- Ken Margolin | November 30, 2006 9:30 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesAn ongoing theme on this blog site is the hazards of construction work and the justifiable liability for companies that negligently put workers at risk. Two more significant settlements were reported this week in Massachusetts, resulting from serious accidents at construction sites. In the first case, an ironworker fell to his death from a scaffolding 65 feet in the air. A piece of structural...
- Ken Margolin | November 21, 2006 3:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticePharmacy errors cause over 7,000 deaths per year, and around 5% of the more than 3 billion prescriptions filled are incorrect, according to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). The NABP has even created a special task force to combat medication errors in pharmacies as the number of prescriptions increases and the potential for error rises as well. Pharmacy medication errors...
- Ken Margolin | November 20, 2006 6:30 PM |
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MiscellaneousIn a 19 year period from 1979 through 1998, the federal Center for Disease Control, reports that more than 300 Americans died from dog bite attacks. Giving an idea of the scope of the danger - an astounding 800,000 Americans sought medical care because of dog bites in a single reported year. Most dog attacks involved a lone dog, and not surprisingly, while any breed of dog can bite, pit-bulls,...
- Ken Margolin | November 20, 2006 9:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeFollowing demographics, many pharmaceutical companies are making so-called "EZ Open" pill bottles designed for adults with arthritis in their hands. The problem is that some of the bottles can also be readily opened by children. The danger of a medication overdose to a child is made greater because many pills are colorful and sugar-coated, making them attractive to a child. Recently, a...
- Ken Margolin | November 17, 2006 1:00 PM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesThree significant personal injury settlements were reported in this week's Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newspaper. Two of the cases were construction accident cases. In one, a worker suffered a crushed foot when a jersey barrier tipped over on him while he was removing temporary wooden railings and installing jersey barriers alongside the highway. While the employer could not be sued because of...
- Ken Margolin | November 17, 2006 9:00 AM |
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MiscellaneousWorkers compensation statutes provide a necessary assurance that workers injured on the job will receive compensation while they are out of work, regardless of who was at fault for the injuries. We can't go back to days when injured workers might be on their own to provide for their families if the carelessness of the worker or a co-worker were alleged to have caused the accident. Worker...
- Ken Margolin | November 16, 2006 1:00 PM |
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MiscellaneousOne of the fastest growing areas of tort law is premises security. These cases occur when someone is injured because of a property owner's negligence. Amongst the most significant, and sometimes terrifying, types of dangerous premises cases result from robberies, muggings, or sexual assaults in parking lots or garages.Not every criminal act will give rise to a premises liability lawsuit. A...
- Ken Margolin | November 16, 2006 7:00 AM |
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MiscellaneousI visited a shipyard yesterday to view a lift machine involved in a client's severe injury. As is always the case on a site visit to a place of heavy construction or machinery, I noticed the many ways a worker could be hurt or killed in an instant. In the shipyard, cranes hoisted muti-ton parts high above. Pipes heavy enough to crush were being rolled into place in an area where workers...
- Ken Margolin | November 15, 2006 6:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeMassachusetts, like most states, treats medical malpractice different than most personal injury cases. The Legislature bought into the insurance industry's false, but brilliantly executed, argument that medical malpractice litigation was responsible for driving doctors' insurance rates sky high and for driving doctors out of the state. It is easy to be suspicious of the motives behind the...
- Ken Margolin | November 15, 2006 9:00 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesTraumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability among Americans. TBI kills 50,000 people per year and it is estimated that over 5 million Americans are afflicted with TBI-related health problems. TBI most commonly occurs from traffic or sports accidents and falls. In any personal injury case involving definite or potential trauma to the head, the possibility of brain...
- Ken Margolin | November 14, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe prevalence of drug-resistant, hospital-acquired infections should still be a cause for concern among doctors and patients, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC's press release on the study's findings discloses that over the past 30 years, "staph" infections, acquired in hospitals and other healthcare facilities such as nursing homes,...
- Ken Margolin | November 13, 2006 3:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeTwo incidents involving anesthesia within the last two months, illustrate that anesthesia mistakes can be deadly when they occur, despite the medical profession's efforts to prevent them. At the end of September, a 5 year old girl died at the dentist's office, where she had gone for routine filling and capping of teeth. The child never awoke. Although the facts are not definitively known as yet,...
