All Topics

• Settling Cases

  Ken Margolin | September 06, 2007 12:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• Virginia Tech Faulted in Student Deaths

  Ken Margolin | August 30, 2007 10:30 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• PET Scan Aids Large Brain Injury Settlement

  Ken Margolin | August 29, 2007 1:40 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• Reported Physical Abuse in Nursing Homes Declines

  Ken Margolin | August 22, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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 Medical Malpractice Claim Lost

  Ken Margolin | August 21, 2007 3:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• The Power of Exhibits

  Ken Margolin | August 20, 2007 11:15 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• The Expert Witness Industry

  Ken Margolin | August 15, 2007 2:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  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...

• Cell Phone Driving Fatalities

  Ken Margolin | August 07, 2007 4:10 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  If the sight of the driver to your right on the interstate, chatting away on his cell phone gets you angry, you've got a right to be. Various studies have shown that driving while talking on a cell phone can be as dangerous as driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit. Estimates of the number of U.S. traffic fatalities caused by cell phone talking while driving are generally in the...

• Wrong Site Surgeries

  Ken Margolin | August 06, 2007 4:10 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  An article in Saturday's Boston Globe illustrated the gap that sometimes exists between written procedures and implementation. The article also highlighted the ongoing danger from surgeries on the wrong part of a patient's body. Five hundred fifty-two cases of wrong-site surgery have been reported by American hospitals since 1995; there are undoubtedly many unreported cases. The incident covered...

• $160 Million Nursing Home Abuse Verdict

  Ken Margolin | August 02, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Corporate nursing home officials who bank on jurors discounting residents' injuries from nursing home abuse, because of their age or pre-existing illness, may think again after a $160 million dollar verdict in Texas. The victim of the abuse was an 81 year old resident of the Comanche Trail Nursing Home in Big Spring, Texas. Nursing home personnel assigned him a new roommate who was mentally ill...