FAQs: Find Answers to Your Questions Here

There are several factors to consider when hiring a medical malpractice lawyer. First, make sure you choose a lawyer and firm with a proven record of success in cases like yours. Second, trust your instincts. You need to have a high level of comfort and trust with the person you choose to represent you, and his or her staff.

Many lawyers claim to handle medical malpractice cases, but in fact, do not have expertise in this complex area of the law. Remember that the choice is up to you. You don’t have to hire the first (or even second or third) lawyer you interview.

There are several factors to consider when hiring a personal injury lawyer. First, make sure you choose a lawyer and firm with a proven record of success in cases like yours. Second, trust your instincts. You need to have a high level of comfort and trust with the person you choose to represent you, and his or her staff. Remember that the choice is up to you. You don’t have to hire the first (or even second or third) lawyer you interview.

Many lawyers claim to handle personal injury cases, but in fact, have never even taken a personal injury case to trial. Some lawyers are willing to settle for a “lowball” offer from the other side, because they are more interested in volume than in results, or because they don’t have the skills and experience to maximize the value of your claim.

• They make you think they are on your side
• They low-ball your claims
• They take advantage of your financial distress
• They blame the victim

• Never agree to a settlement for your injury claim without knowing if it’s fair.
• As soon as possible, contact an experienced lawyer that understands the entire insurance system, and the tactics used by defense lawyers and insurance companies.
• Educate yourself about the process and ask questions. You need to make sure your rights are protected.
• Hold your ground and assume the insurance company will most likely delay handling your claim, deny you were hurt and defend their decision in a court battle.

In general, you have three years from the act of negligence causing your injury to file a medical malpractice lawsuit in Maine. However, there are a number of special circumstances that can shorten or extend that timeframe. The only way to know for sure is to speak with an experienced medical malpracitce lawyer as soon as possible.

In general, you have six years from the date of your injury to file a personal injury lawsuit in Maine. However, there are a number of special circumstances that can shorten or extend that time frame. The only way to know for sure about your specific case is to speak with an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible.

In general, you have six years from the date of incident to file a personal injury lawsuit in Maine.

In general, you have two years from the date of death to file a personal injury lawsuit in Maine.

Once a general practice firm, Berman & Simmons now specializes on personal injury, medical malpractice, product liability, dangerous drugs and medical devices, and complex trial matters.

• Immediate, high quality medical care is essential after a spinal cord injury. Victims should avoid any movement while first responders and doctors oversee your care.
• After your immediate symptoms have been addressed and you are in a stable condition, doctors will work with you and your family to create a detailed plan for your recovery. This may include additional surgeries, medications, physical therapy, and other components.
• Emotional and mental health supports are also essential following a spinal cord injury. Individuals should consider a range of therapies to maintain a positive outlook, as depression and anxiety are common for SCI survivors.

• Economic damages include damages that can be calculated or fairly estimated, such as past and future medical expenses, lost wages and lost earnings potential. Expert witnesses can testify about how the injury impacted the person’s ability to earn a living in the future. These type of damages are sometimes referred to as “out of pocket” expenses.
• Non-economic damages compensate victims for losses that are much harder to assign a specific dollar amount. Pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, emotinal distress, the loss of companionship from a loved one, or permanent loss of function or permanent disfigurement are all types of non-economic damages.

When you're considering hiring a medical malpractice lawyer to represent you, here are a few questions you should ask:

• Have you had success representing clients in cases similar to mine?
• Does your firm have the financial resources to take on my case?
• If necessary, are you prepared to take my case to trial?
• What are some of the results you have obtained?

When you're considering hiring a personal injury lawyer to represent you, here are a few questions you should ask:

• Have you had success representing clients in cases similar to mine?
• Does your firm have the financial resources to take on my case?
• If necessary, are you prepared to take my case to trial?
• What are some of the results you have obtained?

Absolutely not. You will not have to confront your doctor, healthcare provider or medical facility. We will take on that responsibility for you.

