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Boston Attorney Joshua Paulin has set up a great blog called the Boston Immigration and Nationality Blog. Attorney Paulin's blog is relatively new, but I encourage you to visit it for information regarding immigration issues that you or a loved one may be facing.
No. It is you, the client who decides whether or not to settle your case. Your attorney of course is obligated to counsel you as to whether or not a particular settlement is worth taking. Chances are your attorney wants to get you the best settlement possible. Therefore, you should listen and weigh your attorney's advice on whether to settle the case. Your attorney is ethically obligated to inform you of all reasonable settlement offers made on your case.
Deciding whether to accept a settlement or go to trial is a tough decision. Listen to your attorney's advice, go with your gut, and make a decision that you feel is right.
If you have caused a Massachusetts car accident, your auto insurance company will be responsible for any liability for the accident you may have. But, what if the case does not settle? Are you going to be raked over the coals at trial and be personally responsible for paying a verdict in excess of your policy limits? Here is a post on this topic provided by California personal injury Attorney Jonathan Stein over at his California Personal Injury and Insurance Blog:
Q: I was in an accident. I have a 25/50 policy ($25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident.) I am being sued for personal injury for more than that amount. Now what?
A: It depends. If the insurance company had a chance to settle the case within your policy limits and chose not to, then they will be on the hook for the total judgment. (There is a great case that says that the insurance company cannot gamble with their insured's potential judgment.)
However, if there was never a chance to settle (such as where the other person's injuries are worth $250,000 instead of $25,000) then you could potentially be liable for the excess judgment. If this is the case, you need to have a long talk with the insurance company and their attorney and possibly even a private attorney that you pay for. You need to discuss the risks of an excess judgment and how this will affect you and your assets.
If your Massachusetts personal injury lawyer has settled your injury claim, there is a chance that Medicare will have a lien for any medical bills they paid. So, if Medicare pays a portion of your medical bills stemming from your Massachusetts accident, be ready to pay Medicare back for the bills they paid on your behalf.
Former New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who now is the head football coach at Notre Dame, has a medical malpractice trial starting in the Suffolk Superior Court in February, 2007. The case stems from a botched gastric bypass surgery performed in 2002. Here is an article on this case provided by WBZ News Radio 1030:
"BOSTON (AP) -- Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis' medical malpractice suit against two Boston doctors is scheduled to go to trial next month. Weis nearly died after undergoing gastric bypass surgery in June 2002, when he was the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. Weis had the operation to lose weight after battling chronic obesity for years. Weis began bleeding internally soon after the operation and was in a coma for two weeks. His lawsuit alleges that Massachusetts General Hospital physicians Charles Ferguson and Richard Hodin acted negligently. The doctors deny they did anything wrong. Weis has reportedly altered Notre Dame's spring football schedule to accommodate the trial. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady -- who stayed at Weis' bedside for much of the ordeal -- is expected to be called as a witness." |
The following post was provided courtesy of California Personal Injury Attorney Norman Fernandez over at his Biker and Motorcycle Blog which I have mentioned before on this blog. Norman has a great blog and I highly recommend it for great insight and information about personal injury law. Here is his post:
"Most of us are good citizens and purchase liability insurance to cover us in case we cause an accident. Some people purchase minimum liability coverage and some people purchase more.
When you buy this insurance you are doing it to not only comply with the law, but to protect you and your assets in case you cause a car, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle accident.
Now let’s say that you get into an accident that is your fault; you report the accident to your insurance carrier; you think that your insurance company will cover you pursuant to your insurance policy right? WRONG!
If you read the fine print in your insurance policy you will notice a bunch of language that most non-lawyers would not understand. The gist of the language in plain English is that by accepting the insurance policy, you agree to cooperate with the insurance company if they decide to litigate, and the insurance company is the one who decides whether a case will be settled, not you.
The insurance companies are all about making tons of money and paying as little as possible. Since the advent of legally mandatory insurance coverage (Proposition 213 in California) the insurance companies have become very cavalier because their coffers are full of your money.
Instead of settling meritorious claims, they are forcing claims to be litigated in Court in an attempt to stop personal injury lawyers from obtaining a just recovery for their clients. They know full well that personal injury lawyers do not have as much money to litigate as they do, so their ploy is to starve out the personal injury lawyers and ultimately make it harder for people who are injured in accidents to obtain a recovery. In the end it is the consumer and persons injured in accidents who are hurt, while big business makes more profit at your expense.
