Boston Car Accident Attorney News

A Boston car accident attorney is prepared to represent those harmed by the negligent conduct of another driver.  Recently, 1o people suffered injuries when a taxi driver plowed into them outside Logan International Airport.  According to a news report, the incident reflected driver error, rather than terrorist intentions.  The driver mentioned that instead of hitting the brake, he accidentally accelerated into the victims. The victims were mostly other taxi drivers, who had taken a break to socialize.

While in this case, the at-fault driver admitted that he had erred, in some car accident lawsuits, the victims will have to prove liability, or legal fault, in order to recover damages in a personal injury claim. In the case of the taxi driver, he admitted that he had not intended to crash into the victims.  Nevertheless, the victims have the right to pursue legal damages against him for their injuries and medical costs.

Proving fault in a car accident, according to Massachusetts law, often requires showing that the other driver was negligent.  Negligence is a failure to meet a legal duty of care. All drivers owe others the duty to avoid foreseeable harm and to operate their vehicle as other drivers would under similar circumstances. To successfully show negligence, the plaintiff would show that the defendant driver breached their duty of care, and this breach directly caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

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When a vehicle collision occurs, it may be due to the negligence of a driver.  Negligence forms the legal theory of many personal injury claims, and victims can recover damages they have endured for serious injuries after proving the legal fault of the other driver.  To demonstrate negligence, the plaintiff victim would show that the defendant driver owed them a duty of care, breached this duty, and directly caused their resulting injuries and harm.

According to the Commonwealth’s model civil jury instructions, negligence is defined as the failure to use the degree of care that a reasonable and prudent person would use, under similar circumstances, to prevent an accident.  Reasonable care is the level of attention that others would exercise in similar situations.  In the case of a driver breaching a duty of care, there are a variety of ways that this breach can take place.

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A recent report issued by the New York Times indicates that for children under the age of 15, the most common cause of death is unintentional injuries resulting from car accidents.  In the majority of fatal crashes, children were not wearing safety belts.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provided statistics that supported the research and indicated that from state to state, there were variations in children’s deaths.

In Massachusetts, for example, between 2010 and 2014, there were 0.25 deaths per 100,000 children, as compared to 3.23 per 100,000 in Mississippi.  In Mississippi, of the 99 children who died in a car accident during the study period, 56 were not wearing seatbelts or were improperly restrained. Additionally, the study indicated that more deaths occurred on roads that were classified as rural by the Federal Highway Administration. The reasons for this vary and may include the distance to trauma centers, poor lighting on roads, and other factors.

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According to Massachusetts law, in an injury claim following a car accident, evidence that the car involved in the collision was registered to the defendant is prima facie evidence it was being operated and controlled by someone for whom the defendant was legally responsible.  At issue in an appeal before a Massachusetts appellate court was how much weight to afford this statute in proving negligence, particularly when the registered owner of a car involved in a crash had granted permission to the driver to use the car. The court held that permission did not mean that the owner had the right to control the driver’s use of the car, especially when she was completing personal errands.

In a collision that was determined at trial to be an accident and not to have involved the negligence of the defendant, the lower court found the owner of the vehicle involved was not responsible for property damage.  Here, the driver had struck the plaintiff’s traffic signal and arm while borrowing the defendant’s car to run personal errands.  According to the trial court, the car owner had not allowed the driver the use of the car, but his brother had done so.  The lower court found that the driver had not been acting as the agent of the car owner, nor was she advancing his interests at the time of the collision. The lower court entered judgment for the defendant, the owner of the car.

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In an appeal involving an employer’s duty to safeguard confidential information, the Massachusetts Court of Appeal held that a lower court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an automobile insurance company should be vacated.  The lower court had found that the plaintiff had not met his duty of showing the company’s negligence in safeguarding his confidential information following a vehicle collision.  An employee of the insurance company had access to the plaintiff’s information and provided it to her boyfriend, who intimidated the plaintiff, as a witness to the crash.

The plaintiff brought a case against the automobile insurance company, and a lower court dismissed four of his five claims.  The plaintiff appealed the grant of summary judgment on his negligent failure to safeguard personal information claim. In this case, the facts indicated that an employee of the insurer had access to confidential data through work that included records maintained by the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

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In a personal injury lawsuit following a car accident, the issue of liability, or legal fault, was conceded. This means that the defendants admitted they were at fault, and the issue before the jury was the amount of damages to award the injured victim.  The procedural issues in this case reflect the importance of medical records and documentation in a motor vehicle injury lawsuit. Here, the judge ultimately found that the medical evidence did not support the plaintiff’s allegations of harm, and the jury’s excessive verdict was not grounded in the evidence. The result was a serious (nearly 90%) reduction of the plaintiff’s original award.

Following a car accident in July 2004, the plaintiff victim brought a lawsuit alleging negligence against the driver of a pickup truck and his employer. The facts indicated that the defendant driver had rear-ended the victim’s car and then struck her passenger door. The victim underwent medical care and then, two years after the initial car accident, was again-rear ended. In the ensuing lawsuit, the defendants conceded liability, and the matter was tried on the issue of damages.

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