General Personal Injury | InjuryBoard Boston

Parents of a boy who drowned filed a lawsuit Monday, January 28 against the town of Greenwich, Shoreline Pools, and others. The 6 year-old drowned when his arm became caught in a powerful swimming pool drain. The lawsuit, by Brian and Karen Cohn, alleges that the pool safety violates safety requirements that were instated after many similar tragedies.The lawsuit, which seeks damages of more...

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Protecting charitable organizations from liability for the negligence of the organization or its employees, may sound noble, but is in fact, unfair. The immunity doesn't really accomplish its goals, and insures that employees of an organization involved in a personal injury lawsuit, will be sued instead of the organization. Here's the way it works in Massachusetts. By statute, M.G.L. c. 231,...

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Ground beef patties sold under the Shaw's supermarket label, were recalled yesterday. According to Fairbank Farms, the company that sells the beef to Shaws, packages with the tainted beef could have been purchased in New England between 7 a.m. - 11 a.m., on Wednesday, September 5, 2007. The 85% lean beef was sold in 1.33 pound packages with the establishment number "Est. 492. The beef was...

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Fifteen years ago, the idea of formal mediation of a serious personal injury case in Massachusetts, was cutting edge stuff. Settlement of most cases took place the old-fashioned way, via phone calls or meetings between counsel and at times, insurance adjusters. Today, by way of contrast, a look at the advertisements in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, shows more than 30 ads for alternative...

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An eight-person panel, appointed by Virginia Tech. President, Timothy M. Kaine, issued its report yesterday, on the April 16th multiple murder at the school. The panel said that lives could have been saved if the school administration had issued a timely warning that two students had been murdered. The two were killed approximately two hours before the killer proceeded to another building and...

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I wonder if anyone has ever calculated the number of words per hour spoken during the average jury trial. The right words, used the right way, can evoke the most powerful of images, associations, and emotions. Words can also drone on and become little more than background noise to the listener. The lawyer trying a case involving catastrophic personal injury, has a challenge. He may need to...

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Many serious personal injury cases, and pretty much all products liability and medical malpractice actions, require expert witnesses. The experts testify on topics including the mechanism of injury, industry standards or medical standard of care, the plaintiff's medical condition, economic loss, and others. Local experts may not want to testify against a professional or company in their own...

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Obtaining data on the number of people injured at big box stores such as Home Depot, is difficult. The information is guarded like state secrets. Data generated in litigation, however, has revealed that the big box giant, Home Depot, has had an ongoing problem with falling merchandise killing and maiming customers. One lawsuit revealed that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, more than 2,200...

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Big corporations love binding arbitration clauses. They are hidden in many contracts, requiring the individual to give up his or her right to a jury trial in the case of a dispute with the company. Some clauses attempt to block class actions. When large corporations are safe from class actions, they can cheat large numbers of people in small increments, knowing that paying off the few...

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I have been asked this question many times over the years by clients who have received serious personal injuries at work. Workers compensation pays the injured employee regardless of whether the employer or anyone else was negligent, and even if the employee's own negligence contributed to his injuries. Worker compensation laws are essential, but they are something of a devil's bargain. The...

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Underscoring the continued hazards to children, created by poorly designed toys, Hasbro recalled its Easy Bake Oven. Nearly a million of the toys have been manufactured. The oven is intended for young children. It is a small plastic replica of a real oven, electrically powered, that heats up internally to as hot as 400 degrees farenheit! No surprise - children have been getting burned - and...

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Several days ago, I posted a blog on bad faith denial of claims by insurance companies. I don't usually write blogs on the same topic within several days of each other, but I must comment on the superb reporting on insurance company bad faith, in this month's issue of Trial magazine. Trial is the journal of the American Association for Justice, the plaintiffs' trial lawyers association. The...

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There is only one reason to buy insurance - to have the peace of mind of knowing that the financial needs of you or your family will be covered in the event of death, catastrophic injury, or long-term disability or illness. When an insurance company denies payment of a valid claim in bad faith, it is practicing the corporate greed version of "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine." You...

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District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff, ruled in favor of the defendant dry cleaning shop owners in the $67 million dollar pants case (media now describe it as the $54 million dollar pants lawsuit, but why quibble). Life gets back to normal for the American civil justice system, but some damage has been done. Opponents of access to justice by ordinary people, and trial lawyer...

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In a previous blog, I wrote about day-in-the-life videos. These are videos that film a severely injured plaintiff and capture vignettes of a typical day, in a 20 - 30 minute movie. If done properly, they can be shown to a jury at trial. Another tool that any lawyer representing a client with catastrophic injuries may consider, is a video settlement brochure. In the video settlement brochure, the...

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