Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

Every month or so, I report on the Metro Verdicts Monthly graph on the front of their publication which compares verdicts and settlements for a certain type of personal injury claim in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Sometimes I am surprised by the difference in the results.

This month I am astounded by the difference between Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Maryland in median nursing home liability verdicts and settlements since 1987. The median recoveries in Maryland and Virginia are $125,000 and $175,000, respectively. This means that the median settlement and verdict in Virginia is 40% higher than Maryland. Virginia juries are generally more conservative than Maryland so this result is somewhat surprising. But here is what I find surprising: the average nursing home case settlement or verdict in Washington, D.C. is $700,000.

I have not done any sort of sophisticated jurisdictional analysis but I believe there is a general correlation between the size of nursing home verdicts and the size of medical malpractice verdicts. Yet these figures do not appear to support this conclusion. Metro Verdicts Monthly reports that the median settlement and verdict in Washington, D.C. for wrongful death medical malpractice cases over the last 20 years is $665,700. This is much less than Maryland’s median recovery of $900,000 or Virginia’s median recovery of $750,000.

These statistics would surprise me less if the study used average instead of median because the average can be influenced by extremely high verdicts or settlements that can create a misleading picture. But the median settlement or verdict number means that the study divided the jury verdicts and settlements into two equal groups, half having settlements or verdicts above the median and half having settlements or verdicts below the median.