Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

Unfortunate setback today in the AstraZeneca Seroquel lawsuits pending in federal court: two lawsuits set for trial in Orlando next week have been dismissed. This was the first MDL class action trial in federal court, where most of the Seroquel lawsuits have been filed.

The judge’s reasoning for throwing out these Seroquel cases was that the scientific evidence does not “meet the standards" to go to trial. I cannot figure out whether this is a general or specific causation opinion with respect to the link between Seroquel and diabetes. I assume it is the latter because I do not think there is dispute of the link between Seroquel and diabetes.

The Bloomberg article on the ruling mentioned something from one of the plaintiffs' Seroquel lawyers I found particularly odd:

This ruling basically means that there were some glitches in how these two cases were prepared for trial.

I'm sorry? Come again? What glitches? Can we get a little further explanation? Someone needs to clue in reporters in these kinds of cases: it is okay to ask follow-up questions.

I will report more when I learn the exact basis for the ruling. Not much good news for plaintiffs in the drug and medical device world of late.

Robert J. Samuelson is one of the country’s most prolific economists. His regular columns in Newsweek and the Washington Post secure his status as an opinion leader on economic issues of our day.

Samuelson is unrepentantly a proponent of Reagan supply side economics. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks he voted for President Bush. Twice.

This week, Samuelson wrote a depressing article on the health care debacle President Obama inherits. He speaks to the nuance of the problem you do not often hear from non economists. To the chagrin of medical malpractice tort reform proponents, there is no mention of medical malpractice insurance premiums or defensive medicine as part of the health care problem.

Continue reading "Medical Malpractice and the Cost of Health Care" »

The Supreme Court's ruling in Medtronic v. Riegel has largely been ignored by broadcast media. But I found a clip from MSNBC's “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on preemption and President Bush's efforts until the bitter end to push for preemption.

Keith Olbermann's portrait on these things is not exactly "fair and balanced." I think it is a mistake not to present more fully both sides of the argument because it is hard to change minds without presenting all of the facts. But I'm just thrilled to see some broadcast media discussion - albeit MSNBC - of the perils of preemption.

The Daily Record Blog has posts on layoffs at Saul Ewing, Whiteford Taylor & Preston, and Ballard Spahr.

Law students hearing all of this have to be depressed. But unless the current economic crisis is worse than I think, the market for lawyers will bounce back. Right now, no one can ever imagine the light at the end of the tunnel. When we get to the other side in the legal market - my prediction: 2011 - no one will be able to imagine an end to the good times. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The LA Times has a story on Chief Justice John Roberts' failed effort to administer the oath of office to President Obama.

I interviewed with John Roberts in 1993. I did not get a job offer. I'm really feeling better about that these days.

The funny thing is Roberts is well known for his cool under fire in the zillion arguments that he made before the Supreme Court before getting appointed to the Court. I guess there is pressure in front of 9 Justices and then there is pressure in front of billions of people.

This underscores again how amazing Obama gaffe infrequency is under such an incredible spotlight.

We will get back to personal injury law issues tomorrow....

The Washington Post reports that a Prince George's County jury awarded $5,000 to a WJLA-TV (Channel 7 in Washington, D.C.) reporter, stemming from an incident where P.G. County police officers detained her briefly at gunpoint, as well as used excessive force, nearly four years ago. While the jury found that excessive force was used by Prince George's County police, the jury of six men and two women also found that the county officers acted appropriately in conducting a "high-risk" stop of the reporter, who was following the Prince George's County's chief administrative officer investigating abuse of power allegations.

Continue reading "Prince George's County Jury Awards TV Reporter $5,000" »

The Maryland Daily Record reports that a personal injury settlement is not subject to garnishment for child support, according to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion in Rosemann vs. Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder and Adkins, LLC.

This action stems from an effort by a father to obtain child support from the child’s mother (which is not exactly the norm). The mother was injured in May 2005 when a flight attendant dropped a suitcase on her arm during a flight. Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder & Adkins settled the accident claim for $30,000, and the father sought to garnish the settlement, which is how the law firm got involved in the case in the first place (a case I’m sure they regret taking in hindsight).

Continue reading "Garnishing Personal Injury Settlements in Maryland" »

Take a look at this Time Magazine article on auto accident lawsuits. The article has the usual stuff: insurance company complaints about high verdicts, people faking injuries, jackpot justice, the backlog in the courts, and the fact that most personal injury victims only receive small settlements. Here are a few quotes:

The automobile accounts for half to three-quarters of personal-injury suits, fully 25% of all civil cases brought to state law courts. In Chicago, more than 50,000 auto cases are awaiting trial. In Los Angeles, auto liability cases have nearly tripled in the past decade. In New York City, more than 90,000 new cases come up each year. Across the country, Americans pay out $6.5 billion a year in automobile insurance premiums—yet in the past decade the insurance companies have suffered a net loss of more than $850,000 on this business.

