By Robert I. Feinberg | Published April 24, 2015 | Posted in Insurance, Personal Injury | Leave a comment
In 1985, the Supreme Judicial Court decided Cardin v. Royal Insurance Co., 394 Mass. 350 (1985), an important case pertaining to auto insurance. In that case, the Court used a sentence that has stuck with me ever since reading the opinion: “Navigating the tortuous twists of automobile insurance law is at least as difficult as the uninitiated driver’s first foray into the streets of Boston.” This is an accurate statement because understanding and appreciating all of the nuances of automobile insurance law in Massachusetts is a very difficult task.
A premises liability case is one in which a person sustains an injury while on somebody else’s property, whether it be a landlord, business or other entity. These cases almost always involve an issue of management or control over the premises. The question is whether the landlord or other person in control exercised reasonable care in maintaining the area.
This will be the concluding blog in the series of discussions about the recent Massachusetts Appeals Court decision, Fyffe v. MBTA. There are a few more points worth considering. First, I have discussed the concept of speculation by a medical expert or an attorney in past blogs and the Appeals Court in Fyffe discusses the subject at some length. Specifically, the Court rejected the plaintiff’s attorney attempt to bring up the issue of quadriplegia because there was no record of evidence to support such speculation. There had been no suggestion of this issue in the pretrial documents.
This will be the third blog in our series of discussions on the recent Massachusetts Appeals Court decision of Fyffe v. MBTA. We continue our analysis of the lessons that can be learned from this case, one certain to be cited by defense lawyers. While the majority of cases do not go to trial, the way that a trial would unfold and the anticipated evidence that would be presented at such a trial influences to a very large extent the amount of recovery that might be sought from a pre-trial settlement.