Boston Personal Injury Lawyer articles in category: Miscellaneous

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

China's much-reported industrial rise will have many impacts in this country, many positive, but some troublesome. By now, most of us are aware of the tainted pet food ingredients, originating in China, and responsible for the deaths of a number of pets in this country. Recently, a warning was given to avoid toothpastes made in China. Now, toys made in China are under the gun. The New York Times...

A great front page article in today's Boston Globe, told of a doctor on trial for medical malpractice, who used his blog site to comment on the ongoing trial. The doctor's blog name was "flea." The case against him was serious, alleging that his negligent failure to diagnose diabetes, resulted in the death of a 12 year old girl, from diabetic shock. The free-blogging doctor had been commenting...

Most every serious personal injury case, will have at least one expert witness testifying for the plaintiff - if only a physician, explaining the extent of the plaintiff's injuries. Medical malpractice plaintiffs must have an expert to testify to the defendant's deviation from acceptable standards of medical care. Expert testimony gets really interesting, when the cause of an event is in...

The much publicized lawsuit by a sitting D.C. administrative judge, seeking $67 million for a lost pair of pants, is a cruel perversion of the justice system. The plaintiff has done immeasurable damage to the hard-working defendants, immigrants from South Korea, to legitimate plaintiffs, the justice system, and, one would think, to his self-respect. The anti-justice forces, aka "tort reformers,"...

As I wrote in a recent blog, lawsuits arising from slipping on a foreign substance in a Massachusetts premises were made difficult by the rule that the plaintiff had to show the substance was on the ground long enough for the proprietor to become aware of, and remove it. Many a significant slip and fall case never made it past summary judgment, because of the rule, which the courts considered a...

Trials are interesting events. Plaintiffs' lawyers must recreate events that took place a few years ago. The key to engaging a jury is to make them forget that the events were in the past, and make them come alive for the jury. If the jury experiences the events that injured the plaintiff as if it were happening in the present, the likelihood of a successful result is greatly improved. In a...

Reports on dangerous toys will be a recurring topic on this blog. Intended for harmless fun, recklessly manufactured toys continue to maim and kill children. U.S. PIRG reports that 292 children have died in the US between 1990 and 2005: a rate of between 11 and 25 per year. The majority of these deaths (57%) are due to choking or asphyxia. In late 2006 the CPSC ordered a recall of a Mattel...