If you’ve been in a serious accident, there are many benefits to seeking legal counsel as soon as possible after your injury has occurred. Here are some reasons why hiring a good personal injury lawyer early is in your best interest.

• Time is of the essence as Maine has strict deadlines for filing many personal injury claims.
• The at fault driver’s liability insurance company is not on your side and, undoubtedly, is already investigating and reconstructing the accident on its own in an effort to avoid or deflect responsibility. You need expert counsel to make sure the insurer does not take advantage of you.
• Critical witnesses may become unavailable and supportive evidence may be lost or degrade with time. Therefore, it is important to hire a law firm that can immediately and thoroughly investigate the accident, talk with eye witnesses, preserve evidence, and, as necessary, hire appropriate experts to help evaluate and support your case.
• You need an experienced team to help you navigate the medical care you need and relieve some of the financial pressures you may confront by identifying all potential insurance options and negotiating with creditors.
• Hiring a lawyer early can provide much needed peace of mind so you can focus on your recovery.

• First, be sure all parties involved are safe and out of danger. Then move your car if it is causing a hazard; otherwise leave it where it is and turn on hazard lights.
• Call 911 to immediately report the accident to police, even if you think the damage is minor. Stay close to your vehicle until police arrive.
• Remain calm and polite, but do not apologize or admit fault.
• Gather pertinent information from other driver and any witnesses.
• Photograph vehicle damage and any visible injuries. Write down your recollections about the event.
• Get the name and badge number of all responding officers, and ask for police report.
• Seek immediate medical attention for your injuries, even if you think they are minor.
• Contact an experienced personal injury lawyer.
• Report the accident to your insurer. Do not give a signed or recorded statement to your insurer before talking with your lawyer.
• Do not discuss the accident with any representative of the other driver’s insurance company before talking with your lawyer.

• Pain, suffering, and emotional distress, past and future
• Interference with your enjoyment of life
• Medical expenses, past and future
• Time lost from work
• Loss of future earnings
• Damage or total loss of your vehicle

• Conduct adequate clinical trials and other testing as the FDA requires
• Clearly explain the risks and benefits of their products to healthcare providers and consumers
• Continue to test their products for safety

There are a number of reasons why medications can be dangerous, including:

• Drug companies sometimes fail to conduct the studies needed to identify risks that emerge after approval.
• Failure by a drug manufacturer to properly warn the medical community and consumers about risks.
• Marketing of medication for uses not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

More than 30 dangerous drugs have been approved and later taken off the market because of serious health risks since the 1970s. These drugs have killed or seriously injured thousands of Americans. Dozens of other dangerous drugs remain available. Some of them come with warnings from the FDA, but those warnings are not always clear or well communicated.

All of these failures come back to the basic principle of accountability. Drug manufacturers can and should be held legally accountable if they put consumers at risk.

Mass tort categories typically fall into three types:

• Prescription drugs
• Product liability, which includes medical devices: Claims typically fall into three categories: 1) defective manufacture, 2) defective design, 3) failure to provide adequate warnings or instructions concerning the proper use of a product.
• Toxic contamination: Also known as “toxic torts,” these cases involve hazardous pollutants or chemicals that have poisoned people.

Mass tort cases require extraordinary resources and highly sophisticated knowledge. It takes an understanding and mastery of varied and complex subject matter and theories of liability and damages, the time necessary to review and process thousands of case documents, and the ability to work with many witnesses and experts. Our lawyers have the skills and tenacity to prepare a mass tort case no matter how complex.

According to the FDA, generic drugs are required to have the same active ingredient, strength, dosage form, and route of administration as the original brand-name drug. All manufacturing, packaging, and testing sites must also pass the same quality standards as the brand-name drug.

The Supreme Court has determined that generic drug makers are not liable for any negative side effects; the original manufacturer is. (See PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U.S. 604 and Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartless, 570 U.S. 2468.)

