Briggs & Wholey LLC - Statewide Trial Attorneys

02/21/2025

The MSBA's Law Day art poster and essay contests for 2025 are open now through April 15. All Maine students are eligible to participate Cash prizes for first and second place winners in both contests! FMI: mainebar.org/lawday

02/21/2025

AI and Legal Ethics: Listen Up Maine Lawyers

Today the Maine State Bar Association hosted a Webinar about ABA Opinion 512, and law-related artificial intelligence ethics issues. Attorney Thomas E. Spahn of McGuire Woods provided an excellent analysis in this worthwhile one hour session. Briefly, he outlined three important practice concerns to all lawyers when it comes to AI.
No. 1: Competence is Key. Make sure you know what you are relying on when you use AI. If drafting pleadings and citing cases, get back to basics and check the facts for accuracy. Look at what happened to lawyers from Morgan&Morgan who sued Walmart and included AI "hallucinations" of fictitious case citations in a pleading filed in Court. Yikes! https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-hallucinations-court-papers-spell-trouble-lawyers-2025-02-18/
No. 2: Communication: Let your clients know if you want to use AI, and make sure you document client permission. And, apparently, you cannot use boilerplate in a standard retainer agreement to cover this base. The communication about planned use of AI has to be separately OK'd by the client so that it is clear the client knew and understood what they were agreeing to. So the lawyer needs to know what the use is all about as well.
No. 3: Confidentiality: Plugging in confidential client information into a generative AI chatbot is dangerous. Who else has access to that? Can opposing counsel ask for everything put into a "public" AI platform? I don't know the answer to this, but I think opposing counsel are going to give it ride and see how it goes in discovery. Because fighting this discovery issue will be, for most defense law firms, a billable event. Beware.

U.S. personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan sent an urgent email this month to its more than 1,000 lawyers: Artificial intelligence can invent fake case law, and using made-up information in a court filing could get you fired.

01/07/2025

Good News for Americans with Medical Debt

Today’s final rule will remove $49 billion in unpaid medical bills from the credit reports of 15 million Americans. In addition, the Vice President is

08/29/2023

NEED A REAL LIFE PERSPECTIVE ON NEOS? If you are a law firm considering switching or migrating to NEOS, and want to know how it REALLY works from the CLIENT PERSPECTIVE, please feel free to give me a call at 207-596-1099. My law firm signed on to migrate to NEOS, and we are happy to share our progress in the process with YOU.

07/24/2023

Working for the USA taxpayer. When someone crashes into your car, and Medicare pays the bill, it's really taxpayers who are paying for your medical care. You paid into Medicare, and you deserve Medicare. But guess who has to pay back Medicare when the injury case settles. Yes, you. It is the law. And serious. But really, me working for you. It's called a Medicare "lien." Before paying back Medicare on your behalf, I spend attorney time (sometimes a lot of it) cross-checking to make sure that the amount Medicare says it paid for your crash injuries is accurate. It's illegal to knowingly underpay Medicare's lien. OK. But you don't want to over pay either. To complicate matters even more, some folks choose Medicare Advantage instead of Medicare. Medicare Advantage is not the same as regular private insurance. Medicare Advantage takes the place of Medicare. Some Mainers find this confusing because Medicare Advantage is offered by private companies such as UnitedHealthcare, MaineHealth, Aetna, Martin’s Point, Harvard Pilgrim, and many others. Clients ask "Why do I have to pay back my own insurance company?" Here's why: when a private insurer provides coverage in a “Medicare Advantage” program, the private insurer becomes just like the US government’s Medicare Center for Medicare Services. Medicare Advantage has the same Federal legal requirement for repayment of liens for benefits paid when a beneficiary is hurt by someone's negligence. So it's important to put Medicare Advantage on notice of the third party liability claim (such as a bad driver or negligent doctor) and our law firm's representation of the Medicare Advantage client. Final point and Latin lesson: some Medicare Advantage companies use a separate “subrogation” company to held collect the lien. A subrogation company lets a Medicare Advantage company (for example, UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage) use another company (for example, Optum) collect the Medicare Advantage lien amount. Optum stands in the place of another (latin: sub) such as UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage, and asks (latin-rogare) on behalf of UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage for the lien to be repaid when the case settles. It's important for a law firm to put every Medicare Advantage company’s subrogation company on notice of the third party liability claim and the attorney representation as well. Pretty exciting stuff, right?

