Articles Posted in Uncategorized

A Massachusetts woman was seriously injured when she was thrown overboard during a boating accident just outside of Boston Harbor.

According to WCVB, the Massachusetts Coast Guard received a call from a 29-foot vessel named Naut Guilty of persons overboard near Spectacle Island. One woman had her severed her arm at the shoulder; five other people were also thrown overboard.

The Coast Guard was able to retrieve everyone out of the water safely and the woman was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital for treatment of her injuries. The boat’s owner and operator Benjamin Urbelis, 33, of Charlestown was arrested on charges of operating under the influence. Police have not said whether the boating accident was directly caused by Urbelis’s operation of the boat and the accident remains under investigation.

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According to a new report published by the Boston Herald, at least 20% of elevators in Massachusetts (an estimated 8,500) have not had their yearly safety inspections, as required by law. The Herald says that while the numbers are high, a state safety watchdog anticipates those figures are “low-balling” the issue.

As of March 2015, state official had evaluated just shy of 80% of about 41,000 elevators in Massachusetts, according to the Herald who had obtained documents from the Department of Public Safety. That means that approximately 8,600 elevators have not been properly inspected this year.

It seems this problem is ongoing; the Herald reported that State Auditor Suzanne Bump had taken issue with the public safety department back in November 2014, after an audit revealed that some 14,200 elevators had expired inspection certificates.

“Our audit found that, in addition to backlogs in inspections, DPS’s record keeping database was inaccurate,” Bump said in a statement to the Herald. She pointed out that in dozens of elevators her investigators checked, more than half had certificates with different information than the public safety department’s database.

“While we certainly hope their inspection rate is improving,” Bump said, “we don’t know if these recent reports are accurate.” (bostonherald.com)

Officials have claimed that they will hire more elevator inspectors, but as of last week, the Herald reported, they had just 55—just one more since May 2014 when a woman was seriously injured when she fell down an elevator shaft at Fenway Park.

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The decision to find a nursing home for your parent or other loved one is often accompanied by a mix of emotions, financial concerns, and an overwhelming fear of making the wrong choice. While the vast majority of nursing home facilities have the best interests of their residents in mind at all times, there are exceptions to this rule. According to the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), a study of 2,000 nursing home residents showed that 44 percent claimed they had been abused. Fortunately, there are multiple ways of safeguarding your loved one against elder abuse and neglect in a nursing home. Doing your homework before choosing a facility, and maintaining adequate communication with your loved one are key.

Tips for Selecting the Right Facility

Ask around. Chances are, you know several other people who have been down this road before. If their loved one has been in a nursing home for a while, and is very happy there, add that home to your list of potential candidates. Alternatively, you may hear negative reviews about a home you were seriously considering. Remember, people can have very unique, isolated experiences that shouldn’t necessarily condemn an entire facility. For example, that person’s loved one may have lived at the nursing home when a disgruntled ex-employee was still on staff. Ask questions, but don’t jump to conclusions. You can also ask doctors and social workers for opinions on good nursing homes.

Six women were struck by a car on Sunday, making it the second reported pedestrian accident to occur this Memorial Day weekend.

According to WCVB.com, the women, in their 20s, were walking along Beach Road in Orleans when they were hit by a Honda Civic. All were transported to Cape Cod Hospital with serious injuries. This was the second accident to occur on Sunday: an elderly pedestrian was tragically struck and fatally injured while attempting to cross Route 3A in Hingham just around noontime near the entrance of Lincoln Plaza. Police say the man was standing on a sidewalk near an MBTA bus stop and possibly fell or stepped into the street when he was hit. Officials are preliminarily calling both cases accidents.

According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 4,280 pedestrians were killed as a result of motor-vehicle crashes and 70,000 were injured in pedestrian accidents in 2010. The number of pedestrian fatalities in 2010 accounted for 13% of all motor-vehicle accident fatalities and the number of injuries accounted for 3% of the total amount of individuals injured in a traffic accidents.

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A jury awarded $1.5 million to the family of a patient who died as the result of an injury she sustained after being dropped headfirst by an ambulance crew.

Barbara J. Grimes, 67, of Pembroke, Mass., was receiving dialysis treatment at Fresenius Medical Care in Plymouth on January 31, 2009. During the transport, American Medical Response EMTs Wesley Garber and Peter Crowell had rolled her onto a stretcher, which subsequently tipped over, causing Grimes to hit her head and suffer from a brain hemorrhage. Grimes tragically passed away five days after the incident due to the substantial injuries she sustained.

“This was an unnecessary death which should have been prevented by simple precautions. If the ambulance crew had only followed company safety policies regarding stretcher operation, it would not have toppled over. This needless death was easily preventable,” Marc Breakstone, the family’s attorney said in a comment.

Market Basket is in the midst of a premises liability lawsuit after a patron claimed she was injured by falling seafood.

According to WCVB, 74-year-old Ida Clement is alleging Market Basket was negligent after she was struck by several bottles of clam juice, which had fallen off of a shelf at the Derry, New Hampshire store in 2012. According to Clement, she was reaching for cans of tuna fish, when the “heavy” bottles of clam juice fell from a shelf above and hit her—even before she touched anything on the shelf. Clement was forced to undergo multiple surgeries to treat her injuries.

Accidents that involve falling merchandise can be embarrassing for a victim. There may be a multitude of reasons why merchandise falls off a shelf, including products being stocked too high or being unsecured due to items of different sizes being stacked on top of each other, vibrations, or because store employees receive little or no training in proper stocking techniques. Head injuries, back injuries, and broken or sprained bones are often a result of being struck by falling merchandise. Continue reading

The family of Derek Landon Wood is suing the Publix grocery chain for wrongful death. Wood, 11, died in 2014 after eating a chocolate chip cookie that he bought at a Publix store.

He had a serious nut allergy and ate the cookie after a store worker reassured him that it was fine to eat the dessert. The food allergy lawsuit contends that the bakery at the store failed to warn about the cookie’s ingredients, as well as about the potential for cross-contamination.

In another food injury case, the family of Scott Johnson is suing a small town diner for wrongful death. The 16-year-old was severely allergic to diary.

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