Boston Injury Lawyer Blog

Just today, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, sitting in Boston, has handed down new law regarding slip and fall injuries involving snow and ice. It used to be that the duty of care owed by landowners to lawful visitors on their property did not include any obligation to remove snow and ice that had accumulated naturally. Now, however, that has changed. The attorneys at the Boston Law Office of Neil Burns know the importance of staying up-to-date and current regarding applicable laws affecting our clients.

There is no longer a distinction for land owners regarding snow and ice. We now have a standard rule of reasonable care for all property owners--commercial and residential.

The case arose from an accident at a department store. The plaintiff parked in a handicapped parking place, passed a pile of snow which had been plowed, and did his shopping. On his way back to his car, the plaintiff fell on ice which had either fallen from the pile or accumulated as a result of melting from the pile, later re-freezing. The trial court ruled that the accumulation was natural and granted summary judgment for the defendant store and landscaping company. The Appeals Court affirmed.

Continue reading "New Slip and Fall Injury Law " »

Located in Boston, Lawyers Weekly of Massachusetts recently reviewed civil verdicts rendered in Superior Courts in Boston and throughout Massachusetts. The review showed that the deck is heavily stacked against tort plaintiffs, particularly those who go to trial in Norfolk County and other Boston suburban communities. The Boston attorneys at the Law Office of Neil Burns recommend that those clients considering taking their personal injury, car accident or other injury case to trial listen to the advice of their attorney. A lot of factors must be weighed before taking a case to trial, and the rate of success is certainly one large factor to consider.

Lawyers Weekly noted that of the civil verdicts rendered in Superior Court in 2009, only five of the 35 personal injury verdicts returned in Norfolk County in 2009 favored plaintiffs. The county's 14 percent success rate was 22 percentage points lower than Essex County, which had the highest rate of plaintiffs' verdicts, and 12 points behind the statewide average of 26 percent.
The only region in Massachusetts with a lower success rate than Norfolk County was the Cape and Islands, which saw eight of its nine tort trials decided in favor of defendants.

Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady has been keeping track of verdicts for negligence trial he has presided over. Of the 151 negligence trials Judge Brady has heard since 1993, when he first started keeping track, only 16 have resulted in plaintiffs' verdicts, he said. In Norfolk County, only seven of 69 verdicts ended in favor of plaintiffs. Of the 52 trials he has heard in Plymouth County, 49 - or 92 percent - were decided for the defense.

Continue reading "Trying the Negligence Case in Massachusetts" »

Boston is a large tourist destination for people inside and outside of Boston, Massachusetts. As such, hotels in Boston are numerous, as are injuries resulting from those hotel stays. The injury attorneys at the Boston Law Office of Neil Burns can help if you are injured while staying in Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the injuries that occur while staying in Boston area hotels include falling in the bathroom or shower/tub areas.

An example of an injury occurring at a hotel in Massachusetts involves the case of Deloria v. The Druker Company, Ltd. (Lawyers Weekly No. 81-345-10)). The case involved the question of whether there was "the existence of a danger," concerning a hotel's bathtub area. In the case, "The plaintiff argues on appeal that the motion judge erred in concluding as a matter of law that the raised floor of the hotel bathtub was an open and obvious condition and that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether the condition of the bathtub was unsafe and defective. Guided by our decision in Quinn v. Morganelli, [73 Mass. App. Ct. 50 (2008)], we agree with the plaintiff that the jury reasonably could have found that the bathtub posed a danger to the plaintiff, and that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known of that danger. ... The deposition testimony of the plaintiff about her failure to perceive the change in level between the floor of the bathroom and the bathtub, her failure to notice the warning posted, and the report authored by the plaintiff's expert, would reasonably allow the jury to draw such a conclusion.

"Reasonable jurors could also differ in their opinion as to whether the bathtub configuration constituted an 'open and obvious' danger. Although the change in level between the floor of the bathroom and tub was certainly open to inspection, we cannot say as a matter of law that, upon stepping out the tub after a shower, the lengthy step down would be obvious without visual cues alerting one to that fact. Consequently, the plaintiff may proceed on both failure to warn and failure to remedy theories. ..."

A Massachusetts Court sitting in Worcester decided a case on March 22, 2010 involving The Home Depot and a person who was injured while shopping at the store. It is important to have a Boston personal injury attorney with extensive experience in handling injury claims at large retail stores, and the Boston Law Office of Neil Burns has been handling such claims since 1985.

In the case, a plaintiff suffered personal injuries when a display sign for garage doors manufactured by the defendant, Clopay Building Products, Inc., fell on him while he was shopping at Home Depot.

