Massachusetts personal injury lawyers say they expect to see an influx of slip-and-fall claims stemming from this winter's record snowfall and ice, both of which have been so extreme that they may make such cases harder to win.
David White of Breakstone, White and Gluck in Boston said his firm has received at least 50 percent more claims this winter.
"We've never had as many phone calls as we've had this year," said White, former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. "Some of them are slips and falls; others are people being hit by snow and ice falling off buildings."
Other attorneys, such as Frank Antonucci of Springfield, said he has yet to see a large increase in claims, but that doesn't surprise him.
"People with catastrophic injuries don't run to a lawyer; they go to the doctor," Antonucci said. "If there's an increase, I probably won't start to see it until around April. Hopefully, someone in the family was smart enough to take photos (of the scene and the injuries)."
Even with such evidence, he said, negligence may be hard to prove this year. In the past, Massachusetts property owners were liable only for injuries caused by "unnatural" accumulations of snow or ice, such as water pouring down the gutter of a house and freezing on the sidewalk, causing someone to slip and fall, White said.
But in 2010, the state's highest court held owners to a higher standard. Because of the availability of everything from salt and sand to shovels, snowblowers and plows, owners have a duty to take "reasonable care" to clear their property of snow and ice, the court ruled.
During most winters, that would make personal injury cases easier to win if someone failed to shovel his sidewalk or plow his driveway, said Robert Feinberg of Feinberg and Alban in Boston.
"It has definitely changed the landscape," he said, "because proving an unnatural accumulation was not always possible."
This year, however, the snow and ice have been so difficult to clear "that it could affect the calculus of what's reasonable," Feinberg said.
"In general, the more severe the injury is, the more likely a jury would be to give the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt" in the small percentage of cases that go to trial, said Scott Tucker, a defense attorney and partner in the Boston firm Tucker, Saltzman and Dyer.
"But in a year like this, everybody realizes sometimes your best efforts aren't enough," Tucker said. "I think jurors will be more likely to identify with the defendant who wasn't able to keep up with this winter's unrelenting storms because there's a good chance the jurors weren't able to, either. There's a whole lot of, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' "
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