William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
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As a Massachusetts catastrophic injury attorney, I see the real-life consequences of a lot of terrible accidents that were caused by someone else’s negligence.  I see these consequences in the eyes and the lives of my clients, who have to bear these consequences, sometimes for the rest of their lives.  Often these catastrophic accidents involve the death of the victim, and that is always a tragedy.

But each case is unique, and sometimes the tragedy is even more pronounced.  That appears to be the case in the death of Robinson Lalin, a 39 year-old father of five children.  Mr. Lalin was killed this past Sunday early morning when, according to all reports as of today, his arm became trapped in a Red Line subway car as it exited the Broadway T Station.  According to reports, Mr. Lalin was dragged to the end of the platform to his death, his arm being severed before his torso was crushed by the train’s exterior walls.  The damage to his body was so severe that his funeral services will reportedly not allow for an open casket.

Mr. Lain’s family is demanding answers from the T as to how this horrific event could have happened.  And so far, they aren’t getting much.  The T has reportedly only issued comments that both the operator of the train involved, and the train car itself, have been “removed from service.”  Other than that, the T has been tight-lipped.  The federal National Transportation Safety Board has now become involved.

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Reports tonight of a construction worker death in partial collapse of a Boston Government Center garage.  Yet one more awful example of just how dangerous construction site jobs are.  Prayers to the family of the victim.  A lawsuit will certainly follow here, and I hope the family is guided by the best legal talent that they can find.  As  a Boston construction site fatality attorney, I know how these cases “go”, and they demand the best legal talent available, or the victims’ families suffer even more.

Update:  Just learned that the name of the victim is Peter Monsini,  He had apparently been a construction worker for more than 20 years, and was the father to a teenage son.  https://bit.ly/3JPd5qO

This is a typically awful story – construction site fatalities always are.  This may sound insensitive, but in fact it’s the very opposite:  As soon as Mr. Monsini’s family can possibly can muster their strength, they must recover their clear-thinking, and take the critical steps needed to hire the “right” law firm for the wrongful death lawsuit that will follow here.   The “right” Boston construction accident law firm for a case like this, is not one that has handled just “a few” of these cases.  They will need to speak with a construction site death law firm that can prove that they have handled many of these death cases – and , most importantly, that they can prove that they won those cases, securing the highest financial damages possible for the victim’s family. 

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Breaking news reports tonight of a construction worker killed in the collapse of a Government Center garage that was being worked on.  https://boston.cbslocal.com/2022/03/26/government-center-garage-collapse-haymarket-construction-worker-dead-crane/.

Prayers to the family.  This is just one more awful example of just how dangerous construction site jobs are.  Almost certainly, a lawsuit will follow here for damages in this person’s death.   I hope the family finds the best legal talent out there:  As a Boston construction site fatality attorney, I know from experience how these cases “go” – and the defendants fight these cases, tooth and nail.

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An awful tragedy struck two families today at a pond in Worcester.

Worcester Police received multiple calls reporting that someone was possibly drowning Green Hill Pond at around 1:35 p.m.  Several officers responded and immediately went into the pond to rescue the struggling swimmer, reportedly a 14-year-old boy.  Officers brought two people out of the water, but then discovered an officer was missing.  Following a search, officer

Enmanuel “Manny” Familia was found about an hour later and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Familia was with the Worcester Police Department for five years.  He leaves his wife, Jennifer, and two young children, Jayla and Jovan.  The teenager, whose name has not been released, was located shortly afterward and taken to a local hospital, where he too was pronounced dead. Surprisingly, a diver was also taken to a hospital for minor injuries.

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Two Boston construction site workers were tragically killed earlier today in downtown Boston.  While all such catastrophic events and the resulting tragedies are difficult to describe, this one was especially awful.

According to multiple news media reports, including Boston25 News, the two construction workers – Jordan Romero from Lynn and his co-worker Carlos Gutierrez of Chelsea, were killed in a trench accident apparently caused by a dump truck.  The 20-foot deep trench at the site collapsed into itself after the dump truck apparently came too close to it, and caused the trench to collapse.  When the trench collapsed, the truck then fell into it.  From information available as of this evening, it is not exactly clear at this point whether the two construction site workers were already in the trench when it collapsed, or were possibly thrown into the trench first after the truck hit them.  In either event, reports are that the event was horrific.  It may be that the men died of suffocation, possibly buried alive.  It is too soon to say at this point.

As a Boston construction site accident lawyer, I’ve seen too many of these awful incidents – involving catastrophic, life-long injuries and disabilities, and death.  And they shouldn’t happen.  While some might say, “Accidents happen.  What are you going to do?  They can’t be prevented”, that is not true.  They can be prevented, and they should be prevented.  Multiple levels of government – the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the state of Massachusetts and in this case, the City of Boston as well – provide regulations, minimum safety standards and safety protocols for construction sites – and they are designed to prevent tragedies like this.  When those safety procedures and protocols are not followed to the letter, incidents like this awful tragedy today are what can, and do, result.  So no, these events are almost never the kind that “couldn’t be prevented” – in the many cases I’ve successfully represented as a Massachusetts construction site fatality attorney, they almost always could have been prevented.

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It has now been been almost one year since Massachusetts nursing homes locked their doors to the families of their residents. This action, while initially taken on March 13 2020 to prevent transmission of the Covid-19 virus, has turned into an obscene excuse for drawing down an Iron Curtain between residents and their families, who are desperate to know that their loved ones are not being neglected.  There was some relaxation of this visitation ban in late 2020, but the conditions that a family member must meet in order to visit a loved one, remain largely very difficult.  After tolerating more than one year of this pain and with vaccine rollouts now a reality left & right, this “lockout” is now no more than an excuse to, essentially, operate their businesses in secret, far from the ‘prying eyes’ of visiting family members.

