Massachusetts General Laws

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 221, § 14 (2026)

General duties of clerks

✓ current as of July 2026

Find cases: SyfertCases citing this section MAmalegislature.gov (official) JustiaChapter on Justia CornellLII Search CasesGoogle Scholar

Section 14. The clerks shall attend all the courts of which they are clerks when held in their respective counties, and the sessions of the county commissioners, and shall record their proceedings; and shall have the care and custody of all the records, books and papers, whether in physical or electronic form, which pertain to, or are filed or deposited in, their respective offices. The duties of the clerks, so far as they relate to the county commissioners, may be performed by deputy assistant clerks designated under section seven.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 4 cases, 1976–2019 · leading case: Barry v. Commonwealth, 455 N.E.2d 437 (Mass. 1983).

Sort: Relevance Newest Treatment

Barry v. Commonwealth, 455 N.E.2d 437 (Mass. 1983). · cites it 2× “6 That advantage is not significant here, as there was no serious dispute as to the facts in the hearing before the judge in the Superior Court.”

Commonwealth v. Harris, 358 N.E.2d 982 (Mass. 1976). “9 See G. L. c. 221, § 14, which provides that clerks of the various courts “shall have the care and custody of all the records, books and papers which pertain to, or are filed or deposited in, their respective offices.”

Dist. Attorney for the N. Dist. v. Superior Court Dep't, 122 N.E.3d 1051 (Mass. 2019). “See G. L. c. 221, § 14 ("care and custody" of "records, books and papers"); S.”

Migliore v. Purity Supreme Supermarkets, Inc., 1992 Mass. App. Div. 164 (Mass. Dist. Ct., App. Div. 1992). “Our holding in this case in no way diminishes our continuing criticism of material inaccuracies and deficiencies in trial court dockets 7 which not only constitute nothing less than a clerk’s abdication of responsibilities imposed by statutory mandate and rule of court, see…”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.