Articles Tagged with Massachusetts personal injury attorney

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Boston Snow And Ice Accident Attorney

If you slipped and fell on snow and ice you may be confused about what to do, and what your rights are.  There are things you can do after a slip and fall to protect your rights.

Slip and fall accidents can cause injuries ranging from strains and sprains, to dislocations and broken bones, to even death.  The challenge from a legal standpoint with these cases is establishing liability.  The fact that you slipped and fell on snow and ice does not mean you have a case worth pursuing.  Some slip and fall cases are worth pursuing, and some are not.  Here are examples of both:

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Why Representing Yourself For A Personal Injury Case Is A Bad Idea
Many people decide to take a stab at handling their personal injury claim without an attorney. That usually turns out to be a bad idea. Why would an insurance company be concerned about you suing their insured (the person or company that injured you and whom they insure) when you are not a lawyer? Why would an insurance company pay you fair and reasonable compensation for your injuries from a car accident when they know you don’t have the leverage that an experienced attorney provides? Why would an insurance company not try to trick you since you don’t regularly handle personal injury claims? Representing yourself is never a good idea. Hiring an experienced personal injury attorney will send a message to the insurance company that your case is not to be taken lightly.

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Don’t Have a Lawyer and the Insurance Company is Contacting You?

Each and every day Massachusetts auto insurance companies, upon learning of an auto accident in which they may have to pay out money damages, will contact you.  They will send an insurance adjuster to the home of the injured party and attempt to have him/her sign a release. The insurance adjuster shows up, big smile, and explains there is no need to get a lawyer. Then, as is very common, the adjuster will offer some small money, maybe $500, maybe $1000, to the injury victim in order to settle the case as quickly as possible.

This scenario gets me upset – and I see it all the time – because most people, after an accident, don’t know their rights, unless he/she first speaks with an auto accident attorney. The insurance adjuster know this, and capitalizes on it, in order to save the insurance company money (better for the insurance company to get rid of case fast before it has to pay out much more money when an attorney becomes involved in the case). By signing a release without first speaking with an attorney basically guarantees that you are severely limiting your rights and potential compensation.

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1) It compensates for the medical treatment the injury victim had to endure;

2) It covers the medical bills and liens that must be paid out of the settlement;

3) It adequately compensates the injury victim for lost wages, and if applicable, future lost wages or impairment of earning capacity;

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Massachusetts hit and run accidents happen all the time.  If you have been involved in one, you need to know about the following:

1)  The accident must be reported to your insurance company immediately;

2)  The vehicle that caused the accident and left the scene is unable to be identified;

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Negligence is one of three prongs of tort law (the two others being strict liability and intentional wrongs, but more on these in future posts).  Negligence is defined by Black's Law Dictionary (Second Ed.) as "The failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonably prudent person would have exercised in a similar situation; any conduct that falls below the legal standard established to protect others against unreasonable risk of harm."  But what does that really mean?

The word refers to conduct that is considered objectively unreasonable.  For example, if you slipped and fell on ice in front of a store, and the store-owner had notice that the gutter above his store was leaking water onto the sidewalk and that this water would freeze in the winter, then that store-owner may have acted unreasonably, or negligently, in failing to correct the problem.  It was foreseeable – on the part of the store-owner – that someone would slip and fall on the ice (or maybe he or she even knew of slips and falls in the past and did nothing to correct it). 

Or, let's take the example of an automobile accident.  If a driver is driving erratically and ends up injuring someone, that driver may have been operating his automobile negligently, because he or she could have reasonably foreseen that someone would be injured as a result of his or her unreasonable conduct.

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