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The families of Amy Rademaker, 15, and Natasha Weigel, 18, have agreed to take the wrongful death settlement offers made to them by General Motors from its victim compensation fund. Weigel and Rademaker were killed following a 2006 car crash involving a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt that appears to have been caused by an ignition defect. The air bags did not deploy. Megan Ungars-Kerns, who was 17 at the time and the one driving the vehicle, sustained serious brain damage.

GM established its victim compensation fund for the injury victims and the families of people killed in motor vehicle crashes caused by its faulty ignition switches. Some 2.6 million autos have been recalled because of the safety issue.

How much GM will decide to offer to each party will depend on the victim’s age, earning potential, family duties, and medical costs. According to The Washington Post, one 10-year-old who became a paraplegic in a GM car crash involving ignition problems was offered $7.8 million.

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According to elder advocates, the state’s Executive Office of Elder Affairs, which oversees some 224 facilities, is not properly equipped to protect Massachusetts assisted living residents, who are too often at risk of getting hurt. The Boston Globe reports that assisted living residences in the state are not as tightly regulated as nursing homes. However, many elderly persons-about 13,700 people-are choosing this housing alternative because it is less expensive than the cost of living in a nursing home.

Typically assisted living residents are elderly adults who need help cooking, bathing, or with other daily tasks but can otherwise live independently. Yet because of not enough supervision and inadequate staffing, this type of living situation ultimately could prove more hurtful than helpful.

The Globe says that about 100 incidents in assisted living facilities, including those involving elder abuse and deadly falls, are reported to the Elder Affairs office every week. Some recent incidents include a Stoughton fall accident involving a dementia patient who wandered into a room and fell out of a window on the second floor, a Framingham elder abuse case involving two staffers that allegedly assaulted two Alzheimer patients and filmed a third resident that wasn’t full clothed, and a Revere trip and fall accident involving a man who fell in the bathroom and bled to death before help finally arrived.

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Ford Motor Co. recalled nearly 850,000 vehicles, including two of its most popular models, last week over concerns that an electrical glitch could cause the vehicle’s air bags to malfunction during an accident.

According to reports by the Wall Street Journal, the Michigan automaker recalled 2013 and 2014 model year Ford sedans, Escape crossovers, C-Max hybrids and the Lincoln MKZ luxury cards sold in North America, Canada and Mexico. The reasoning behind the recall was that the vehicle’s restraint control module has the potential to disable both front and side curtain airbags during a crash, which ultimately would increase the risk for injury for passengers. The shortage would illuminate the vehicle’s air bag warning light. The company stated that at the present time, it is unaware of any accidents that have been caused by the suspected malfunction.
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Two men were tragically killed on Sunday afternoon while doing a tandem skydive at a Cape Cod Airfield in Marstons Mills.

The maneuver, which is generally considered very safe, involves an experienced skydiving instructor strapped behind a novice skydiving student. Together the pair will jump from an aircraft and descend under a large parachute.

On Sunday, around 5 p.m., this routine jump turned horribly wrong when the men performing the maneuver missed their landing spot on the airfield and crashed into a shed in the backyard of a residence across the street. The student, a 29-year-old from Nantucket, and the instructor, 48, of West Lynnwood, Washington, suffered fatal injuries during the fall.

The cause of the accident has been attributed to complications with the parachute. According to reports by the Boston Globe, the student’s friend, who had also jumped, said witnesses told her that the pair’s parachute had in fact opened, but had become tangled. Officials believe the pair eventually lost control before hitting the shed. The woman also reported that while up to altitude, “both instructors were complaining how this was their 16th jump of the day, and both of them were saying they were tired but had two more to go,” according to The Boston Globe.

Investigators are hoping that some footage shot from the sports camera of one of the men will provide some evidence as to exactly what happened. D.A. for the Cape & Islands Michael O’Keefe said he believes that this was just a tragic accident. The FAA is currently in the process of leading the investigation to determine how the jumpers veered off course and crashed.
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The estate of Monique Miller is suing the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department, unnamed deputies, and a corrections officer for her Framingham, MA wrongful death. Miller, a 42-year-old woman with five children, died of a drug overdose while at the MCI-Framingham correctional facility. She was imprisoned over drug and shoplifting charges.

According to her family, Miller snorted heroin while in custody. She was then allowed to remain facedown on the floor of her cell for hours even though she obviously needed medical help. The plaintiffs are accusing corrections officer Nancy Padvaiskas and the other defendants of “deliberate indifference” and violating the prohibition related to unusual and cruel punishment. Their Massachusetts wrongful death case also accuses the sheriff’s deputies of not supervising the prisoners under their care, failing to stop drug use by inmates, and not noticing that there were inmates under the influence of drugs.

