Boston Personal Injury Lawyer

Trucking Accident Statistics in Massachusetts

Margaret Embry — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:20:12 GMT

It is estimated that an average of 5,000 Americans are killed each year in tractor-trailer related accidents. In Massachusetts, there were twenty-two fatal accidents involving tractor-trailers in 2008.

The number of large trucks involved in accidents has almost doubled from 2004 to 2007 in Massachusetts, according to data from Road Safe America. In 2004, there were a total of 954 fatal and non-fatal accidents combined and 1,689 in 2007. There were 912 non-fatal accidents in 2004 and 2,228 in 2008. The number of injury accidents has also increased, with 369 in 2004 and 988 in 2008.

The following are some of the causes of trucking accidents, according to Road Safe America:

excessive speed, consumption of drugs and alcohol, failure to use protective measures such as seatbelt and helmets, poor vehicle impact protection, and poor road design.

Also,

trucking safety statistics and a new study on driving behavior found that automobile drivers were to blame 56 percent of the time, truckers 44 percent, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The probability that a truck accident will result in death or serious injury increases with each extra ton of weight over 80,000 lbs.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Margaret Embry

Agreement to waive jury trial against nursing home may not be a good deal for you

Steven Schafer — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:08:27 GMT

Admitting a member of your family to a nursing home can be stressful. Your grandparent, parent or spouse often needs immediate health care and attention and they can no longer live on their own, or you can no longer care for them in your home.

It’s a trying period of transition marking a loss of independence for the patient and sadness for the family.

Under these circumstances, it’s not easy focusing on the details of the admissions contract. Yet it’s very important that you do so, particularly if the nursing home demands that the patient waive his or her right to a jury trial in the event of a lawsuit resulting from an injury suffered while in its care.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Long-term care facilities often seek to avoid a lawsuit in court by having a patient or their guardian agree to arbitration, which is an out-of-court proceeding to resolve disputes. Arbitration in and of itself can be beneficial, but preserving your right to a jury trial is very important because it leaves that option open should you decide that’s a better route to take for holding a nursing home accountable for negligent care and getting fair damages for injuries caused by the nursing home.

Some courts have ruled that pre-injury agreements to waive a jury trial are unfair and unenforceable – particularly if signing the agreement is necessary to gain admission to the nursing home, or if the waiver is buried in a multi-page contract and isn’t fully explained by the nursing home.

But some courts have upheld these waivers. In my state, for example, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) enforced an arbitration agreement between a nursing home and the patient’s son, who was acting as his father’s representative under a durable power of attorney.

In Miller vs. Cotter, the court in upholding the agreement emphasized three main factors specific to the case: the waiver agreement was not a condition of being admitted; it was a two-page document separate from the lengthier admissions contract; and the son had a 30-day period to reject the waiver agreement.

Also, the SJC refused to void the agreement as a matter of law. The court said federal and state law favors agreements to arbitrate, unless they are grossly unfair and one-sided. The court decided that jury-trial waivers as part of the admissions process at nursing homes are not unconscionable under law.

Fortunately, the Miller case doesn’t mean that all jury-trial waiver agreements will be upheld in Massachusetts. In another recent case, Constantino vs. Frechette, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled that nurses at a long-term care facility could be sued in court for the wrongful death of a patient, even though the facility and patient had agreed to arbitration. The court said the agreement did not specifically cover individual employees.

Allowing nursing homes to avoid jury trials before an injury occurs is arguably a bad public policy. Each injured person’s situation is different. They should have the choice of assessing whether it’s better to have a jury decide the negligence of a nursing home and what damages an injured person should receive, or whether it’s better to have an arbitrator resolve those issues.

Additionally, court rules often give the nursing home resident a better chance to prepare for trial by forcing the nursing home to turn over critical information. Arbitration rules, on the other hand, can favor the nursing home because they don’t always allow for as much investigation and discovery. An intelligent assessment of these factors can’t be made before the injury even occurs, or before the resident ever gets advice from a nursing home negligence lawyer.

