Neil Chayet, a judge’s son whose health law practice was less renowned than the minute-long summaries of court cases he delivered weekdays to a national radio audience for 41 years, died on Friday in Salem, Mass. He was 78.

His wife, Martha, said the cause was small cell cancer.

By the time he retired from radio in June, Mr. Chayet had distilled more than 10,000 cases into quick legal yarns that kept his “Looking at the Law” segments a staple on the Boston powerhouse station WBZ-AM and the stations to which it was syndicated nationally by CBS News Radio.

“He wanted to keep doing it,” Peter Casey, the news and programming director of WBZ News Radio 1030, said in a telephone interview. “He had no intention of stopping until he had to.”

Mr. Chayet shied away from talking about cases that were widely known, leaning instead toward interesting and quirky ones that were untethered to a particular date. He found some cases himself, but he also relied on research by law students hired to assist him and friends in the legal community.