Boston Personal Injury Attorney Blog

March 6, 2015

Madonna Suffers Whiplash from Stage Fall

As most of us have heard by now, Madonna fell off a stage during a performance at the Brit Awards. Madonna was performing during the awards ceremony and blames her fall on a wardrobe malfunction.

During her performance, she was wearing a cape that was supposed to fall off her shoulders. The cape failed to fall and caused her to be pulled backwards off the stage. According to a recent news article from BBC News, Madonna says wardrobe personnel were worried her cape would fall off early and tied it extra tight to make sure that didn’t happen. When it was time for the cape to fall, Madonna was at the top of a flight of stairs designed for the set, and she pulled the string as she was instructed to do in an attempt to release the cape.

At this point the cape did not release and it started to strangle her. She realized she could either intentionally fall off the stage or be strangled by the cape. She chose to fall, saying that she had fallen off her horse many times and knew the proper way to take a fall. When she landed on the ground, Madonna says she hit the back of her head and suffered whiplash. Medical personal preformed an initial test to determine if she suffered a concussion, and also someone was posted to watch over her with a flashlight until early the next morning to make sure did not present any new signs of head injury.
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March 2, 2015

Canton, Massachusetts Ice Hockey Rink Roof Collapses on Youth Team

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

With an end to this harsh Massachusetts winter almost in sight, we hope to get through the next month or so without more serious accidents due to icy and snowy conditions.

Recently, a group of two dozen youth hockey players, coaches, and parents narrowly escaped a potentially fatal roof collapse at the local ice rink in Canton, Massachusetts, according to a recent news article from NECN.

Witnesses say the team was at the rink for early morning practice when a large section of the roof came crashing down without any significant warning signs. Around 7 a.m., the team was on the ice, when they heard loud noses from the room. Around a second later, the coach heard a loud snap and started screaming. He was screaming for the kids to get off the ice. Witnesses say there were seven kids directly under the section of roof that came crashing down, and they barely had time to hear their coach’s voice and get out of the way before being crushed by the falling roof, snow and ice.
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February 27, 2015

Police Dog Bites Officer and Doughnut Shop Worker

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent report from the Sun Sentinel, a Florida police dog has been fired after biting two people in a three-month period. The police K9, a four-year-old Belgian Malinois, had been with the police department for around a year prior to these two biting incidents.

The first incident occurred last November, when the dog bit a police officer while he was issuing a citation. The officer was bit in the leg and suffered a personal injury. The second injury was much more serious. According to reports, the dog ran out of his handler’s car and into a local doughnut shop. When this dog entered the shop, he immediately bit an employee’s calf, causing serious damage. This injured worker has hired a lawyer to represent him in his dog bite case.

Witnesses say the dog and his handler, a police officer, went to the doughnut shop to meet a police sergeant. Police sergeant started to pet the dog that was in the back seat of a patrol car when the dog lunged at her.
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February 24, 2015

Two People Buried by Snow From a Cambridge Roof

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

The greater Boston area has been slammed by numerous winter snowstorms over the last month with significant snowfall accumulation. According to a recent news report from News 10, two people were injured when a large amount of snow fell off the roof of an ice rink in Cambridge. A 33-year-old man and 20-year-old woman were completely buried under then snow, and a rink operator had to help out. It has been reported both victims were hurt by the snow, but not seriously injured.
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February 21, 2015

Boston Injury Update: Bullying Victim May Be Rendered Blind

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent article from WJCL, an 11-year-old girl has a brain injury that is believed to be the result of another student throwing a football at her face. Victim’s father said he was aware his child was a victim of other children bullying her, and had notified the school of his concerns for her safety prior to her being permanently injured.

He said he had even sent the school over 20 separate emails concerned with his daughter’s safety from school bullies and made some attempts to fix the situation, but he wishes more had been done by everyone involved, including himself.

