Thomas Knowlton, Litigation Division
Tom Knowlton received his B.A. degree in Mathematics, cum laude, in 1981 from Williams College and his law degree, magna cum laude, in 1989 from Boston College Law School. Before attending law school, Tom taught Math and Latin at the Roxbury Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts. After law school, Tom clerked for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and then worked at the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow.
Tom has worked in the Attorney General s Office since 1994. In January 2021, Attorney General Aaron Frey promoted Tom to Deputy Attorney General and Chief of the Litigation Division. Tom has argued more than 30 cases in the Maine Law Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, including:
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Chief Justice Roberts recently issued his year-end report on the federal judiciary, appropriately focusing on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chief Justice noted that 2020 ended with the judiciary in much the same situation as when the American court system began – in the midst of a public health crisis. In 1790, it was the influenza. In 2020, of course, it was the coronavirus. Throughout the history of our judicial system, whether by horseback or by Zoom, the work of appellate courts has proceeded despite health challenges.
What caught my attention in the report was a statistic showing that new filings in regional courts of appeal fell by less than one percent in 2020, from 48,486 to 48,190. New civil appeals decreased five percent, reflecting a decrease in new civil filings in district courts. That made me delve deeper into judicial statistics, to look at what is going on in the First Circuit and
A Maine law doesn't entitle employees to collect unused vacation time as wages, the First Circuit said Wednesday, upholding a lower court's decision spurning a former Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. employee's bid to get paid for his bank of leftover paid time off after he resigned from the company.