But the Court ruled against the injured plaintiff, holding that he could not recover damages from Clopay Building Products, Inc., because he did not demonstrate that Clopay Building Products, Inc., breached any duty to him. The Court noted a basic rule of injury law, called negligence, in saying that "'To prevail on a negligence claim, a plaintiff must prove that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of reasonable care, that the defendant breached this duty, that damage resulted, and that there was a causal relation between the breach of the duty and the damage." In this case, the plaintiff failed to show that Clopay Building Products, Inc. owed him any duty. Thus, while the plaintiff's case could proceed against The Home Depot, or the injured person could continue suing The Home Depot, the Court dismissed the case as against Clopay Building Products, Inc.

Continue reading "Injury at Massachusetts Home Depot " »

In the Boston suburb of Worcester, Massachusetts, a Superior Court Judge found the nightclub owner 30 Worcester Center, Inc., responsible for injuries a patron sustained while at the club.

Such was the case recently when a 16-year-old girl was punched in the face by another patron at a nightclub owned by 30 Worcester Center, Inc. In that case the Judge found that the defendant nightclub owner was negligent and should be ordered to pay the plaintiff damages of $14,000. The Judge found the nightclub was negligent in the following respect:

Continue reading "Night Club Injuries to Massachusetts Residents " »

In the Boston suburb of Salem, Massachusetts, a jury recently decided that a plaintiff who slipped and fell in a parking lot while going to Dunkin' Donuts was not entitled to money damages.

Hoey v. Argeros Realty Trust Court/case no.: Salem Superior Court, No. ESCV2007-00259. Boston slip and fall attorney Neil Burns notes that, "It's always tough to speculate regarding jury's decisions, but the plaintiff in that case did not file her claim until some four years after she fell. You always want to talk to an attorney soon after suffering and injury from an accident. Waiting four years could not have helped."

Continue reading "Delayed Massachusetts Slip and Fall Claim " »

A Massachusetts woman interested in renting an apartment near Boston, scheduled an appointment to visit the building. When she arrived, she walked to the back of the building to find the defendant and the unit she was interested in renting. She then fell down an unguarded stairway and was injured, suffering personal injuries. The women sued the building owner, and according to the lawsuit, she claimed the stairway violated Massachusetts state building code. "It is important to note," says Boston personal injury attorney Thiadora Pina, "that the woman can still sue the landlord for her fall down the stairs and subsequent injuries. According to this decision, however, her cause of action, or what she can sue under, is now limitied."

Continue reading "Would-Be Massachusetts Tenant Can't Sue Landlord For Fall Down Stairs " »

Choose a qualified lawyer if you have been injured as the result of the negligence of a landlord, restaurant, parking lot owner and other private business owner. These cases include slip and fall injuries, burn injuries, and many other type of injuries our clients are the victims of.

Attorney Neil Burns has represented families and loved ones who are victims as a result of negligent maintenance of premises for decades. Massachusetts law protects victims who are injured as a result of accidents caused by the negligence of land and business owners: especially when they knew or should have know about the condition causing the injury.

Often our clients need to recover damages for pain and suffering, loss of earning capacity, hospital and medical bills, and emotional losses.

We are experienced in working with clients who have suffered injuries from a host of accident sites - buildings where they live or work, stores where they shop, inadequate security, and falling products. We work aggressively to gather information and fight the insurance companies who often blame the victim.

Slip and fall victims in Massachusetts are the beneficiary of new law. Massachusetts has adopted a new standard regarding premises liability law with regard to grocery stores, for example, and other self-service retailers. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the state's highest court, sitting in Boston, Massachusetts, decided Sheehan v. Roche Brothers Supermarkets, Inc., which lightens the victim's burden of proof in slip and fall cases.

In Sheehan, the plaintiff slipped on a grape inside a supermarket sustaining significant injuries that required a month of hospitalization. In reversing a decision for the defendant, the Supreme Judicial Court adopted a new approach to premises liability. Previously, Massachusetts followed the traditional approach for premises liability cases. That is, a store owner simply had to "maintain its property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all of the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden of avoiding the risk." Thus, a store owner could only be held liable for an injury if the store owner knew or should of known of the dangerous condition and had sufficient time to fix the condition.

In deciding against this approach, however, the Court stated that stores had changed the way they do business from individualized clerk-assisted retail stores to self-service retailers. Due to this change, the Court stated that focus should be on the reasonable foreseeability of a patron's carelessness. Consequently, where a store's chosen mode of operation makes it reasonably foreseeable that a dangerous condition will occur, a store owner may be held liable for injuries if the plaintiff proves that the store owner failed to take reasonable precautions necessary to protect him or her from the foreseeable dangerous condition.

Thus, in order to prove a claim the plaintiff must do the following: (1) show the injury was attributable to a reasonably foreseeable dangerous condition on the owner's premises that is related to the owner's self-service mode of operation; (2) show the owner failed to take reasonable measures, commensurate with the risk involved, to prevent the injury; and (3) persuade a jury that the owner acted unreasonably. At the Law Office of Neil Burns, we represent clients injured in slip and fall accidents and are dedicated to protecting their rights.