William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
Construction Accident
Car Accident
Nursing Home

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How many times has the following happened to you? You’re driving, and talking on your cell phone, (which you shouldn’t be, in the first place.) You drive over a bump and the phone slips out of your hand, into the Netherworld – the black space between the middle console and your driver’s seat. Most people, at this point, take their eyes off the road, and start fishing in the black hole below. In probably 60% of these instances, they cause a car accident because they’re not paying attention and their eyes are off the road.

The same thing could happen to your coins, pens, paper, keys and God know’s what else you might be holding in your hand when you drive. This kind of distracted driving of course, doesn’t even begin to take into account the numerous people who text-message while they are driving. It bewilders me – and should frighten everyone – at the number of people who take their eyes off the roadway, thinking that sending a message is more important than driving safely.

People had better start to think twice about this foolish practice. Because It just might be the very last message you ever send.

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Most burn injury victims suffer these injuries due to a fire of some kind. However, as our burn injuries page makes clear, many times burn injuries occur due to scalding, and these types of burns are usually severe.

This was the case yesterday (April 6 2013,) when three students at the University of New Hampshire were badly burned Saturday afternoon due to a hot water pipe that burst in a dormitory, according to a university spokeswoman. Injuries from pipes that burst coming from a hot water heater, can be especially devastating: The normal water temperature inside a water heater is commonly set at around 160 degrees, and when water this hot hits the skin, it will without doubt cause third-degree burns. According to news reports, that’s exactly what these three female students suffered, as they were in or leaving Hunter Hall, a three-story dorm that houses nearly 115 students. Their burn injuries were so bad that while the burn victims were first taken to local hospitals, they were later transferred to Boston hospitals, due to the severity of their burn injuries.

Following such an accident, most families ask: Is anyone liable for the injuries that the burn injury victim suffered? If so, why, and what type of compensation is possible? As a Boston, Massachusetts burn injury lawyer, I can tell you that the answers to those questions depend on the facts and the circumstances surrounding the event, centrally whether and how much evidence of negligence is present. In this case, possible defendants could include:

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Today’s school lesson is: When in doubt, sit it out.

This is exactly what the American Academy of Neurology would like to see happen, if and when high school athletes receive a head injury while playing sports for their school teams. Head injuries happen to athletes in high school and college all the time, and, with that motto, the American Academy of Neurology has concurred and offered guidelines to improve safety in school sports.

If players who are displaying head injury symptoms such as dizziness and headaches are allowed back in a game after a suffering head injury, it could lead to serious, possibly irreparable neurological damage. In that event, injured athletes would be wise to consult with a Boston head injury lawyer, to ascertain any negligence on the part of the schools, game officials or other parties involved in the incident. And in case you might be asking yourself whether players in a sports game relinquish all legal rights once they agree to play in the game, the answer is “No, they don’t.” If a player suffers preventable injuries due to someone else’s negligence, that party may be held legally responsible.

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Injuries and accidents occur every day, everywhere, and usually when and where you least expect them.

And now, there’s reason to be concerned about eating lunch – specifically if it’s a tuna fish sandwich. If you live in or near Boston, consuming tuna fish that is contaminated can lead to a Boston food poisoning injury, and that can lead to all kinds of terrible complications. If you’ve ever contracted food poisoning previously, you know that it is a horrible sickness. If that happens to you in the future, you should consult with a Boston food poisoning lawyer. Symptoms of food poisoning can range from vomiting, to fever and dizziness. The most common food poisoning in the USA results from botulism, campylobacter, E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, shigella, and listeria. And if you’ve ever taken a cruise, you know all too well that you have to be on the lookout for other causes of food poisoning such as Norwalk virus. In extreme cases of food poisoning – such as if you contact botulism or E. coli — food poisoning can be fatal.

Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that annually, about 1 in 6 Americans (roughly 48 million people) get sick from foodborne diseases, 128,000 become sick enough to need hospitalization, and 3,000 die.

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Sometimes the worst things happen, when you least expect it. Imagine that you’re out driving safely, minding all the road signs and traffic lights. You’re behind the wheel, observing all safety regulations, your seat belt is on, and you are neither texting while in the driver’s seat nor are you drunk. Everything seems just fine.

Suddenly, without any warning, your car’s sunroof shatters, raining glass onto you and your passengers, in the middle of a busy intersection. What happens next? As a Boston car accident lawyer, I have a good idea — and it does not have a happy ending. Chances are, you will lose control of the vehicle and become involved in a car crash. That means that you could possibly wind up with catastrophic personal injuries, a stay in the hospital, endless doctor appointments, and months and months of physical therapy – if you are lucky enough to live. You may well need the services of a Boston car crash attorney in the process.

Think it couldn’t happen? That this kind of accident is just too strange – too “Twilight Zone?” Think again.

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I have published posts previously on the subject of Massachusetts nursing homes prescribing anti-psychotic drugs to patients who are not psychotic, but rather suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia-related medical conditions. In Massachusetts in recent years, this practice was exposed in federal court for what it really was: A kickback scheme between anti-psychotic drug manufacturers (notably Johnson & Johnson,) and nursing home operators, who received increased financial payments if they “pushed” these drugs onto patients, many times in the absence of medical need.

