the judge specifically found that adequate under Rule 65.3(e). That’s the kind of finding appellate courts rarely disturb.

Bottom line: the substantive questions she raises about using an injunction instead of an eviction may still matter on appeal, but procedurally she is out of leverage in the trial court, and the landlord is now one signature away from an execution for possession. Nothing here is certain — the judge hasn’t ruled on the contempt yet — but the momentum is entirely one direction.

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

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