A potential problem for health care consumers following a decision like the SJC’s ruling in the Cotter case is that other health care providers might start demanding jury-trial waivers. What’s to stop a hospital emergency room from making treatment available only if a patient agrees to arbitration in the event of malpractice? Or what if HMOs or primary care physicians start demanding jury waivers?

Even if medical treatment isn’t conditioned on signing an arbitration agreement, is it reasonable to assume most patients will even understand the full implications of waiving their right to a jury trial – especially when they are more focused on the illness or injury that brought them to the emergency room or their doctor’s office?

Bottom line: If you face having to admit a member of your family into a nursing home, it’s important to take the time to understand what’s in the admissions contract, including any provision requiring you to waive your right to a jury trial pre-injury.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steven Schafer

Bedrails can kill patients

Steven Schafer — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:27:36 GMT

Despite federal safety regulations and an increased awareness of the dangers of using bedrails at long-term care facilities and hospitals, patients continue to die from suffocation, strangulation or asphyxiation.

How do these tragedies occur?

One way is when patients slip through a gap between the mattress and the bottom of the raised bedrail, their heads get stuck, and they strangle to death. Sometimes their bodies are compressed causing asphyxiation. Or patients suffocate when they get wedged between the bedrail and the side of the mattress, with their faces pressed against the mattress. These hideous entrapment deaths usually occur with elderly patients. As long ago as 1995, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a Safety Alert to hospitals and nursing homes warning about entrapment hazards and safety concerns that accompany the use of bed rails.

I’m currently handling a case involving the strangulation death of an 87-year-old Massachusetts woman in 2006. The woman slid off her nursing home bed, and caught her chin on the raised bedrail. Her head became wedged between the bed rail, mattress and bed frame, with the rest of her body in a sitting position toward the floor, causing asphyxiation.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health concluded that the woman’s mattress pad alarm and personal safety alarm had not sounded to alert the nursing staff that the woman was in distress. Nonetheless, the woman’s tragic death could have been prevented if the nursing home had taken the proper steps to identify and eliminate the risk of entrapment hazards associated with bedrails.

Compounding these tragedies is the fact that they could have been easily avoided. Long-term care facilities and hospitals can take relatively easy and inexpensive steps to protect patients from these dangers.

For example, they can install cushions to fill the gap between mattress and bedrail, much like bumpers used in a baby crib. As an alternative, they can install see-through netting to fill the gap, which provides patients better visibility from their beds. Another safeguard is to simply use thicker mattresses to eliminate the gap.

Nursing homes and hospitals have used bedrails for decades with the intention of restraining patients from falling out of bed and suffering injuries. However, medical studies actually show that bedrails can increase the likelihood of falls as elderly patients try to crawl over or around them. A safer option is to simply place a patient in a bed low to the floor with safety mats next to the bed, and avoid using bedrails altogether.

Some long-term care facilities and hospitals increase the potential for injuries and death by “mixing and matching” beds, mattresses and bedrails from different manufacturers, causing unsafe integration of bed parts. Not only that, nurses and nursing assistants often receive inadequate training on the proper use of bedrails, and effective monitoring of patients.

A related problem is that the cause of death is often misdiagnosed because the suffocation can result from a gentle compression of the body or covering of the nose and mouth. The trauma often associated with strangulation, such as bruising of the neck or a fractured hyoid bone, which lay at the base of the tongue, is not always present or may not be identified.

An even larger potential problem is that long-term care facilities and hospitals either destroy or alter their medical records (more often than you’d like to believe), which makes it harder to prove their negligence in the use of bedrails and monitoring of patients.

The sad truth remains that bedrails can cause more problems than they solve. There’s often no need to use them, yet they are continuing to be used, and people are dying or suffering serious injuries as a result.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steven Schafer

Freight Train and Commuter Train Collide, Over 200 Injured

Jenny Albano — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:54:38 GMT

On Tuesday afternoon a freight train rolled from a side track onto the main line and collided with a commuter train that was stationary injuring over 200 people. Around 150 people were treated on scene and another 80 were taken to local hospitals. None of the injuries were life-threatening and the majority were minor. There were about 300 passengers on the Stoughton-bound train.