Even people who cause accidents and have proper liability insurance to cover the claim are being victimized by the insurance companies.
The insurance companies are experts at deception. With your money, insurance companies contribute money to politicians, and run media ads which blame the personal injury attorneys for making insurance rates so high. What they don’t say is that the backlog in Court is due to the insurance companies not settling claims like they should in the first place.
Now let’s go back to the example of you causing an accident. If the insurance company is unreasonable and refuses to settle a case at or below policy limits, you will then be dragged through the legal system. You may have to answer discovery, appear for depositions, and even take time off to go to trial. This is a long and arduous process that you did not think that would have to deal with when you purchased liability insurance. Surprise!
If you lose at trial, the insurance company will in most cases pay the judgment, but guess what; YOU WILL HAVE A JUDGMENT AGAINST YOU ON YOUR CREDIT REPORT, and in the Court file! Thanks to your insurance company your credit has just been dinged due to no fault of your own.
Is this fair? I submit to you that it is not. You paid for insurance; the insurance company could have settled the case for you within your policy limits; instead, they decided to litigate in an attempt to minimize what they have to pay out so that their profits remain high. They did so without any regard for your credit report, or having your name appear in the public record as having a judgment against you.
Many insurance companies have in-house lawyers; some use outside lawyers. These lawyers are supposed to have a duty to you to do what is in your best interest. The reality is that they do what is in the insurance company’s best interest. This is the ultimate conflict of interest. Ethically the attorney that the insurance company uses to represent you has a duty to you, not the insurance company. The reality is the attorney gets his marching orders from the insurance companies.
A worst case example is the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster. Have you read about all of the poor people who are getting screwed because they are not being covered by their insurance companies for insurance that they paid for?
It’s time for America and consumers to wake up and smell the roses. It is not the trial attorneys that are the problem; its big business wanting to screw the little guy so they can obtain more profit at your expense. Some have made this a political issue. I have even heard President Bush talking about Tort reform, and blaming the trial attorneys for the nation’s health care woes.
Anytime you here tort reform remember one thing; you are about to be screwed! Anytime your right to recover for damages in a Court of law is infringed upon, you will be the victim, while big business rakes in the mula!"
Slips and falls happen each and every day in Massachusetts. These accidents happen with greater frequency during the winter due to ice and snow accumulations. If the property owner was negligent in failing to maintain the premises of where you fell, you may have a case. But, if you were intoxicated at the time of the fall, that can be a problem. Usually, the fact that you were intoxicated will not kill your case. But, it will reduce the value of your case. The extent of that reduction depends on the specific facts of your Massachusetts slip and fall accident.
You can, if you can meet any of the following requirements:
1) Your "reasonable and necessary" medical bills are at least $2000.00; or
2) You sustained a fracture in the accident; or
3) You are somehow scarred or disfigured as a result of the accident; or
4) You have a loss of function of a body part as a result of the accident.
If you meet one of these requirements, then you can sue the driver who caused the accident for pain and suffering. Please note that these requirements are referred to as the "tort threshold." Therefore, they only apply to auto accidents. If you have been injured in a Massachusetts slip and fall accident, the tort threshold does not apply.
The MBTA is sued by hundreds of people each year who claim to have slipped and fell on MBTA property. Slip and fall cases are tough to win in Massachusetts. Really tough. But, they become even more difficult when it is the MBTA that is the defendant. Why? Because they, as an agency, have too few claims repesentatives, too few attorneys, and not enough money to pay out on claims. If you slipped and fell on MBTA property, the best thing to do is to notify the MBTA immediately and make sure that an accident report is created.
Attorneys who negligently perform legal services to their clients run the risk of legal malpractice claims. If you believe your attorney has committed legal malpractice, you should consult with a Massachusetts legal malpractice attorney immediately. But it must be remembered that in order to prevail at trial (if your case does not settle there will be a trial), you will need to have an expert testify in court that your attorney somehow mishandled your case, that you suffered damages as a result of that mishandling, and, that there exists a causal connection between the mishandling and the damages you suffered.
