Telephone: (617) 252-3366 Ext. 105

Email: jeldridge@fosteld.com

Joan Eldridge is a graduate of Jackson College, Tufts University, with a B.S. in Biology. She was the recipient of an undergraduate National Science Foundation grant for field research in ethnobotany conducted over several years in the Out Islands, Bahamas. Prior to attending law school, she did clinical and laboratory research in reproductive endocrinology. She is a graduate of Boston University School of Law. She is also an EMT-B. She is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Her practice focus is in health care law, in the defense of medical providers in medical malpractice actions and before regulatory boards, and in hospital-based general liability, contractual, and employment actions. She has appeared in all levels of the state court and in the trial and appellate level of the federal court.

Ms Eldridge also has an active appellate practice, with eighteen reported decisions, many of which are frequently cited as precedent by the Massachusetts courts. The areas addressed include interlocutory appeals of discovery issues; defending entries of summary judgment and judgments of dismissal; evidentiary rulings and jury instructions at trial; interpretation of statutory and regulatory provisions; civil rights; and employment law. One appellate decision stands for the premise that conduct of counsel during trial may constitute an admission and the successful rebuttal of the presumption of receipt of in-house mail. Bouley v. Reisman. She has handled appeals that have defined the parameters of the medical malpractice tribunal statute. More notable among these are Lambley v. Kameny, which held that status as a healthcare provider, rather than a formal patient-provider relationship, determines the tribunal’s jurisdiction; and the more recent Vasa v. Compass Medical, wherein the Supreme Judicial Court held that the medical malpractice tribunal statute does apply to cases where a non-patient third party sues a medical provider for an injury allegedly due to the provider’s treatment of a patient. In representing a hospital deponent in the United States District Court, Ms Eldridge obtained one of the first reported decisions on discovery of peer review, a decision that is widely cited by the state appellate courts for the premise that the language of the peer review statue disfavors in camera inspection of peer review committee records. Hughes v. American Regent. A later appellate decision defined the inquiry to be made by the trial court in determining whether documents are peer-review protected. A more recent decision further discussed the appropriate trial court inquiry and confirmed that the peer review statute prohibits a plaintiff’s discovery of hospital-based peer review. Another recent decision held that service of a motion to amend a complaint does not commence an action for purposes of staying the seven year statute of repose. Blaney v. Lowell General Hospital.