Boston Personal Injury Lawyer

The problem of medication errors has by now been well-reviewed, and efforts to minimize such errors are underway in hospitals and doctors' offices across the country. Nevertheless, the problem of medication errors has proven to be a very stubborn one. In his groundbreaking book, "To Err is Human," Lucien Leape, M.D., estimated that medication errors caused approximately 98,000 deaths per year....

California has banned cell phone use by drivers ages 16 & 17. The ban will include text messaging. Older drivers will be allowed to use hands free phones, but the ban for the teenagers will be total. While the legislation is positive and regrettably, too rare, it is insufficient. A number of studies have shown that even during conversations on hands free cell phones, drivers' reactions times...

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...

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...

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...

This week's Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, reported a $3.3 million dollar settlement in a brain injury case. The plaintiff was a contractor in his mid-40s, who was allegedly struck by an improperly secured piece of equipment, while climbing a ladder in a poorly-lit area of the water supply tunnel project on which he was working. After the blow, he complained of headaches, hypersensitivity to...

There was some good news in a 2005 study from the National [Nursing Home] Ombudsman Reporting System ("NORS"). Complaints involving physical abuse in nursing homes decreased from 5,426 in 1998 to 4,137 in 2005. According to the report, complaints of nursing home physical abuse ranked 19th out of 128 categories of complaints relating to nursing home conditions.While any decline in numbers of...

A couple of weeks ago, a Suffolk County Superior Court jury in Boston, rejected the claim of former New England Patriots offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, that doctors botched his gastric bypass surgery. The defense verdict came at the end of the second trial of the case. The first jury hearing the case was deadlocked, leading to a mistrial. Weis had claimed that his surgeons allowed...

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...

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...