When a Broken Bone Changes Everything
Attorney John J. Sheehan helps Boston fracture victims recover full compensation after construction accidents, car crashes, and workplace injuries.
A fractured bone isn't just a temporary inconvenience. Surgery, months of physical therapy, permanent hardware implants, chronic pain, and the inability to return to manual labor can devastate your family's finances. Whether you broke your leg in a scaffolding collapse, shattered your wrist in a car accident on the Mass Pike, or suffered crush fractures in a workplace incident, you deserve compensation that reflects the true cost of your injury.
Attorney Sheehan has represented Boston fracture victims since 1993, fighting for workers who depend on their physical health to earn a living. He understands that a "simple" break can mean permanent disability for construction workers, warehouse employees, and manual laborers throughout Massachusetts.
Fractures We Handle
- Construction site fractures — Falls from heights, caught-between accidents, struck-by incidents, and scaffolding collapses, causing severe breaks.
- Car accident fractures — High-impact collisions on I-93, Route 1, Storrow Drive, and throughout Boston, causing leg, arm, pelvis, and spinal fractures.
- Workplace fractures — Slip and fall accidents, machinery incidents, and crush injuries in warehouses, factories, and industrial facilities.
- Hip and femur fractures — Life-altering breaks requiring surgery, extended hospitalization, and permanent mobility limitations.
- Compound fractures — Open breaks that pierce the skin, with a high risk of infection and often requiring surgical intervention.
- Crush fractures — Comminuted breaks where bones shatter into multiple pieces, requiring reconstruction.
Unlike minor sprains or bruises that heal quickly, fractures require immediate emergency care, often surgical intervention, extensive rehabilitation, and frequently leave permanent limitations. Attorney Sheehan fights for compensation that covers your complete medical costs, lost income during months of recovery, and the permanent impact on your earning capacity if you cannot return to physical work.
Understanding Your Fracture Injury
Not all broken bone injuries are the same — Attorney Sheehan helps you understand what you're facing:
Simple (closed) fractures break the bone without piercing your skin. While less immediately dramatic than compound fractures, simple breaks still require proper alignment, immobilization, and often surgical pinning or plating. Recovery typically takes 6 to 12 weeks, but complications can significantly prolong healing.
Compound (open) fractures break through your skin, creating serious infection risks and requiring immediate surgical intervention. These fractures almost always require surgery to clean the wound, realign the bone fragments, and place hardware. Recovery takes 4 to 6 months minimum, with higher rates of complications including infection, non-union, and permanent nerve damage.
- Transverse fractures break straight across the bone and typically occur from direct impact. These often heal well with proper treatment but require 8 to 12 weeks of immobilization.
- Oblique fractures break at an angle, making bone alignment more difficult and increasing the likelihood of surgical intervention with pins, plates, or rods.
- Comminuted fractures shatter bone into multiple fragments. Common in high-impact accidents like construction site falls or severe car crashes, these fractures always require surgery and frequently result in permanent limitations. Recovery takes 6 to 12 months with significant rehabilitation.
- Greenstick fractures occur when bone bends and partially breaks, and are more common in younger workers. While these sound less serious, improper healing can cause permanent deformity and chronic pain.
- Non-union occurs when your fracture fails to heal properly, leaving a gap in the bone. This requires additional surgery, bone grafting, and extended recovery. Non-union is more common in smokers, diabetics, and workers who cannot afford to take proper time off for healing.
- Malunion occurs when your bone heals in the wrong position, leading to chronic pain, limited mobility, and arthritis. Correcting malunion requires surgically breaking and resetting the bone.
- Nerve damage from fractures can cause permanent numbness, weakness, or chronic pain syndromes. Fractures near joints often damage surrounding nerves, creating lasting complications beyond the bone injury itself.
- Infection in compound fractures or surgical sites can destroy bone tissue, require removal of hardware, and extend recovery by months. Severe infections sometimes lead to amputation.
Attorney Sheehan works with orthopedic specialists who document these complications, ensuring your settlement reflects the full scope of your injury, not just the initial break.
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The True Cost of Your Fracture
Attorney Sheehan fights for compensation that covers your complete damages:
An emergency room evaluation at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, or Boston Medical Center typically costs $2,000 to $5,000 for X-rays, CT scans, reduction procedures, and casting. When emergency surgery is required to place pins, plates, or rods, your bill can jump to $20,000 to $40,000 for the operating room, anesthesia, implants, and overnight hospitalization.
Outpatient follow-up appointments, additional imaging to monitor healing, and hardware removal surgeries can add $5,000 to $15,000 to your medical bills over 6 to 12 months of treatment.
