April 27 (Reuters) - Massachusetts' top court on Thursday revived the indictments against two former leaders of a veterans' home charged with criminal neglect for their roles in handling a COVID-19 outbreak that killed 84 people.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a 5-2 ruling, overturned a judge's decision to throw out the charges against former Holyoke Soldiers' Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director David Clinton.
"Of course, sometimes bad things happen for no discernable reason, and no one is to blame," Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote for the majority.
In bringing the charges against the men in September 2020, then-Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, now the state's Democratic governor, touted the criminal case as the first in the country tied to a COVID-19 outbreak at a nursing facility.
The state of Massachusetts last year agreed to pay nearly $58 million to resolve a lawsuit by families of veterans who contracted COVID-19 during the outbreak.