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Two people were injured on Friday night when a platform overhand at the North Billerica commuter rail station collapsed as passengers exited a Lowell-bound train, The Lowell Sun reported.

According to MBTA Transit Police Lieutenant Richard Sullivan, the passengers sustained non-life threatening injures after being struck by falling debris from the overhang. Both victims were treated at area hospitals and the cause of the accident remains under investigation.
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According to a report issued by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety three popular models have received poor reviews in the IIHS’s front-end collision test.

The tests simulate what happens to a driver in a front-end collision. The ever-popular Chrysler Town and Country Minivan is one car that failed this IIHS test. According to reports by CBS, when the experts ran the Town and Country into a barrier, drivers side only, at 40 mph, the air bag deployed, but the front of the car collapsed. In this situation, the driver would be thrown off the bag and suffer a blow to the head. And this was not the worst collision: IIHS also tested the Nissan Quest, which when the model hit the barrier, its engine compartment was pushed two feet backward pinning the test dummy so completely that research technicians had to dismantle the front seat to recover it.

In a statement obtained by CBS, Executive Vice President Dave Zuby said that the Nissan Quest “is one of the worst vehicles we’ve tested in this particular test. The forces that we measured on the dummy’s left leg suggest that a person would be lucky to recover from the leg injuries and be able to walk normally again,” he said.

These new overlap tests are relatively new-they were initiated because a significant number of drivers were being killed in off-center collisions. The misperception, as Zuby puts it, is that people assume that cars are safer than ever, yet people are still dying and being seriously injured during front-end collisions.

In addition to Chrysler’s Town and Country, Dodge’s Caravan, and Nissan’s Quest being tested-all of which were rated as poor, the IIHS tested the Toyota Sienna (rated acceptable) and the Honda Odyssey (good).
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To resolve information breach allegations, Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island will pay $150,000 in a lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts. The state accused the hospital of failing to protect the confidential data of over 12,000 residents.

It was over two years ago that Women and Infants Hospital discovered that 19 unencrypted back-up tapes had gone missing from prenatal diagnostic centers in New Bedford and Providence. The tapes should have been delivered to Care New England Health System and sent off-site. The move was to facilitate the transfer of legacy radiology data to a new archiving system.

The consent judgment says that data breached included the names of patients, their birth dates, social security numbers, the names of their doctors, patient exam dates, and ultrasound images. The state said that the data breach occurred because the hospitals tracking and inventory system was not adequate, and that almost a year purportedly lapsed before anyone noticed during the Spring of 2012 that the tapes were even missing. The state of Massachusetts says that deficient internal policies and employee training then caused the breach to go unreported until the fall of that year.

Police in the small, central Massachusetts town of Lunenberg are seeking the public’s help in finding a vehicle that may have witnessed a hit-and-run accident and left the scene after the victim asked for help early in the morning on February 27. The victim was seriously injured when a pickup truck carrying a snow plow struck the pedestrian from behind and then sped away. The truck wanted by police is described as “a light-colored, possibly white, 1999 to 2003 Chevrolet or GMC pickup with a yellow plow… single cab with black molding around the wheel wells and black molding on the side,” according to WCVB.

Lunenburg officials are particularly interested in a second car driving in the same direction as the first vehicle that was caught on a security camera stopping in front of the victim seconds later. The driver got out of the car and appeared to speak to the injured pedestrian before getting back in his car and driving away, leaving the victim behind. Anyone with information is urged to contact police.
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A plane crash in Marshfield injured one person last week. According to the Boston Globe, the small plane crashed into the woods near Marshfield Municipal Airport. The wreck caused a small fire too. Only the pilot was aboard the plane, and he sustained injuries. The small aircraft was a Maule M-5. The plane left the George Hollowfield Airport and was returning to land when it crashed into a tree.

Although small plane crashes rarely make the news, they do happen. There aren’t as many injuries and fatalities involved in small plane crashes, but people are still getting hurt. There are a variety of factors that contribute to why small planes crash. Listed below are a few statistics for plane crashes in 2010.

2010 Plane Crash Statistics

• 1,500 total civil aviation accidents occurred.
• Those incidents involved 1,520 U.S. registered aircraft.
• 275 of those accidents were fatal (18 percent.)
• General aviation accounted for almost 96 percent of total accidents and about 97 percent of fatal accidents.