Stop for a moment and try to imagine what it would be like for you as a family member forbidden from seeing your loved one who is in a nursing home or a Massachusetts “skilled nursing facility” (almost an oxymoron).  How would you know he or she was being properly cared for?  Answer:  You wouldn’t.  As a Massachusetts nursing home neglect & abuse attorney, I can assure you:  Under the best of circumstances, nursing home residents, as well as some Massachusetts rehabilitation hospital patients, are often neglected and abused.  The cases I’ve come to know as an attorney are horrific.  And secondary to family members, is the primary effect this lockout has on residents themselves:  They are lonely, frightened, often neglected, and often without anyone to advocate for them.  While the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) previously allowed for some minor relaxation of these “lockout orders” in September 2020, family members as a whole still cannot easily, readily visit Massachusetts nursing home residents.

As a legal expert in this field, I have been interviewed by the media about this issue and nursing home neglect in general, and I have blogged about it previously as well.  More people need to know about this cruelty and neglect that is an everyday reality for tens of thousands of Massachusetts nursing home residents, and I encourage readers of my blog to share this post with others – just click on any of the social media icons just below the title to this post at top left, above.  Viral messaging like this can spread in a positive way, very quickly.

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While the 1990’s saw a string of very large settlements from class actions against various individual tobacco companies and the tobacco industry in general.  One class action settlement in particular involved hundreds of millions of dollars paid to state governments that sued the tobacco industry for the hundreds of millions in Medicaid funds that the states paid to provide medical care for victims of lung cancer and others illnesses caused by smoking.

But what about individual plaintiffs?  Can they still sue a tobacco company if they feel that their lung cancer or other types of cancer was caused by smoking?

The technical answer is that anyone can file a lawsuit against anyone else, at almost anytime, for anything.  The civil justice system provides that wide access for good reason – -so that no one can be ‘shut out of court’; and so that the average person can take on huge, deep-pocketed defendants.  So that injured victims can take on automakers, dangerous product manufacturers, chemical companies, etc.  Our constitution and system of justice guarantees us all that right.  But the right to file a suit agai9nst someone – and the likelihood of winning that suit – are anything but the same thing.  In fact, they’re world apart.

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With the actual arrival of a coronavirus vaccine now just days away, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar stated on CBS’ Face The Nation today that “all” nursing home residents could receive vaccinations by Christmas.

Because I’ve received so many requests for help and legal representation by the families of Covid-infected Massachusetts nursing home residents, I’m heartened to hear this – but skeptical of the timeframe offered.  As almost any knows after ten months of this pandemic infecting every aspect of life in this country, this virus affects primarily the elderly (i.e., over 72 years old) and the those that are immunocompromised.  People who are residents of nursing homes and rehabilitation centers are acutely vulnerable, because they are old, weak, and because viruses and bacteria are rampant in these environments.

The fact that Governor Baker decided to provide legal immunities to Massachusetts nursing homes and Massachusetts rehabilitation facilities was, in my opinion as a Massachusetts nursing home neglect attorney, ill-advised and counter-productive.  While hospitals and the nursing home industry prevailed in that fight, it was, both legally and socially, an awful decision.  One needn’t be an attorney to realize why:  Think about it:  Health care facilities such nursing homes and assisted living facilities have always been, even under “normal” circumstances when they can be sued for negligence, known as places where patient neglect and abuse can be commonplace.  Shielding them from most negligence suits during a pandemic – a time when they should be at the height of vigilance about patient care in those facilities – is the height of folly. This legal immunity was provided on top of all visitors to Massachusetts nursing homes and assisted living facilities being banned from entering these facilities since last March – including family members.  The result? Families of nursing homes have been blind about how their loved ones are being treated.

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In Part One of my post on this subject, we discussed how dangerous and severe Massachusetts Construction Site Accidents can be.

Due to these realities, workers compensation payments alone for such catastrophic construction site accidents -which consist mostly of reimbursement for medical bills and lost wages – will often be inadequate to pay for such severe damages.  The “silver lining” here is that with construction site accidents, more potentially liable parties than just the worker’s employer are involved: Just take a look at the next construction site you might walk by:    There are multiple parties on a typical construction site – contractors and subcontractors – who could be potentially liable for a worker’s injuries or death:   Heavy equipment providers like backhoes and bulldozers; crane manufacturers, electrical equipment manufacturers; explosive equipment manufacturers; girders, metal and pipe suppliers; protective equipment providers; the list goes on and on.  Each of these entities have their own equipment, personnel and responsibilities at the site.

Who’s At Fault?

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The title to the above post is a good one, because when construction site workers suffer on-the-job injuries, who pays for those injuries can often be confusing, due to Massachusetts Workers Compensation laws, governed by M.G.L. Ch. 152. That’s because employees who are injured (or killed) while on the job in Massachusetts are treated differently than people who suffer bodily injuries that are not work-related.  Under Massachusetts law, employees cannot sue their direct employer for negligently causing their injuries. If an employee is injured on the job, the injured worker typically files a workers compensation claim with the employer, which allows for speedier compensation payments to be made to the injured employee, but does not allow the injured employee to directly sue his employer for any injuries.

The money to pay injured workers come from workers compensation insurance policies, and the premiums for this type of insurance are paid for, under law, by the employer. Most employers in Massachusetts are required to carry “workers comp” insurance. The premiums for this type of insurance are paid for, under law, by the employer. The whole point is to provide a regulated system that efficiently compensates injured workers, while protecting employers from being sued in the courts. It’s been that way for a long time not only in Massachusetts, but in most other states, as well.

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