Most fractures require 8 to 16 weeks of physical therapy after cast removal or surgical healing. At $150 to $300 per session, 2 to 3 times weekly, rehabilitation can cost $5,000 to $15,000. Workers with fracture injuries that leave permanent limitations need ongoing therapy indefinitely.
Occupational therapy to relearn basic tasks, vocational rehabilitation to train for new careers when physical work is impossible, and pain management treatment for chronic post-fracture pain add tens of thousands in additional costs.
Construction workers, warehouse employees, delivery drivers, and manual laborers cannot perform their jobs while wearing casts or surgical hardware, or while undergoing rehabilitation. Even "simple" fractures require 6 to 12 weeks off work. Complex fractures requiring surgery keep you out 4 to 6 months minimum.
At the median construction wage of $28/hour in Mass, missing three months costs over $13,000 in lost income. Miss six months and you've lost $26,000. Workers' compensation replaces only 60% of your wages, leaving significant financial gaps that third-party injury claims must fill.
Many fracture victims cannot return to their previous physical occupations. Chronic pain, permanent hardware, limited range of motion, and arthritis prevent construction work, warehouse jobs, and other manual labor. The difference between your previous wages and what you can earn in sedentary work represents hundreds of thousands in lifetime losses.
A 45-year-old construction worker earning $60,000 annually who must take a $35,000 desk job due to permanent leg fracture limitations loses $25,000 per year. Over 20 remaining work years, that's $500,000 in lost earning capacity, compensation workers' compensation doesn't provide, but third-party personal injury claims do.
Workers' compensation provides medical care and partial wages but pays nothing for your pain, suffering, permanent scarring, inability to play with your children, or lost enjoyment of activities you loved. Only third-party personal injury claims recover these damages.
Attorney Sheehan documents how your fracture actually changed your life, not just the clinical description of your injury and treatment in the medical records. You deserve compensation for the chronic pain keeping you awake, depression from forced career changes, inability to coach your kids' soccer team, and constant reminders of your injury and the limitations it causes.
Your Legal Options After a Boston Fracture
Attorney Sheehan pursues every available avenue for maximum compensation:
Workers' Compensation for Workplace Fractures
If you broke bones at work, Massachusetts workers' compensation covers your medical treatment regardless of who was at fault. This includes emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, prescription medications, and medical equipment like crutches or wheelchairs.
You also receive temporary total disability benefits equaling 60% of your average weekly wage while unable to work during recovery. If your fracture causes permanent limitations (common with serious breaks), you receive permanent partial disability benefits based on the medical rating of your impairment.
Critical protection: Your immigration status does NOT affect workers' compensation rights in Massachusetts. Undocumented workers receive the same benefits as citizens. Attorney-client privilege protects all information you share with Attorney Sheehan, and filing workers' compensation claims does not alert immigration authorities.
Third-Party Personal Injury Claims
When someone OTHER than your employer caused your fracture, you can pursue a third-party personal injury lawsuit for unlimited damages beyond workers' compensation's limited benefits.
Common third-party scenarios:
- Construction site accidents where general contractors or subcontractors (not your direct employer) caused unsafe conditions leading to your fall and fractures.
- Car accidents involving negligent drivers who caused crashes on I-93, Route 1, the Mass Pike, or throughout Boston streets are particularly common when you're driving for work.
- Defective equipment from manufacturers whose faulty scaffolding, ladders, power tools, or safety equipment failed and caused fracture injuries.
- Property owners who maintained dangerous conditions at buildings, renovation sites, or properties where you were working, especially in Boston's many old building renovation projects.
- Utility companies that failed to mark underground utilities, improperly maintained electrical systems, or created hazardous conditions, resulting in electrocution and fall-related fractures.
Third-party claims recover 100% of lost wages (not 60%), full pain and suffering compensation, complete future medical costs, loss of earning capacity, and impact on your family, including damages unavailable through workers' compensation alone.
How Attorney Sheehan Maximizes Your Recovery
Attorney Sheehan files workers' compensation claims immediately to secure medical coverage and partial wage replacement while investigating whether third parties share liability for your fracture. When third-party liability exists, he uses his advanced knowledge and skill to pursue both claims simultaneously, ensuring you receive quick workers' compensation benefits while building the strongest possible personal injury case for maximum total compensation payout.
Most Boston fracture victims don't realize they have third-party claims. Attorney Sheehan's comprehensive investigation identifies every potentially liable party, holds them accountable, and ensures you receive the full compensation you deserve, not just limited workers' compensation benefits.
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