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In my previous post on this subject, I wrote of how new products in prenatal testing have caused several false testing reports, causing many expectant couples to elect abortions, out of fear that the fetus would be born with severe birth defects.

The tests, which can be conducted as early as nine weeks of pregnancy, detect placental DNA in the mother’s blood and test it for chromosomal abnormalities, as well as gender. The tests were originally designed for older women and women at high risk of pregnancy difficulties, but many of these tests are now marketed to all pregnant women.  Industry analysts estimate that between 450,000 to 800,000 of these tests have been performed in the United States since 2011.  Several companies are racing to corner what some analysts predict could be a $3.6 billion global industry by the year 2019. Continue reading

When you’re out walking on the street as a pedestrian, or riding your bike – and it’s quiet on the road – that can be a sure sign of disaster.

Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. That’s because electric and hybrid cars, right now, do not make any noise when traveling at less than 18 miles per hour.

Hybrids and electric cars don’t depend on traditional gas or diesel-powered engines at low speeds, which makes them much quieter than traditional cars, and it also makes it hard to detect their approach. That means that pedestrians don’t hear the cars coming and going. And neither do bicyclists. If pedestrians and bicyclists don’t receive adequate warning that cars are approaching, this can put them in harm’s way. Despite all of their advantages – especially gas savings – hybrid and electric cars can pose special problems.

To help victims of car-truck accidents, we have prepared a FREE Injury and Accident Tip Sheet entitled “The Top 10 Tips If You Suffer A Personal Injury In Massachusetts.” It will outline the right steps you need to take if you have been injured in a car-truck accident in Massachusetts, and are unsure of what steps to take. We know most people will find this article extremely helpful. Click here to download this FREE document.

As with car accident cases or car-pedestrian accident cases, it is standard legal practice in truck-car accident cases that there are no legal fees paid upfront to the law firm that represents you. These types of cases are billed on a contingent-fee basis, which is standard in the legal industry. This means that the law firm representing you is not paid any professional legal fees unless the firm successfully recovers financial damages for you at the end of the case — through a jury verdict following a trial, or through a settlement instead of a trial.

In other words, you have nothing to lose in contacting a qualified law firm if you have been involved in a Massachusetts car-truck accident.

In a decision that has somewhat clarified the scope of social host liability, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) earlier this week issued a decision that absolved parents from liability where injuries result from a party their underage children hosted, but did not supply alcohol at. Social host liability is the body of tort law that determines if an owner of private property is liable for Massachusetts accidents and injuries that result from the conduct of a person who became intoxicated at the host’s premises.

I’ve previously blogged about on the subject of alcohol liability, in circumstances where a defendant is a business establishment such as a restaurant or bar. That area of law is known as Massachusetts Dram Shop liability or Massachusetts liquor liability. However, when the defendant is not a commercial business but is instead a homeowner who hosted a party or event at which alcohol was served and injuries were caused by a person who became intoxicated at the event, that form of liability is known as “Massachusetts social host liability.” This liability originates from certain laws which state that social hosts who provide alcohol to their guests can be held legally responsible for the injuries or harm that may result to another person if alcohol has been provided negligently to someone attending the function. Previously, it has been clear that if someone hosted a social gathering at their residence, where alcohol was excessively consumed by a person, and the intoxicated person later caused injury to an innocent party, liability attached to the event host.

This most recent decision has somewhat narrowed that doctrine. In a unanimous ruling, the court held that underage persons who host underage drinking parties, yet do not directly supply the alcohol, cannot be held liable if someone attending the party is later injured due to resulting intoxication. The court also relieved parents or owners of the property where the part took place of any liability, if they did not know that the party was being held, and did not play any role in providing the alcohol that was consumed.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve written previously about the problem of hospital alarm fatigue. It’s a new type of medical malpractice claim, and it’s not necessarily an easy problem to solve – at least not overnight.

Very recently, a case of this type that was previously filed against Massachusetts General Hospital, settled prior to trial, for $850,000. Actually, the hospital and the patient’s family had reached an agreement on settlement back in May, but the settlement was not filed in court and made public until very recently. The case was brought by the family of a man who died at MGH when nurses failed to respond to alarms on his cardiac monitor . The incident brought national media attention to the dangers of “hospital alarm fatigue” among nurses and other hospital staff – and raised the question of what, exactly, can be done to combat the problem. This case was noteworthy not only for the subject matter of hospital alarm fatigue, but for the way in which it was settled. Usually, the liability insurance companies that insure doctors and hospitals fight medical malpractice and medical negligence cases to the end. They do that in large measure because they know that their chances before a jury are very good: Statistically, juries are reluctant to find against doctors and hospitals.

As a Boston Massachusetts medical malpractice lawyer, I can assure you that this is due in large measure to the public brainwashing that has been accomplished on the subject of “tort reform” by the liability insurance industry. Anyone reading this post should, without delay, view the HBO award-winning documentary “Hot Coffee“. This stunning expose will show you exactly what “tort reform” means when it comes to medical malpractice and medical negligence cases – and of just how unjust it is.

As a Dedham and Boston, Massachusetts medical malpractice lawyer, I frequently see Massachusetts personal-injury cases that could have been possibly avoided. In the latest example of this, a 65-year-old man was belatedly diagnosed with cancer of the sigmoid colon, which proved fatal.

This case settled prior to trial for $1.5 million, for the delayed diagnosis of colon cancer resulting in death.

The plaintiff claimed that the defendant doctor was negligent in that he failed to offer or perform an annual colon cancer screening. The defendant physician, who acknowledged that the medical standard of care required a colon cancer screening, claimed that he would only have been required to conduct those tests if he had been the patient’s primary care doctor. But he claimed that the man was only a private-pay patient who was only seeing him for blood-pressure checks and he did not want the full services of a primary-care physician.

Much of life can be cruel, and even ironic. So it was that a 17 year-old boy, who was only weeks away from getting his much-awaited driver’s’ license, was killed last Thursday while skateboarding in Taunton, Massachusetts. Nicholas Silva-Thomas was killed by a car driven by a hit-and-run driver, as yet unidentified.

The youth was skateboarding on Bay Street in Taunton, after leaving Watson Park with other skateboarding friends to go to a pizza shop. At about 9:40 PM, as Silva-Thomas was skateboarding on a street he hoped to be driving on in the near future, he was struck by a driver who fled the scene and abandoned the youth, lying in the street with a fatal head injury. Witnesses said that not only did the driver leave the scene, he or she turned their lights off while doing so, to make the license plate on the car harder for any witnesses to see. No one was able to identify the license plate as the car sped away. Hopefully, there really is a thing called hell, and hopefully, there is a spot reserved for people like this driver.

This is a tragic story, but if it can do any good at all, let it illustrate the enormous and grave dangers connected with not only skateboarding as a sport, but skateboarding and Massachusetts motor vehicle accidents. I am fully aware that skateboarding has become very popular in recent years. When I was a kid, in the 1970’s and ’80’s, skateboarding was popular, then it fell out of vogue. In the past ten years or so, it’s come back with a rage. Michael J. Fox made it popular in 1986’s “Back To The Future” – though his skills were computer-animated. I understand the thrill of sports like this, and I understand kids (like many adults) want thrills. The problem is that seemingly all caution is thrown to the wind with so many of these activities: A reminder: No matter how adept at using a skateboard, no one can navigate, turn, or stop on these things with the same precision as even a bike. In an emergency, you cannot evade or escape a collision with anywhere near an “acceptable” margin of safety while on a skateboard.