Pesaturo said the CSX freight car, loaded with lumber, rolled about two miles from where it had been parked at a lumber yard on the siding. It traveled onto the Stoughton commuter rail branch line, then onto the main line where it struck the passenger train's locomotive near Canton Junction just before 5:30 p.m. Pesaturo said the engineer, who was among those injured, was alerted by a track signal that something was on the line and was able to stop the commuter train before the crash.

Authorities are investigating to find out how the freight train became loose. The train was number 917 and left from Boston's South Station at 4:40 p.m.

Passengers involved in the crash said that the train suddenly stopped at the Canton Junction and then there was a loud bang. Also, a small brush fire ignited outside of the train and there was dust filling up the train car. Passengers were flying down the aisles and people had fallen on the floor. According to the passengers it was a terrifying experience.

The train service resumed Tuesday night from Boston and Providence, R.I,, but passengers had to be bused from Canton to Stoughton because crews were still cleaning up the debris from the accident.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Hannaford for Data Breach

Chrissie Cole — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:18:31 GMT

A class action lawsuit was recently filed against Hannaford Bros. on behalf of the consumers whose credit card and debit card numbers were stolen when the company's computers were hacked.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, in the U.S. District Court in Portland and claims the supermarket chain was negligent in providing adequate computer data security.

The class action lawsuit follows a security breach that compromised 4.2 million credit card and debit cards leading to over 1,800 fraud cases.

Hannaford discovered the breach on February 27, upon further investigating they found the data breach began on December 7 and wasn't contained until March 10.

All 165 Hannaford stores located in New England and New York were affected, as well as 106 Sweetbay stores in Florida.

While this security breach is ranked as one of the largest in U.S. history, it is smaller than the 45.7 million credit and debit cards that were exposed at TJX Cos., in 2005.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Chrissie Cole

Pool Drain Lawsuit Filed Because of Drowning

Jenny Albano — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:31:29 GMT

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 than $15,000, alleges Shoreline had a history of violating building code requirements and accuses the town of failing to conduct a proper inspection before issuing a permit.

Zachary, the 6 year-old boy, became trapped after his arm became stuck in the intake valve on the wall at the deep end of the pool. When the water enters the intake valve there is a great amount of suction. When he became trapped on July 26, 2007, the father and another adult jumped in to try and save him, but unfortunately the suction from the intake valve was to strong.

The boy's parents could not find a mechanism to turn off the suction pump, so Karen Cohn ran and shut off power to the house, including the pool's drain pump. Brian Cohn was then able to free his son and perform CPR, but it was too late.

According to the lawsuit, there have been more than 150 reported drain entrapments since 1985 and over 48 deaths. There have also been other serious injuries such as disembowelment. In 2004, Connecticut made new safety requirements for pool circulation systems.

The lawsuit states that the swimming pool the boy drowned in did not live up to the minimum safety standards and that there are seven code violations that could cause entrapment.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Wrongful Death.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

Contaminated Dairy May Have Caused 3 Deaths

Jenny Albano — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:36:55 GMT

Health officials claim that the milk from Whittier Farms dairy in Shrewsbury has caused the death of 3 elderly men and caused one women to miscarriage since last June because the milk was contaminated with listeria.

Whittier Farms is popular because they still deliver milk to your door in glass bottles and the milk does not contain added hormones.

All were infected with listeria, which is extremely rare in pasteurized milk. It is more often found in raw foods, such as uncooked meat and vegetables, and processed foods such as soft cheeses and cold cuts. The outbreak is believed to be only the third time listeria has ever been linked to pasteurized milk in the United States. Listeria bacteria are often present in manure and are commonly found in soil and water. Pasteurization is supposed to kill listeria.

