William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
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File this under “You Should Always Get A Second Medical Opinion.” Because you never know when a medical doctor is going to give you the wrong information, and the next thing you know, you suffer serious injuries as a result. Sometimes, that “bad medical advice” can lead to death.

Such was the case in 2006, when Eric Dupre, 33 years old, of Fall River experienced chest pains, prompting him to visit a walk-in medical clinic in Somerset. The clinic’s doctor performed an EKG on him, which showed nothing abnormal. He was told to go home and rest. And he died 12 hours later.

His widow Michelle, and their two children, Riley and Zachary, filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr. Dupre’s death was the result of medical negligence by Prima Care, as well as that of the doctor, Dr. James Stubbert, and his physician’s assistant, Amber Mello. Just this week the case settled for $2.5 Million. As part of the settlement, all parties involved promised to not comment on the incident.

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As a Boston-Dedham personal injury attorney, I’ve handled a great deal of personal injuries due to many forces, including cases of food poisoning. In fact, most people would be surprised to learn of the number of injuries that can result from improperly or negligently prepared food. In this case, the alleged culprit was somethign we all love: A chocolate chip cookie.

The plaintiff in this case alleged that she sustained injuries to her mouth and teeth from a hard object when she bit into a chocolate chip cookie while visiting her mother at an assisted living facility, called Sunrise. Importantly in this case, the cookie had been given free to the plaintiff by the facility. She did not purchase it. Not a big deal, you say? It is a big deal in the eyes of the law, especially when dealing with Massachusetts negligence claims.

That’s because whehter or not the defendant facility (Sunrise) could have been found liable for the plaintiff’s injuries here, would depend upon whether or not the facility could be shown to have breached something in Massachusetts law called the “Warranty of Merchantability.” This is an implied warranty (which means it doesn’t need to be stated in writing,) dealing with Massachusetts consumer law. Boiling it down to a brief explanation, it states that a particular product that a merchant sells, must be suitable and safe for the purpose it was produced. The legal question in this case? Did the assisted living facility, in providing this free food item to the plaintiff, qualify legally as a “merchant”?

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Maybe it was the “curiosity factor,” but people still aren’t sure what happened in the string of car crashes that occurred on Sunday in Attleboro. Massachusetts State Police are investigating the incidents.

The first Attleboro car crash occurred around 9AM on Sunday near Route One, and involved two cars. They wound up in the woods along the highway, and one even caught on fire. Right afterward, another two-car accident in Attleboro happened in the same spot. Then, less than an hour later, another serious Attleboro car accident took place there, in which three people were taken to the hospital.

At this moment, no one knows what caused all of these Massachusetts automobile accident injuries. However, as a Boston-Dedham personal injury attorney, I know that when Massachusetts car crash injuries are caused by a motor vehicle operator’s negligence, you deserve to be compensated for the physical pain and suffering, emotional trauma, and economic harm they inflict on you. Even in moderate motor vehicle accident cases, I have represented Boston motor vehicle accident victims whose lives will never be the same.

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Given the fact that many people belong to health clubs these days, I’m often approached by people about their Massachusetts health club contracts. You see, (if you belong to a gym or health club,) you’ll learn that the standard contract terms that are used for these types of agreements by almost all Massachusetts gyms and health clubs, prevent you as the customer from suing the health club for any injuries suffered on the premises.

These health club injuries can arise from any number of circumstances: A weight dropped on someone, a cable or pulley on a machine that lets go, a slip and fall on a floor or pool area, even swimming pool injuries. You signed the agreement, and now you find that you’ve been injured in some way that you feel is attributable to negligence of the part of the health club. So you’re out of luck, right?

No, you’re not. While 99.9% of businesses try to escape liability by incorporating liability disclaimers like this, not all of them are effective or valid. When it comes to health club memberships in Massachusetts, attempted “Releases of Liability” like these are barred by state statute. Specifically, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 93, Section 80, which states in relevant part: “No contract for health club services may contain any provisions whereby the buyer agrees not to assert against the seller or any assignee or transferee of the health club services contract any claim or defense arising out of the health club services contract or the buyer’s activities at the health club.”

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It’s the word we all never want to hear: cancer.

That was the very word that Mary White heard on Friday afternoon in May 2007. Her gynecologist called her to say that the polyp that she had had removed a week prior was actually “an aggressive uterine cancer.” The gynecologist told her she needed additional surgery urgently. to remove the cancer. Not surprisingly, she panicked at this information and had her uterus removed. Not too long after the surgery, however, she received another unexpected phone call. This time, her gynecologist informer her that in fact, she did not have cancer at all, and never did have cancer. The surgery removing her uterus, and rendering her sterile for life, was needless.

You don’t have to be a Boston medical malpractice attorney, as I am, to understand the tumultuous and devastating emotions that Ms. White suffered due to those two phone calls. Anyone would sympathize and empathize with her circumstances.

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As a Dedham-Boston car accident attorney, I’ve heard more than one story about a Massachusetts car accident that caused a fatality. And now, there’s yet another Massachusetts car crash that took the life of a young student who had just graduated from Yale University, in the class of 2012.

Marina Keegan was killed last week in a Cape Cod car accident that occurred on Route 6 in Dennis. She and her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, also a member of the Yale class of 2012, were headed to Wellfleet, to the Keegans’ summer home, for a birthday party for her father. Apparently, Mr. Gocksch fell asleep at the wheel, and the car veered off the road, into guardrails on both sides of Route 6, and then flipped over. Mr. Gocksch was hospitalized, in stable condition, and was later discharged. State Police said that speed wasn’t a factor.