07/17/2023

Dog Days of Summer. In Philadelphia to connect with North Carolina colleagues about the Camp, Lejeune, Justice, Act, and while there, stopped by the Puppy Pit~
Alison Wholey Briggs
American Association of Justice
Camp Lejeune Justice Section Member

06/14/2023

What Are Good First Steps for Mainers After A Healthcare Data Breach

If you are a Mainer, including for Medicare Gap coverage, and you have or had Harvard Pilgrim as your healthcare provider, check this out: Your personal information, - including social security number, Medicare number, date of birth, address, possibly email address and telephone number, and your medical information- may have been "infiltrated", a fancy word that means that HPHC's computer security, whatever that security was, didn't keep your sensitive info from being hacked between March 28th and April 17th. For those on "autopay", I'm not sure whether our autopay financial information might have been accessed. Hopefully it was encrypted sufficiently to be safe. It's a good question, though. Harvard Pilgrim hasn't provided me yet with a written list of all my personal data that was taken-but I have asked for a written list...
FIRST STEPS according to Harvard Pilgrim's NOTICE:
"Harvard Pilgrim has established a dedicated call center for individuals to contact with questions or concerns and for potentially impacted individuals to enroll in complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. If you have any questions regarding this incident, please contact the dedicated assistance line at IDX, which can be reached at 888-220-5517 (toll free), Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM ET, excluding U.S. holidays. If members have any questions about other issues unrelated to this ransomware incident or are being denied care, please call the number on the back of your Harvard Pilgrim member ID card for assistance."
Two class action lawsuits have already been filed in federal court in Massachusetts, one of them by a New Hampshire plaintiff.
But the first step is to limit your personal damage to credit and identity. More on this later. And please email me (a Harvard Pilgrim member who was affected too) at [email protected] if you would like to chat about this. Stay safe, Alison Briggs, Esq.

An investigation is ongoing, though the company said it is not aware of any information taken from the breach being used.

12/09/2022

Free Thinking. Thoughts on a dress down Friday at the office. Just want to roll your eyes when a doctor plays " Victim" after making a preventable mistake that ruins a life. Today I'm working on a file for a client whose worries about a medication were dissed by her doctor. She spoke up, but he didn't give her the choice that should have been hers to take-not his to withhold. Thank You to LifeFlight of Maine and Massachusetts General Hospital. They pulled her out of a death spin. But it was too late to bring back the life she had before. She (older, trusting) is so badly damaged she can't work, she can't drive, she can't even do her own cooking, play with her grandchildren . Nothing. I spent 5 years representing doctors and hospitals, and another 20 years representing patients and their families. Most doctors are wonderful healers and terrific people. If they make a rare mistake, they want to own up to it, fix their mistake, or make up for what can't be fixed. The few bad apples, the doctors who don't play fair.... they're just like all the blame-shifters you ever met since being a kid. Protect yourself from these guys. You can be fair to a doctor and also be heard. Do this: If you feel like your doctor is not listening to you-- and if you feel like you are too sick or too unsure of how to get your doctor to listen to you and give you choices--GET A PATIENT ADVOCATE to email or MyChart message, or FAX your concerns to the doctor so that he or she has a second chance to stop and reconsider your situation. That way you give the doctor, who may have been focused on someone else when you first spoke, a fair chance to reconsider. And you have a record of what you want done. Be sure- be very sure-- to have your patient advocate (or you, if you're doing it yourself) add these words to your note to the doctor: "Thank you for considering my [this patient] concern. The worry is that if the request isn't reconsidered, it could have bad consequences. Please make this note a part of the permanent patient medical record. I hope to hear from you." And give a phone number so the doctor can reach out and discuss. And good luck. Take care. Alison W. Briggs, RN, Briggs & Wholey, LLC.