• Review records – We examine statements from claimants and their medical records to identify the device or drug and injuries.
• Injury consistency – We check for similarity of injuries among those harmed by drugs or devices as evidence for the claim and categorize the cases to understand any shared characteristics.
• Federal court filing – Individual cases are consolidated to speed up processing and information gathering.
• Bellwether trials – A small group of lawsuits, chosen from a larger group of similar cases, are tried first. The results can determine the potential outcomes of future cases. As an example, C.R. Bard, the maker of the inferior vena cava (IVC) filter G2, will pay plaintiff Sherr-Una Booker $3.6 million for injuries she suffered from the device and for failure to warn about its dangers in the first IVC "bellwether" case to go to trial.
• Settlement – This occurs when both parties enter negotiations to settle the claims, and any proposed agreements are presented to claimants to decide whether they will accept them or proceed to a trial.

Because mass tort claims can involve multiple plaintiffs, they can take longer than  typical personal injury cases. Generally, these cases take years before resolution.

There are statutes of limitations in medical device and dangerous drug cases, so it’s important to contact a lawyer as soon as possible if you believe you have a claim.

Under state and federal law, victims of dangerous drugs have the right to recover financial damages for various categories of loss, including:

• Current and future medical bills
• Lost work time related to your injury
• Disability and disfigurement
• Pain and suffering
• Mental and emotional damages

If you have been harmed by a dangerous drug or a defective medical device, we are prepared to stand up for you and your family. Our team of experienced lawyers will hold companies accountable and make sure you receive full compensation for the harm done to you.

In class action lawsuits, several plaintiffs who sue a defendant are grouped together into one “class.” One or a few plaintiffs can be named as representatives of the class. For instance, a class action lawsuit can occur when several consumers sue an automaker for producing faulty auto parts.

Mass tort cases can be grouped together only for pretrial proceedings and become multidistrict litigation for federal trials, and then the individual cases may be tried later in their original state jurisdictions. MDL is a way to speed up processing and information gathering.

Mass tort cases stem from a defective drug or device on the market that harms many people. Multidistrict litigation occurs when individual mass tort cases are combined to streamline the legal process. Class actions, however, do not always involve injury claims and cover one complaint with common characteristics.

As a statewide law firm, our headquarters are on Lisbon Street in Lewiston and we also have offices in Portland and Bangor, Maine.

• keep aerosol cans far away from heat sources or anything flammable
• avoid storing aerosol cans near heat or open flames
• avoid cooking with grease; some cooking spray accidents have involved grease fires
• consider healthier alternatives to non-stick cooking oil sprays such as olive oil, butter or other natural oils
• apply cooking spray to pans or food at a safe distance away from heat
• if you ever catch fire from an exploding cooking spray can, "stop, drop, and roll” by slowly lowering yourself to the floor and rolling in a safe place that won’t cause major damage to extinguish the flames.

Some LTD policies will terminate benefits after two years if you are able to work at “any occupation.” Despite what it sounds like, this does not mean your benefits will be terminated if you can work at any job whatsoever. “Any occupation” means an occupation that compensates you at a reasonable rate and is related to your skills, training, education, and experience.

If you purchased an individual LTD policy or if you work in a highly specialized profession, you may have an “own occupation” policy. This type of policy provides benefits when you are no longer able to work in your specific field or sub-specialty.

The Employment Retirement Security Act, first passed by Congress in 1974, protects and regulates retirement, short term disability, long term disability, and other benefits provided by employers to workers. If your LTD policy was provided through your employer, ERISA law probably applies. There are exceptions to this, and whether your policy is an individual policy or an ERISA governed employer-provided policy is not always obvious.

ERISA is a complex body of law consisting of federal statute, regulations, and court decisions.