- Ken Margolin | November 13, 2006 10:30 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsThe federal Center for Disease Control estimates that alcohol is involved in car crashes that kill someone in the United States every 13 minutes. That equals more than 15,000 deaths per year due to drunk driving accidents. The government has made a number of recommendations to reduce alcohol-related deaths and injuries on the roadway.It pressured states - with the threat of losing federal money...
- Ken Margolin | November 10, 2006 1:00 PM |
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Tractor-Trailer AccidentsRollovers of large commercial trucks cost lives as well as millions of dollars of property loss each year. Some studies have shown that speeds during steady turns, believed to be safe by the truck drivers, are often close to their truck's rollover border line. In other words, some dangerous driving by truck drivers is not out of intentional recklessness, but ignorance of the physical properties...
- Ken Margolin | November 10, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsA friend of mine joked recently that he had a vision of his demise - run over by a minivan driven by someone talking on a cell phone. He may be right. The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society estimates that drivers distracted by cell phones cause 2,600 highway deaths and 330,000 injuries each year. Since everyone knows they shouldn't talk on a cell phone while driving, it remains a mystery why...
- Ken Margolin | November 09, 2006 1:00 PM |
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MiscellaneousWhether you celebrate or lament the new Democratic majority in the Congress, one thing is undeniable - federal tort reform legislation will be off the table for now. Tort reform - the view that victims of personal injury from negligence should have restricted access to the courts and fewer rights if they get there, was an issue that divided right down party lines. Many Republicans, especially...
- Ken Margolin | November 09, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeA trip to the local drug store to fill a prescription seems as benign as a trip to the supermarket to buy a quart of milk. As a matter of fact, many supermarkets now have pharmacies. In addition to the huge number and varied types of pharmacies, add the proliferation of new drugs and the aging of the general population, and you get billions of prescriptions filled each year. The United States is...
- Ken Margolin | November 08, 2006 11:30 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesWhen attorneys handle a case involving paralysis or other catastrophic injuries, one of the biggest challenges is effectively portraying their impact on the client's life. Words are powerful, but go only so far. One of the most effective tools available to the trial lawyer is the day in the life video. These videos show more dramatically than any verbal description, the difficulties posed by the...
- Ken Margolin | November 08, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesVoir dire is the process whereby potential jurors are questioned before they are selected, to probe for biases that might impair their ability to impartially judge the facts. Voir dire has been described in a "Law Day" outline of the American Bar Association, as "one of the most important aspects of any trial." Massachusetts is one of only a few states in the country in which voir dire is not...
- Ken Margolin | November 07, 2006 9:00 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsSevere spinal cord injuries fall into the category of injuries that can be described as life-altering. Enormous strides have been made in the last decade to help individuals paralyzed by spinal cord trauma live longer with a higher quality of life. Naturally, the greater the damage to the spinal cord and the more severe the limitation on movement and self-sufficiency, the greater the supports...
- Ken Margolin | November 06, 2006 12:30 PM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesAnesthesia errors, fortunately, are not everyday occurrences. When they do happen, the results are often catastrophic. Since a serious anesthesia mistake often causes deprivation of oxygen to the patient, death or brain damage can be the end result. To the great credit of the anesthesia profession, it was anesthesiologists who led the way to modern methods of medication error reduction....
- Ken Margolin | November 03, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeSince the 1990s, emergency room closings and emergency room errors have been on the rise, due to rising healthcare costs, shrinking hospital budgets and dwindling staff levels. During the same time period, the number of patients seeking ER care as risen.The American College of Emergency Physicians has posted an action-alert page urging people to write to their Congressional representatives to...
- Ken Margolin | November 02, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeOn September 6, 2006, two years after its voluntary withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, Merck released a self-funded study attempting to evade charges that the company knew of the dangers of Vioxx prior to selling the drug to the public. According to an ATLA (Association of Trial Lawyers of America) press release, documents produced because of the numerous lawsuits in several states that have...
- Ken Margolin | November 01, 2006 7:00 AM |
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MiscellaneousA lawsuit begins with the filing of the Complaint and the service of a copy of the Complaint with a summons, on the defendant. If the defendant has insurance, there will usually be a delay of approximately 30 days while the insurance company assigns defense counsel. Once the lawyers for all parties are known and the defendant answers the Complaint, the lawsuit begins moving.Massachusetts has a...