Briggs & Wholey is a Statewide Maine Personal Injury Law Firm. Personal injury lawyer (car accidents, serious injury, medical malpractice)

12/02/2022

Wow- and Wonderful. Yesterday was a great day for my client. Here is what W.C. said on Google:
"This law firm is fantastic. Alison is a great attorney- smart, tough, no nonsense, thorough, detail-oriented, and incredibly efficient. My professional life, and possibly my freedom, depended on Alison’s defense. My nursing license unjustly came under attack by a dishonest and corrupt hospital administration and Alison defended me vigorously. She fought tooth and nail for me to maintain my license and my profession. She won my case and got all allegations dismissed outright by digging for the truth, holding the hospital responsible for their own incompetence and dishonesty, and fighting hard to prove my innocence.
I highly recommend Alison to any medical professional who needs to have their professional license defended. She is worth her weight in gold and I will be forever grateful for the amazing job she did. 5 stars for Briggs & Wholey, LLC"

Briggs & Wholey is a Statewide Maine Personal Injury Law Firm. Personal injury lawyer (car accidents, serious injury, medical malpractice)

10/20/2022

Nursing Home Owners. Federal money. Federal Rules. But not Federal Court? What ?? Why is this even being challenged? Nursing Home owners take federal money to make their nursing homes profitable. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's a good thing. What's right is this, too: The federal government says: You take federal $$$, you have to follow federal rules for the health and safety of patients under the Nursing Home Reform Act. So why is a Nebraska nursing home company that took federal $$$, in return for promising to follow federal law , cry-babying that it is being sued in Federal Court by folks who allege the nursing home didn't follow federal rules? Because, I suppose, they want the money without the responsibility. Hey, I get it. I own a business too. Smaller than a big nursing home chain, but still. It's a business. Following Maine law to keep our office safe for employees and clients, and making sure I have insurance in case I overlook something unsafe, that costs money and takes some attention. But like every other Maine small business owner, I have to. It's part of the deal of doing business. I think if I were taking federal $$$ based on federal rules, I wouldn't be surprised to be held responsible in a federal court. What's wrong with that?

An Indiana case before the U.S. Supreme Court could have national implications for millions of Americans in federal safety net programs.

10/12/2022

Justice. Put your dad's/mom's/news screamer's politics aside. When the scales tip, look right at it. Do what you would want if it was you. Or your child. Or your wife or husband. Look within yourself, and do what you can to fix what can be fixed. And make up for what can't be fixed. No more, but no less.

Briggs & Wholey is a Statewide Maine Personal Injury Law Firm. Personal injury lawyer (car accidents, serious injury, medical malpractice)

10/05/2022

ELMO IN MAINE COURTROOMS. Waldo County Maine got a beautiful, modern courthouse in 2019. It needed it. And the courtrooms got "Elmo". Not that Elmo. The time-saving camera Elmo. An Elmo camera lets trial lawyers put images under the lens on a stand so the images show up on the large TV screen positioned for jurors to see the evidence. Need to focus in on a portion of a medical record? No problem. Elmo can zoom in. Elmo is instead of jurors having to pass a picture or a document between the 12 folks in the jury box, or jurors having to just listen to questions about a document in a lawyer's hand, essentially "blind". The unsung heroes of Maine's judicial system, the Clerks of the Court, don't complain about showing counsel how to use the new technology. Instead, they are unfailingly professional, patient and kind in their willingness to take a few minutes out of their day to make the State's investment in the technology pay off. With the pandemic stabilizing, and civil jury trials (finally!) back on the calendar, Maine lawyers can look forward to picking up with Elmo where we left off in 2019-saving hours off a trial day and bringing jurors a better feel for the evidence. Now that trials are being scheduled more often, perhaps a coordinated Bar Association CLE with the Clerks and Elmo would be a fun and useful endeavor.

Briggs & Wholey is a Statewide Maine Personal Injury Law Firm. Personal injury lawyer (car accidents, serious injury, medical malpractice)