Independent Federal Agency Study by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
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Last Sunday, a Newton man died after falling from the third floor balcony of a Nashville bar. Law enforcement officials said that they don’t suspect foul play at this point. There hasn’t been any word on the official cause of this tragic incident though. Was there some problem with the railing? Was the balcony defective or in need of updating? Dmitriy Sirota, 23 years old, was from Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. He was reportedly in town on business and at the Honky Tonk Central on Lower Broadway in Nashville on Sunday night.
Reporters with the Tennessean received no response for comments after attempting to contact management at Honky Tonk Central multiple times. It may be difficult for a victim’s family to get answers after an incident like this. An experienced premises lawyer can stay up-to-date with official investigations.
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Americans are flooded with calls from telemarketers every day. While many people dismiss these calls as an annoyance, a provision is encouraging consumers to report these calls in exchange for monetary compensation.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was established in 1991 in response to an overwhelming number of consumer complaints to deter unsolicited telemarketing calls to landlines and cellular phones without express consent from a consumer. In accordance with the TCPA, consumers who receive these types of calls may be entitled to collect damages ranging from $500 to $1,500 for each unlawful call, fax, or text message. The federal law helps to govern the conduct of telemarketers and debt collectors by prohibiting:

• Automatic, artificial, or pre-recorded voice messages without prior express consent, to any emergency telephone line, hospital patient, pager, cellular phone, or other service for which the receiver is charged for the call.
• Artificial or pre-recorded voice messages to residential telephone lines without prior express consent.
• Unsolicited advertisements to fax machines of individuals who have no prior existing business relationship (i.e.; junk faxes).
• Automatic telephone dialing systems to engage two or more of a business’ telephone lines simultaneously.
• Making any telemarketing call to any residential subscriber who has registered her number on the national or company-specific “Do-Not-Call” list.
• Sending unwanted business advertisement via text message to your cellular telephone.
• Making any telemarketing call that is not within the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.
• Unlicensed debt collector calls.

A consumer is unlikely to know whether a call to his or her cellular phone was initiated using an auto dialer-auto dialed calls often sound like any other phone call. However, calls made with auto dialers often are met with static air for a number of seconds after a call is answered and are typically accompanied by an audible click. It is important as a consumer to keep in mind that in order for a debt collector or telemarketer to maintain volume operation, they must make thousands of telephone calls each day. Therefore, if you are receiving phone calls from a debt collector or a telemarketer, it is quite possible that he or she is already violating the TCPA.
If you have previously provided your cell phone number to a bank or debt collector, you may always revoke consent.
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The ex-owners of Goldthwait Associates, which is a billing company based in Marblehead, and four pathology groups have reached a breach of privacy settlement with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office over the accidental dumping of sensitive health records at a public dump in Georgetown. The collection of tossed papers included the records of over 67,000 people. Included in these documents were people’s names, SS numbers, addresses, and test results. A Boston Globe photographer had found the tossed records in 2010 when he was throwing out his trash.

Under federal and state laws, health records have to be gotten rid of in a way that destroys any personal information. This usually involves burning or shredding the documents. Even though no evidence exists to show that the poor handling of these files resulted in anyone using the information improperly, in a press release, Attorney General Martha Coakley said that thousands of patients were likely placed at risk from this information breach. She noted that it is important that personal health information is protected as it goes from doctors to third-party contractors.

Coakely’s office contends that several pathology groups, who were also defendants in this case, violated Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulation when they didn’t ensure the proper safeguards to make sure that the patient information was protected when they gave the files to Goldthwait Associates. Her office also alleges violation of data security regulations of the state due to the groups’ failure make sure that the billing company they retained would make sure the proper security measures were in place to protect the confidential information.

Doctors, billing company pay $140,000 penalty for records tossed in public dump, Boston.com, January 7, 2013

Former Owners of Medical Billing Practice, Pathology Groups Agree to Pay $140,000 to Settle Claims that Patients’ Health Information was Disposed of at Georgetown Dump, Mass.gov, January 7, 2013

More Blog Posts:
Middleborough Woman Sues Tufts Medical Center for Breach of Privacy and Seeks Punitive Damages, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, July 14, 2011

Alaska Medicaid to Pay $1.7M to Settle HIPAA Lawsuit Over Hard Drive Data Breach, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, June 27, 2012

Boston Personal Injury?: Use of Psychotropic Drugs Can Prove Fatal for Some Elderly Patients, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, March 30, 2011 Continue reading