Tests that were completed at the plant do not show anything wrong with the pasteurization process and now health investigators are testing the cooling and bottling machinery for the source of the problem. So far the investigators have taken around 70 samples from all over the plant.

The dairy, which also has a 500-acre farm in Sutton, has stopped all operations until the source of the bacteria is found and the problem is rectified. The Whittier family has sent letters to its customers saying they are "extremely concerned about the situation" and are cooperating fully with authorities.

Symptoms of listeria include fever, nausea and diarrhea. Ingesting this kind of bacteria can cause serious illness or death in pregnant women, newborns, the elderly and patients who have compromised immune systems.

DNA testing on the four patients with listeria from Whittier Farms showed they all carried the same strain of listeria, which suggests that the bacteria had a common source. Once this was found, the families of the deceased were interviewed to help pinpoint the source.

At about the same time, a health worker at the hospital where an 88-year-old man was diagnosed with listeriosis learned that the man had had unpasteurized cider and coffee-flavored pasteurized milk. When both drinks were tested, only the pasteurized milk -- from Whittier Farms -- came back positive. Officials then found listeria in an unopened container at the dairy's store in Shrewsbury.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Defective and Dangerous Products.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

The Bon-Ton Department Stores Inc. is Recalling Hooded Jackets Due to Strangulation Hazard from Drawstrings

Jenny Albano — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:14:10 GMT

The Bon-Ton Department Stores Inc., in conjunction with the CPSC, is recalling about 3,240 Children's fleece hooded zip-up jackets with neck drawstrings because the drawstring could pose a strangulation hazard to children.

In February 1996, CPSC issued guidelines to help prevent children from strangling or getting entangled on the neck and waist by drawstrings in upper garments, such as jackets and sweatshirts.

The recalled hoodies are for boys from ages 8-20 and are under the brand-name "Burnside". The jackets come in sizes from small through x-large and have multiple designs of the front. The recalled product will have the "RN # 39209" labeled on the tag of the jacket.
tag.

The recalled items were available at Bon-Ton, Bergner's, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers retail stores across the U.S. and Parisian stores in the Detroit from August 2007 to October 2007. So far there have been no reported injuries from the drawstrings.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Defective and Dangerous Products.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

Vintage Chocolates Inc. Recalls Soy Milk Chocolate Bars

Jenny Albano — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:11:07 GMT

Vintage Chocolates Inc., in conjunction with the FDA, is recalling 4,455 soy milk chocolate bars because they may contain undeclared traces of milk. Anyone that is allergic or sensitive to milk and consumes this product could run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions.

The bar is presented in a beige cardboard package of 3.5 oz, depicting tree with a green band on top stating "43% Soy milk or 38% Soy milk". On the back of the package one would find; the following information: UPC: 797148000398.

One injury was reported to the company which sparked an analysis of the formulation, and product analysis to determine the origin of the problem. The company has concluded from the investigation that the traces of milk in the product came from cross contamination issue during processing.

The one reported injury was from a child who received rashes after eating the soy chocolate bar. The product was distributed in 15 states and was available in retail stores as well as on the company's website: echocolates.com

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Defective and Dangerous Products.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

FDA Announces Safety Review of FosaMax, Boniva Class of Drugs

Courtney Mills — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:06:34 GMT

The FDA released an 'early communication' to the public of an ongoing safety review regarding the drug class bisphosphonates due to potential atrial fibrillation with the use of this class of drug. The agency has requested that further data be obtained in order to assay the merits of the tendency.

Bisphosphonates are a class of drug prescribed by physicians to treat osteoporosis. These medications are sold on the market under the brand names Fosamax, Actonel, Reclast, and Boniva, and they retard the rate of bone thinning in adult men and women. These drugs also reduce the likelihood of suffering from broken bones.

The FDA made this announcement after a study in the New England Journal of Medicine this spring revealed more cases of serious atrial fibrillation associated with older female patients treated with Fosamax or Reclast than those treated with a placebo.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Drugs, Medical Devices, and Implants.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Courtney Mills