During transport for a court appearance last year, Miller and other prisoners snorted heroin while in Cambridge. The drug came from another prisoner, who was also concealing the sedative Seroquel.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission said it expects to pay over $30 million to a whistleblower. This is the largest SEC whistleblower award issued under the whistleblower program, which was established under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. The agency is keeping the specifics of the case under wraps. However, the regulator acknowledged that the recipient is someone who lives outside the United States.

Under the program, the SEC may give the whistleblower 10 – 30% of the award collected if the information provided was original and substantial enough that it led to the enforcement action and resulted in sanctions of over $1 million.

To date the SEC has issued awards to approximately 15 informations. This informant is the fourth one located overseas.

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Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is under investigation over allegations that some of its members inserted date rape drugs into the beverages of party attendees. According to police, several of the girls who attended the festivities had trouble standing or walking and experienced lapses in memory afterwards. Two of them had to go to the hospital. All of them had a red X on one of their hands, which was drawn on them while they were at the party.

Putting the drug Rohypnol, also known as a roofie, into someone ‘s drink has become a means of incapacitating someone prior to sexual assault. According to the search warrant affidavit, one of the women accused the fraternity of also trying to roofie women at another party the night before. Others said that on Friday, cups were placed below the bar while the drinks were made. Tau Kappa Epsilon’s chapter at the university has been suspended pending the investigation’s findings.

This is the same fraternity that last year was investigated over allegations involving three sexual assaults. No charges were filed in those probes.

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A man whose common-law wife and twin daughters died during their delivery says he intends to sue the doctors involved for birthing malpractice. Tafari Brathwaite says they tried to deliver the babies naturally even though Victoria Rexach told them she needed a C-section.

At the time of the delivery, Rexach, 30, was 5 ½ months pregnant with the girls. The three of them died on August 28, 2014.

Rexach previously had two cesarean sections. Her doctor, a high-risk specialist, had said she should have the procedure again this time around. However, when Rexach went into labor prematurely, doctors at Richmond University Medical Center chose natural childbirth even though, contends her family, the hospital knew that she couldn’t deliver naturally. The believe Rexach would still be alive today if they had performed the surgery.

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A Massachusetts man was fatally injured last week in a tragic golf cart accident at a South Berwick, Maine golf course.

According to police reports and the Associated Press, the victim, who’d been playing at The Links at Outlook, was riding as a passenger in a golf cart when the driver lost control on a downhill portion of the cart path near the 14th hole. Both the driver and the victim were ejected from the cart; the cart then fell on and crushed the victim’s head. The driver received only minor injuries.

The victim is described as a 27-year-old male from Massachusetts. His name, nor were any other details about the accident, was not released. South Berwick Police Chief Dana Lajoie stated that blood was drawn at the scene from both the driver and victim to determine the men’s blood alcohol content.

Assuming that alcohol was a factor in this horrific accident, this situation could fall under the dram shop statute and liquor server liability law. According to Massacusetts General Laws, Chapter 231, Section 85T:

“In any action for personal injuries, property damage or consequential damages caused by or arising out of the negligent serving of alcohol to an intoxicated person by a licensee properly licensed under chapter 138 or by a person or entity serving alcohol as an incident of its business but for which no license is required, no such intoxicated person who causes injuries to himself, may maintain an action against the said licensee or person or entity in the absence of wilful, wanton, or reckless conduct on the part of the licensee or such person or entity.”
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With Massachusetts and other states seeking to join Washington and Colorado in legalizing the retail sales of marijuana for recreational purposes, safety advocates are worried that this could increase the number of traffic crash fatalities that happen. While it remains illegal everywhere in the country to drive while under the influence of pot, that doesn’t mean that people don’t do it-especially if it becomes more easily accessible.

According to studies, marijuana can interfere with multitasking, impair decision-making, and reduce peripheral vision, which are skills necessary for safe driving. However, unlike drunk drivers, motorists that are stoned tend to realize that they are impaired and may try to be more careful when behind the steering wheel. Still, like alcohol, marijuana seems to make a user more careless. Also, the more inexperienced a pot smoker is, the more likely he/she is to become impaired because no tolerance level has been built up.

Young adult males and teen boys are the groups most likely to smoke pot and then drive. They are also the ones most at risk of becoming involved in a traffic crash when under its influence.

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