In this serious incident, her father alleges another child intentionally threw a football at his daughter’s face. She came home from school feeling lightheaded, and he took her the doctor for an examination. Doctors soon learned she had a rare disorder known as intracranial hypertension. While doctors cannot say her alleged assault was the definitive cause of her traumatic brain injury, there is a high probability, since it typically a result of head trauma.

She is currently losing vision in one eye and may go permanently blind, even if she has a risky surgery to correct the issue. Intracranial hypertension involves the skull putting pressure on the optic nerve, causing blindness to occur.
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February 18, 2015

Raising Awareness of Burn Injuries in Massachusetts

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Injuries from burns are often among the most severe and painful types of personal injury. According to a recent news report from WWLP, grease and steam are the leading causes of burn injuries in Massachusetts.

The State Fire Marshal for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts urges people to be more aware of the dangers associated with unattended cooking, and hopes to educate people through his work with National Burn Awareness Week.

While many people think of a structure fire as the leading cause of burns, cooking grease and steam cause far more severe burns in Massachusetts each year. As he noted when being interviewed, simply tipping over a pot of hot soup can lead to serious burn injuries.
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February 14, 2015

Herland v. Izatt – Gun Owner Liability to Impaired Persons

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

The issue of gun control in this country is a highly contentious one. While the right to bear arms is generally undisputed, those weapons do sometimes cause unintentional harm and gun owners can be held liable for injuries in some cases.

In 2013, lawmakers in Massachusetts debated a bill that would require gun owners to purchase liability insurance in the event the firearm caused injury or death. The state already has gun storage laws, but police are not allowed to come into someone’s home without a warrant to ensure weapons are properly stored. The idea was that insurance companies could verify proper gun storage prior to issuing a policy. Plus, if gun owners received better rates for adequate gun storage, the thinking went, there would be fewer accidents and fewer incidents of theft resulting in guns falling into the wrong hands.

The measure ultimately failed.
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February 12, 2015

Silva v. The Stop & Shop Store – Injury Alone Won’t Suffice in Lawsuit

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

The fact of injury is never enough to establish a finding of negligence necessary to make litigation a worthwhile pursuit.

In order to establish negligence, one has to prove:

A duty owed
A breach of duty
Proximate cause
Compensable injuries

It sounds simple, but without any one of these key elements, a civil injury lawsuit will inevitably fail.
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February 10, 2015

Vargas v. FMI, Inc. – Trucking Accident Liability Challenged

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

The trucking industry as a whole has gotten very savvy with the way in which it has structured operations in order to limit liability.

By hiring independently-contracted drivers, they seek to reduce the chance of a vicarious liability claim for employee negligence. By having separate firms owning the tractors and the trailers, they attempt to shield themselves under the Graves Amendment — federal law written to protect rental car companies from renters’ negligence but which truck companies have used to their advantage.

Despite a powerful trucking lobby that actively seeks to erode public safety protections and limit liability, there are still several key laws that hold trucking firms accountable in these instances.
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February 10, 2015

Collapsed Table Causes Serious Childcare Accident

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

When we first leave our kids at daycare or with an after school childcare program, it is sometimes an emotional experience. Whether it is the first time the child has been away from his parents, or at high school sports program, we are worried something bad could happen. While these concerns are completely normal for any parent to have, we generally assume he or she will come home safe at the end of the day.

Unfortunately for one family, this was not the case. According to a recent news feature from North Jersey.com, a child’s life was forever changed when he was only six years old. His mother says she had her son in an after school program when a serious accident occurred. The young victim was sitting on the floor working on a puzzle when a collapsed cafeteria table fell on him. The table was folded up along the floor and was supposed to be secured, but it was not. When the table hit the young victim it fractured his femur and skull.

While he eventually made a full physical recovery, the victim, who is autistic, now fixates on accidents and must visit the place where he was injured almost every day after school. This accident occurred eight years ago, and her son is still affected by what happened. His mother learned another young boy had recently died in similar accident at another school, and she could hardly believe this happened again.
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