Thankfully, public awareness of this problem is growing. Care One and HealthBridge Management corporations, which own nursing homes in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, have become the focus of a newspaper and internet advertising campaign by a nursing home patient advocacy organization called HealthbridgeWatch.org, and careonewatch.org. The nursing home patient advocacy campaigns are warning people that nursing homes run by these companies have been reported by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS,) as prescribing anti-psychotic medications to patients and residents “At rates that are higher than Massachusetts and National averages”; sometimes “Over triple the national average.” The twin advocacy organizations have reported that as many as 76% of long-term residents of these facilities, who are not psychotic, are administered these powerful and dangerous drugs, despite the FDA’s warning against this practice. HealthBridge Management owns or operates several nursing homes here in Massachusetts, but at least three that HealthBridgeWatch.org has reported as prescribing these drugs to a high degree include the Newton Health Care Center, the Lowell Health Care Center, and the Holyoke Rehabilitation Center.

In my experience as a Boston, Massachusetts nursing home neglect and abuse lawyer, anyone who either has a loved one in a nursing home owned or operated by these corporations, or by other owners, would be wise to seek immediate clarification of whether their family member or loved one has ever been given anti-psychotic drugs, or any similar drugs belonging to the class of anti-psychotic drugs.

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File this under “Your Taxpayer Dollars At Work.” … Or, as I’ve been thinking recently about doing with this blog, creating a new category of post called “Outrage Of The Day.”

According to a recent article in The Boston Globe, in 2009 Medicare paid approximately $5.1 Billion in taxpayer dollars to nursing homes across the United States — including Massachuetts. That’s a staggering number. If it went to truly help the elderly and infirmed patients at these nursing homes, that would be money well spent. But there’s more to this story, and it isn’t good.

Those taxpayer dollars apparently went to sub-par nursing homes that reportedly were not meeting the most basic requirements necessary to look after their residents, according to government investigators. As a Boston nursing home neglect and abuse lawyer, I believe that these nursing homes could very well be perpetrators of the nursing home neglect, negligence and abuse that we as a Boston, Massachusetts nursing home neglect law firm see all too frequently.

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Want to travel from Boston to New York? Well, you could easily take the train, and ride in comfort on AmTrak. But that would set you back a few hundred dollars.

Or, instead, you could take the $15 Fung Wah bus line, as scores of people have done. A mere $15 from Boston’s Chinatown to New York’s Chinatown? That’s an incredibly low price.

But many people are beginning to learn why that price might be so low. And why, if you did actually take the Fung Wah, you might pay another kind of price, possibly a very serious one. That’s because the Fung Wah bus line has been cited with an inordinately high number of safety violations – so many, that as of today, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) has ordered the Fung Wah, stunningly, to remove 21 buses from its fleet of 28. As reported in The Boston Globe today, the Massachusetts DPU actually found cracks in the frames of 21 aging buses operated by Fung Wah. As a result, the DPU has asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to shut down the Fung Wah until it fixes and addresses its problems, which were found in state inspections that were held in early February. Inspectors discovered cracks in steering axles, engine cradles and also in motor mounts. Inspection officials have commented that the low-cost bus carrier does not understand basic safety requirements. Officials have also indicated that Fung Wah seems to be unable to maintain its bus fleet properly.

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For all of my readers out there, here’s a quick question: Can a city or town police department be civilly sued because of the negligence of their police officers?

The answer is yes, although many people might not have thought so.

There is a story out of the city of Frederick, Maryland that is making national headlines right now, and as a Boston injury lawyer, I hope that the right attorney in Maryland is consulted in this matter. Why? To hopefully file a lawsuit for negligence and wrongful death in this apparently horrific case involving the death of an innocent person at the hands of what at this time appears to be a case of police brutality and police misconduct. The story concerns an unfortunate man with Down syndrome, who simply wished to sit through a second showing of the film Zero Dark Thirty in his neighborhood movie theater. And the desire to do that has left him dead.

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Here’s even more evidence that justice can still be achieved in this day and age, when one small family takes on a huge corporation, whose negligence caused them devastating harm.

This week, the family of a little girl in Plymouth, Massachusetts who was devastatingly injured in 2003 due to taking Children’s Motrin, was awarded $63 Million by a Massachusetts jury. The jury found that Johnson & Johnson – a giant in the healthcare industry – was liable, because it had failed to warn the public adequately about the potential side effects of Children’s Motrin – of the USA’s most common household medications. The girl’s family commented that the verdict, given by a jury in Plymouth, was “a historic day for consumer safety.” As a Boston, Massachusetts injury attorney, to say that I could not agree more, is an understatement.

The plaintiff here is Samantha Reckis, who was just seven years old in 2003 when she was given Children’s Motrin after she showed signs of having a fever. Unfortunately, as she continued to take the drug, she developed far worse symptoms. Her family actually didn’t think that she would survive. The young child was suffering from a condition known as Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis. This is an extremely painful – and rare – skin condition that is caused by an adverse reaction to medication, notably Ibuprofen. Ibuprofen, of course, is the popular painkiller that is sold under the mass-market brand “Motrin.” Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (also called “TEN”) is the most severe form of a skin disorder called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. To understand how devastating the skin injuries that this child suffered were, is challenging. The most accurate way to think of it is to imagine having worst form of sunburn –magnified hundreds of times in severity. Not only did she require months of hospitalization and multiple surgeries, but incredibly and tragically, she lost most of her skin. She also suffered permanent liver and lung damage. Today, she is 16 years old and legally blind. Her life will never be the same.

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