Apparently, the news of Ms. Keegan’s death went viral, as she wrote a newspaper column for the Yale Daily News. In her last column, she wrote, “What we have to remember is that we can still do anything.” The column drew a huge outpouring of grief and sympathy for the young graduate. Her ashes were to be strewn in Cape Cod Bay.

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Unfortunately, tragedies don’t take a holiday, and it’s unfortunate on this Memorial Day holiday weekend that two people have been killed in separate Massachusetts motor vehicle accidents.

A truck-pedestrian accident occurred in Newton today that resulted in a man being killed in that accident. Newton police are currently investigating the May 27 truck-pedestrian accident that killed 22-year-old Dennis Cassagrande of Rochester, New Hampshire. Mr. Cassagrande was reportedly hit by a pickup truck just after 3AM on Newton’s Nonantum Road. The truck was driven by 21-year-old Beau Dellicker from Mendon. At this point in time, no charges have been filed against Mr. Dellicker.

On the Cape yesterday in Dennis, Massachusetts, a 22 year-old woman was killed and a second person was seriously injured in a single-vehicle car accident on Route 6 East on Cape Cod. Massachusetts State Police reported that the car crash involved a Lexus sedan driven by a 22-year-old man from New York, who was transported to Cape Cod Hospital with serious injuries. The passenger in the vehicle, a 22-year-old woman, died at the scene. As of publishing this post, the victim has not yet been identified. According to preliminary police reports, speed does not appear to have been a factor in the crash.

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Harvard University is the crème de la crème of Ivy League schools; an institution that has fostered the best and the brightest.

And now it finds itself caught up in a storm that has to do with a murder in one of its residence halls. And interestingly enough, none of the three men allegedly involved in the Cambridge Massachusetts murder were Harvard students, which has brought about a case of college dormitory negligent security.

Here’s the story. A 21-year-old man named Justin Cosby allegedly entered Kirkland Hall at Harvard University on May 18, 2009. Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Cosby entered the property for the sole purpose of selling a large quantity of marijuana to some people there in the residence hall. A man named Jabrai Copney was convicted in Middlesex Superior Court of the alleged first-degree murder of Mr. Cosby. Mr. Copney was not a Harvard student either, but he had access to Harvard University buildings because he was romantically involved with Harvard Student Brittany Smith, who lived in Lowell House. He apparently lived in Lowell House with Ms. Smith.

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Let’s say you’ve been injured in a Boston car accident, a Dedham slip and fall accident, or a Braintree construction-site accident. You are suffering and you need a lawyer to seek damages for what you believe is negligence on the part of someone who caused you serious injuries. Here’s a little secret that the average person who has never been in this situation doesn’t know:

You can hire a Massachusetts accident lawyer to represent you and pay no upfront fees to that law firm. It will cost you nothing, up front. In fact, you won’t pay ANY legal fees to the Massachusetts personal injury law firm that you hire unless that firm or lawyer wins your case or obtains money for you, to compensate you for your damages. That’s because almost every Massachusetts personal injury attorney is paid on a contingent-fee basis. What this type of fee means, is that if your injury lawyer does not produce a successful outcome for your case by making sure that you are awarded financial damages for your injury, you will not owe him or her any money in professional legal fees. But if the Massachusetts injury lawyer that represents you does achieve a successful outcome, and you are awarded financial damages for your Massachusetts injury, then at the conclusion of the case, the attorney’s firm will be paid a percentage of the gross amount of the award or settlement paid to you.

The standard legal fee that a Massachusetts personal injury lawyer earns in a contingent fee case is one-third (33.3%) of the total settlement or verdict on your behalf. In some categories of high-risk cases, such as products liability or medical negligence/medical malpractice,) the contingent fee can be as much as forty percent (40%,) but that is due to the very expensive nature of these cases, the typically long time it akes to litigate them, and the high risk involved. (For example, medical malpractice cases can be extremely difficult to win, and the attorney representing the plaintiff in such a case bears the risk that he or she will spend an enormous amount of time and money on such a case, and have a jury find against the plaintiff.) In a contingent fee agreement, the attorney will very frequently also agree to advance the costs and expenses of the litigation, which can be considerable. When the case is over, the costs and expenses that have been advanced by the attorney are also dedcuted out of the final award or settlement paid on your behalf.

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As a Westwood, Massachusetts car accident attorney, I’ll restate something I’ve emphasized previously: In Massachusetts (as in almost every other state) the highest statistical odds of a person being injured, involve a motor vehicle accident of some kind, whether it involves a two-car accident in Dedham, or a pedestrian-car accident in Westwood, a car-truck accident, or a car-bike accident, or a Route 128 motorcycle-car accident. Even if you don’t drive a car, your risk of being injured as a pedestrian is relatively high. It’s a fact of modern life.

Aside from just “car accidents,” there is another type of motor vehicle accident that people can be injured in: A bus accident, or MBTA accident. There was just such an accident yesterday in the town where live and practice law, in Westwood, Massachusetts.

There was an MBTA bus crash on East Street in Westwood, but thankfully no one was injured. The Westwood bus accident occurred underneath a commuter rail bridge on East Street in Islington, a section of Westwood. According to local residents, the East Street bridge is the site of accidents on almost a weekly basis. The bridge has a big sign on it warning of low clearance, but apparently that does not deter commercial buses and trucks from driving under it, even if they’re not sure they can make the clearance.

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