Category Archives: Uncategorized

An unfortunate twentieth anniversary has just passed. A law that went into effect on January 1, 1989 greatly curtailed the rights of Massachusetts auto accident victims. This concerned uninsurance and underinsurance motorist coverage. The Legislature passed a bill, called the Massachusetts Auto Insurance Reform Act, signed by Governor Michael Dukakis, which eliminated stacking of policies […]

I am forever asking people in business how their work has changed since their career began. Let me offer my opinion on the sea change in personal injury law. The prevalence of alternative dispute resolution- arbitration and mediation has quickened the resolution of cases and has made their processing cheaper. Those are significant advantages. When […]

How many times have we heard that “you only get one chance in life” or “you only get one bite of the apple?” We have been told this countless times. In an on-the-job injury those adages may not be quite true. A worker cannot sue his/her employer. Our workman’s compensation statute provides the employer with […]

If a child wanders onto a construction site and falls injuring himself/herself, how do we assess the child’s conduct? We do not have “attractive nuisance” in Massachusetts, unlike many other jurisdictions. We do have a statute, MGLc 231 § 85Q governing trespassing children which sets out five criteria for negligence not unlike attractive nuisance. As […]

In follow up to my last blog post about words of legal significance, I am reminded of the following word: disinterested. Often that word is confused with uninterested. To not care is to be uninterested. To be impartial is to be disinterested, not favoring either side. Obviously we want our judges and juries to be […]

When a person opens an umbrella what does that tell us about the weather? When a ship’s captain brings aboard his wife and children what does that say about what he thinks of the seaworthiness of the vessel? These are classic examples of conduct from which we make inferences. Indeed, Judges instruct jurors that inference […]

When I started practicing personal injury law, I was always told that there is a prejudice against motorcycle operators and that this will hurt in the representation of motorcycle victims. First, let’s turn that on its head: motorcycle operators, to the extent that one should and can generalize, are pretty meticulous people. Yes, they are […]

Massachusetts auto insurance law is at least as difficult as “the uninitiated driver’s first foray into the city of Boston.”  These are the words of the Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in Massachusetts and were written nearly twenty-five years ago.  Any plaintiff/victim should make sure that his/her attorney is familiar with those laws. Less […]

Attorneys representing injured victims – be it for accidents on premises, auto, products liability, medical malpractice and nursing home malpractice – must be willing to incur expenses to present the case thoroughly and imaginatively. However, there is one expense that costs thousands of dollars that I do not feel is a necessity: the much revered […]

Proving responsibility in personal injury cases can be reduced to the following: a brick by itself is a brick but together bricks make a wall. Essentially that is the definition of relevant evidence. Relevant evidence, according to the Federal Rules of Evidence, means that it has a tendency to make any fact more or less […]