Getting his case to the jury so that [the auto accident victim can recover] may take four years in New York City, three years in Boston, over 2½ years in Honolulu or Detroit. Courts in Los Angeles have held the delay to less than two years. In Miami the wait is less than six months—an interval many lawyers consider too short to allow the medical evidence to "ripen." But in Chicago, at the other extreme, the traffic jam is backed up for a staggering 5½ years.

The article underscores the frustration the general public has with the whole thing: car insurance companies, the courts, car accident lawyers, and accident victims. Oh, one more thing worth mentioning. The article was published in Time over 45 years ago.

Continue reading "Car Accident Lawsuits: Time Magazine Article" »

Some advice from an article in Lawyers Weekly:

If the witness has to answer "yes" to anything during cross-examination, "make sure it is a very proud 'yes,' rather than looking like a deer in headlights when you're cross-examined. That way the jury won't think the opposing lawyer is scoring any points."

If the police come in my office and arrest me for murder as I'm typing this post, I'm convinced I would have a guilty look on my face as they hauled me out of here. The same holds true with many witnesses: they have the "You got me on that one" look on their faces even when asked a question like, "Your social security number is 123-45-6789, isn't it?"

The take home message is that if you have a client like this when you are preparing for cross examination - and you are only going to be able to know if you do a live cross - it makes sense to remind the witness not to answer as if the defense lawyer has just scored a big point. But there is one caveat: some people just can't help it.

I enjoy picking up the Outlook section of The Washington Post on Sunday’s to read George Will. I rarely agree with him. But I’m always impressed with his writing and analysis.

Sunday’s article offers thoughts on a topic that is obviously near and dear to my heart: litigation. George Will is a little bit less impressive when you actually know something about the topic he is writing about in his column.

Continue reading "Litigation Society?" »

This is the bill introduced in the Senate last year to overturn Medtronic v. Riegel. A similar bill was introduced in the House of Representatives about six months ago. If you look at the Senate bill, you will note that one of the cosponsors was the junior Senator from Illinois. Is President-elect Obama still with medical device victims?

In Bruce Springsteen’s song Jungleland, the police wrongfully shoot and kill the song’s hero. Yet his girlfriend just “sets out the bedroom light” and the “poets down here don’t write nothing at all.” Little did I know in high school that this song was going to relate to a mass tort medical device claim like the Medtronic defibrillator lead litigation.

Continue reading "Medtronic Lawsuit" »

An opinion was published yesterday by Medtronic MDL Judge Richard H. Kyle. The opinion ruling on Medtronic’s motion for summary judgment begins with this sentence:

The federal courts are frequently confronted with sympathetic plaintiffs who are, nevertheless, without remedy by operation of law.

This opinion in the Medtronic MDL is 37 pages long. I just finished reading the entire opinion. But you get everything you need to know in the first sentence.

This is a crushing defeat in the battle for victims of the Medtronic recall. But it is just that – a battle in what may still be a long campaign both on appeal and in Congress.

You can click here for the full opinion.

Continue reading "Medtronic Lead Cases Suffer Major Setback" »

The Internet tells two stories this morning. First, the Maryland Daily Record tells the story of an applicant to the Maryland bar who has been practicing law, apparently without incident, in New York for 25 years. This New York lawyer apparently wanted to relocate to Maryland and took and passed the Maryland bar. Six months before he passed the Maryland bar, this lawyer had received a DWI in Virginia. He did not disclose this fact during his character committee interview, which was less than two weeks after he had been released from a four day stint in jail for the DWI. After he passed the bar, he fessed up. From the context of the story, I’m assuming that he came clean without any concern that the arrest was going to be uncovered; he just belatedly decided to do the right thing.

The second is a blog post from the New York Personal Injury Law Blog about a New York lawyer caught in a sting operation when "he engaged in sexually explicit conversations over an internet chat room with an undercover police officer posing as a 13-year old girl, followed by his attempted meeting with the presumed minor for purposes of sexual contact." But a divided New York court decided the appropriate sentence for this man would only be three years.

In the Maryland case, I would have admitted the lawyer if I were on the Maryland Court of Appeals. It seems to me, this was not a Marion Jones or even an Andy Petitte situation where someone gets caught and suddenly claims remorse. Instead, it seems like this guy just plain did the wrong thing and then decided to do the right thing. Sure, he did not show, as Judge Lynne A. Battaglia pointed out writing for the majority, absolute candor. But while wrong can be black and white, it is still a matter of degree. How about admitting the guy – who apparently has been practicing law for a long time - and then suspending him for a year? Moreover, for me personally, I’d be more inclined to deny his application for the DWI. He did not put my wife and kids at risk by omitting something and then correcting his error. But he did by getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car.

On the other hand, the New York sex offender case is completely baffling to me. How in the name of Chris Hansen is this guy permitted to continue to practice law? The dissent sums up my view:

Continue reading "A Tale of Two Lawyers" »