Social Host Liability in Massachusetts

Social host liability law in Massachusetts. Good afternoon. I'm Neil Burns. I'm an attorney here at Six Beacon Street and along with my partner Roshan Jain, we represent victims of car accidents, motor vehicle accidents of all types and premises liability cases, including social host liability cases.

So these are cases where, not a commercial establishment like a restaurant, but an individual or a family invites someone over to their home, to their boat, to their Airbnb, to their apartment and says, let's have a gathering. Let's have a party. And 99% of the time these things work out. There's no problem, there's no injuries.

Certainly don't involve lawyers if there is a minor injury, but sometimes there is a problem, there is an injury. What do we look for when we're representing victims, we look for the reasonableness of the situation. If there were minors involved and adults understood this was to be the case and alcohol was served, this is of course a red flag. You're liable, you're responsible.

We would represent the victim in that case. Most cases don't involve minors. They tend to get a lot of notoriety, but most cases don't. Alcohol can be a factor. If you know someone's drunk and you let them drive home or even impaired, you can be responsible. But more importantly, let's look at what tends to happen in real cases as opposed to the ones that we see in the media.

It tends to be that you have a defective railing, a defective walkway or driveway. Your lighting isn't good, somebody falls and gets hurt, leaving your house. These are ways that we represent victims because there's a responsibility there. A rock wall that falls over. Again, a light that's not on and somebody walks to their vehicle and there's a hole they fall in or they hit a curb or they hit a pole because it's in the way.

These are things that we look for as liability attorneys, protecting the rights of those that are injured. If you are a victim of a social host liability type case, if you went to a party or a loved one went to a party, or an event, it doesn't have to be a party, a social, a luncheon. Please give us a call if you are injured.

We have a lot of experience with this. We've represented minors, we've represented adults, we've represented elderly people, we've represented all sorts of people who are injured. We've represented families since 1985. So if you've been injured, you know someone that's been injured, give us a call. Burns and Jain, 617-227-7423.

Thank you.