• fibromyalgia
• lupus
• juvenile idiopathic arthritis
• osteoarthritis
• shingles
• Kawasaki disease (aka mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome)
• vasculitis
• rheumatoid arthritis

• a visual field test to check if blind spots have developed
• OCT imaging, three-dimensional photography done to look for early retinal damage
• a multifocal test (electroretinography) to see any retinal decay and how the cells respond to light

• Muscle control and coordination
• Body movement
• Reflexes
• Muscle tone
• Motor skills
• Learning
• Sight
• Hearing

• Not yielding the right of way to a cyclist when making a right or left turn.
• Driving or drifting into the bike lane.
• Failing to accommodate a bicyclist who must ride in traffic due to a lack of shoulder or bike lane.
• Failing to stop at a stop sign or red light.
• "Dooring," a situation in which a driver or passenger opens a door without looking over a shoulder or in the rearview mirror, resulting in the bicyclist not having time to take evasive action and colliding with the door.
• Sideswipes.
• Road rage.

• Anesthesia complications.
• Failure to diagnose oral diseases or cancers.
• Injuries to oral nerves.
• Improper placement of crowns and bridges.
• Improper tooth extraction, including extracting the wrong tooth, unnecessary extraction of healthy teeth, and extractions that cause nerve or gum damage.
• Root canal injuries.
• Errors causing nerve damage to face, lips, jaw, or tongue.
• Infections from improper sterilization of instruments and equipment.

• Bodily injury liability.
• Property damage liability.
• Collision.
• Comprehensive.
• Uninsured motorist protection.
• Underinsured motorist protection.
• Medical payments.

• Distracted driving.
• Fatigue.
• Impaired driving.
• Speed.
• Lack of experience.
• Failure to obey traffic rules.
• Poor judgment.

• Filing your claim with the relevant insurance companies.
• Fielding communications from insurance representatives.
• Obtaining physical copies of police reports and medical documentation.
• Negotiating with opposing counsel.
• Filing your case in court.
• Drafting and opposing all legal paperwork.
• Compiling evidence and formulating arguments.
• Bring your case to trial and arguing your case in court.

• A timeline of events;
• Names of facilities and physicians that provided treatments;
• Relevant symptoms and diagnoses;
• Dates of missed work;
• Details of other losses you may have suffered.

• The impact of the injury on your life and livelihood;
• The amount of medical bills;
• The length of treatment required to repair your injuries;
• Invasiveness of treatment, including whether the injury required surgery;
• How the injury impacts your life expectancy;
• Whether you were at fault for the accident.

• The impact of the injury on your life and livelihood.
• The amount of medical bills;
• The length of treatment required to repair it;
• The invasiveness of treatment, including whether the injury required surgery;
• How the injury impacts your life expectancy;
• Whether you were at fault for the accident.

• Pain, suffering, and emotional distress
• Medical expenses
• Loss of future earnings
• Interference with your enjoyment of life 
• Time lost from work

• Many states have strict deadlines for filing personal injury claims
• Witnesses may become unavailable and evidence may be lost over time
• You should only be focusing on recovery 
• The other insurance company is likely already building their client’s case against you
• You’ll need help navigating your medical care and dealing with financial pressures

• Tailgating 
• Inattention
• Drunk or impaired driving
• Speeding
• Distracted driving
• Use of cell-phones

• Whiplash
• Brain injuries or concussions
• Arm and wrist injuries 
• Facial injuries 
• Spinal cord injuries 
• Broken bones and fractured ribs 
• Foot and ankle injuries

• Speeding
• Distracted driving
• Disobeying traffic rules
• Driving under the influence
• Driving tired
• Failing to drive safely in dangerous weather conditions

• Galactosemia

• Lysosomal Storage Disorders

• Maple Syrup Urine Disease

• Metal Metabolism Disorders, Such as Wilson’s Disease

• Phenylketonuria

• Other Fatty Acid Oxidation or Urine Organic Acid Disorders

• Medical expenses for your child’s care.
• Rehabilitation, therapy, or special education costs.
• Out-of-pocket expenses from your child’s condition.
• Pain and suffering for your child.
• Disability damages.
• Other damages.

