By Matt Yas
College students have been known to gripe. The workload and inherent pressure to excel can be enough to wear down even the most driven graduates-to-be. But, for Peter J. Ainsworth, the college years presented a hurdle more challenging than any academic course.
Ainsworth was a married undergraduate at Boston College when his wife gave birth to a daughter with severe organ damage. Lauren would eventually require 28 operations, including an organ transplant. Ainsworth even delayed his graduation in order to move to Pittsburgh, where Lauren underwent an experimental operation.
Despite the ordeal, the young student found his strength. "I felt that, out of necessity, I had to take the position of total confidence," he says now. "We were going to make it through. To look at it any other way, you'd fall apart. And things worked out."
That confidence served him well during his unflinching volunteer service to the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. While a student at Suffolk University Law School, he worked extensively on cases for the Victim Compensation Fund, helping to deliver more than $24 million to affected families.
Ainsworth's sense of dedication has undoubtedly contributed to his seemingly meteoric rise within the litigation firm of Meehan, Boyle, Black & Bogdanow in Boston. He tried a medical-malpractice case against two nurses who allegedly had failed to monitor and report a patient's elevated blood pressure level, arguing that inaction by the nurses led to the patient's permanent disability. His firm lost the lawsuit but settled with the treating physician for $600,000.
More recently, Ainsworth won a $350,000 verdict as lead counsel in a wrongful-death case arising from a house fire allegedly ignited by a landlord's faulty installation of a dryer."The hardest part was conveying the damage without appearing to exploit what happened to these people," Ainsworth recalls. "This family lost a lot. It's not about the money for them; it's about bringing in the man responsible for this loss."
His "amazing rapport and warmth," as Meehan, Boyle managing partner Michael B. Bogdanow puts it, are key attributes to his early success.
"I can't say that I know what it's like to lose a [loved one]," Ainsworth says. "But I've seen tragedy, and it has played a big part in who I am. It has made it easier to empathize with people."
August 18, 2008