• birth injuries
• failure to diagnose cancer
• failure to diagnose heart conditions
• failure to diagnose other conditions
• failure to diagnose Plaquenil toxicity
• failure to treat
• surgery and anesthesia
• dental malpractice
• nursing home injuries

• Seatbelts
• Airbags
• Door Latch Mechanisms 
• Fuel Pump
• Steering components
• Braking systems
• Windows 
• Tires
• Windshield wipers
• Headlights and taillights

• Never using a tool that is defective
• Double checking tools prior to use to make sure they work efficiently
• Make sure all defective tools are repaired or replaced

• Not reading the operator’s manual 
• Improper maintaining of the equipment
• Bad electrical connection
• Overrunning machines
• Not replacing old parts 
• Having misaligned or broken tighteners 
• Failure to store the equipment correctly 
• Weather related problems
• Ignoring warning labels 
• Inexperienced/untrained operators

• Unclear prescriptions
• Incorrect labels on pill bottles
• Failure to warn a patient about side effects
• Incorrectly administering too high of a dose
• Prescribing a medication that has an adverse reaction with another medication

• Mistakes in administering medication 
• Incorrect use of antipsychotic medication
• Physical assault
• Sexual abuse 
• Dehydration
• Incorrect or negligent care of people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia
• Mistreatment or negligence leading to injury
• Bedsores
• Malnutrition
• Drops and falls that were avoidable 
• Improper use of restraints
• Illegal discharging of patients

• Make sure that the injured person is safe, or make the situation safe if possible. 
• Dial 911 when you are able to do so. 
• Carry out first aid as needed.

• The development of autoimmune disorders 
• The development of thyroid disease
• An increase in cholesterol levels
• Decreased fertility and birth complications
• Ulcerative colitis 
• Liver damage
• High blood pressure during pregnancy 
• The development of testicular, kidney, and prostate cancer

• Call 911 to report the accident
• Write down the name of the other driver, as well as their license, registration, and insurance information. 
• Note any witnesses to the accident and get their information too if possible.
• Get medical help for your injuries immediately
• Take photographs of your injuries and damage to the vehicles
• Contact an attorney
• Report the accident to your insurer, but don’t give any statements before talking to an attorney
• Don’t talk to anyone from the other driver’s insurance company before getting advice from an attorney

• Conducting daily surveys of the premises, looking for possible dangers. These can include ripped carpeting, uneven flooring, or wet surfaces. 
• Consistently maintain all floors and walkways
• Immediately address problems by putting up appropriate warning signs and remedying the issue as soon as possible
• Train all employees in slip and fall safety, including how to appropriately respond to injured persons
• Regularly check and maintain outdoor areas, including sidewalks and parking lots
• Document all of your efforts

• Construction accidents
• Exposure to toxic materials
• Accidents resulting from transportation
• Fires
• Explosions
• Repetitive motions
• Industrial accidents
• Accidents resulting from heavy machinery
• Electrocution
• Falling objects
• Workplace violence

• Wearing personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Take frequent breaks/enforce breaks
• Have clear, easy to read warning signs
• Take care of all equipment properly
• Have regular safety meetings
• Perform regular safety inspections
• Give employees proper training
• Create a stress free work environment
• Use safe storage solutions for toxic materials
• Have fall protection protocol in place

• Socializing your dog regularly 
• Being a responsible owner, including training and exercising your dog
• Educating your family about how to properly approach a dog
• Avoiding risky situations, such as approaching a dog when it is alone, injured, or eating
• Reading a dog’s body language, especially it is seems frightened or stressed

• Battery
• Assault (physical or sexual)
• False imprisonment
• Trespassing 
• Infliction of emotional distress

• Access to firearms 
• History of violence
• Alcoholism
• Mental illness
• Poverty

• Legal malpractice 
• Real estate agent malpractice 
• Funeral home malpractice 
• Accounting malpractice
• Engineering malpractice

• A duty owed to the client/patient
• A breach of duty owed to the client/patient
• Being able to foresee the consequences 
• A direct consequence of injury
• The extent of the injury itself
• The extent of other damages