Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

The New York Daily News reports that the family of a high school student in New York, who was killed in a stolen vehicle hit-and-run drunken driving accident, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the driver of the car, the owner, and the family that hosted an underage drinking party. It is a no-brainer case against the adult hit and run drunk driver who also will certainly face criminal liability. The merits of the case against both the owner of the vehicle and the family that hosted an underage drinking party where they gave the victim – not the driver – alcohol, is more problematic, even from a personal injury lawyer with a admittedly pro-plaintiff world view.

About half of the states in this country have enacted Dram Shop statutes which permitted the imposition of civil liability on suppliers of intoxicating beverages in certain circumstances. Only a few states take the position that there was no civil liability for serving alcohol. But Maryland is one of those few states. Moreover, Maryland courts will not distinguish a case where the alcohol was served to minors in the home with the parents’ consent (Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion in Hebb v. Walker, 73 Md. App. 655 (1988)).

This is another bad and outdated Maryland law. But this New York case is trickier than “the adults give kids alcohol, and then the kids go out and hurt someone in an accident" scenario. Both the pedestrian victim and the driver were drunk. The wrongful death lawsuit names the parents who allowed the pedestrian/victim to drink alcohol at a party.

Honestly, and the New York Daily News has a picture of this handsome boy and his parents that is downright heartbreaking, I have a hard time placing civil liability on the parents that allowed him to drink alcohol in their home. There are cases where someone is morally responsible – which I think is hard to deny in this case - but should not be civilly responsible. I think this is one of them. A sixteen year-old boy is blameless in the big picture in this case in every way that matters. But his own behavior should – I think at least – negate the liability of the parents that allowed him the have alcohol. I realize this opinion is not out of the plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyer manifesto. But I didn’t check my own views at the door when I became a plaintiffs’ lawyer.

Continue reading "The Difference Between Moral and Civil Responsibility" »

“For What It Is Worth” has a picture on a blog entry I found via Overlawyered. It pictures a van that could be a replica of a cartoon mocking personal injury lawyers. The blog, written by a non-practicing lawyer in Connecticut, provides no context for the picture, so I was 99% sure at first glance that it was a joke/hoax. But the personal injury lawyer named on the van in the blog – David Neufeld – is a lawyer handling personal injury cases in Brooklyn. The author of the blog confirmed that he took the picture with his iPhone.

I cannot believe this is not a bigger story. I think this van would be ridiculous for any profession, much less a lawyer. I’m surprised no one in the media has picked up on the story. Moreover, beside Overlawyered, no one has even linked to this post.

U.S. News and World Report ranks the University of Baltimore Law School in the Fourth Tier again in its annual rankings of law schools. I incorrectly reported that UB was in the Third Tier yesterday. I must have been looking at last year's results

I was hoping to see the Law School jump to the second tier or remain in the third tier. But a new state-of-the-art building for the law school is coming and lots of other changes. I was telling my insurance law class at UB this morning that I can feel the quality of students dramatically improving. This means more to me than what U.S. News and World Report has to say, particularly with the new building less than two years.

One thing you cannot help but notice in looking at the ranking of the school is that University of Baltimore has a particularly large law school. Contrast the University of Louisville’s 323 students with the University of Baltimore’s 657 full-time law students. This makes the competition a little unfair. If Louisville took 657 law students, the quality of its enrolled class would look very different. I think we would fare better if they only considered the top 300 students in the rankings.

• Wall Street Journal Article
(discussing the rise of the University of Baltimore in the U.S. News and World Report rankings)
• New Dean at the University of Baltimore
(announcement of new law school dean in 2007)
• New University of Baltimore Law School Campus?
(report of potentially expanding UB to P.G. County)
• New University of Baltimore Law School Building
(Peter Angelos' donation and construction of a new law school)
• Maryland Bar Exam
(University of Baltimore's rising pass rate)
• The Volokh Conspiracy on Law School Rankings
(David Bernstein's post on how the U.S. News & World Report ranking have gotten out of hand)

Yesterday, I wrote about how the Maryland the Maryland Board of Physicians does not deter bad doctors and that the most viable deterrent to bad medicine in Maryland is medical malpractice lawsuits. Today, the Maryland Daily Record reports that the consumer advocate group Public Citizen has found that Maryland's physician discipline system is one of the worst in the United States.

The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog today underscores why meritorious medical malpractice lawsuits not only bring justice for the malpractice victim but also serve society. The post contrasts two cases of malpractice and cover-up: one by a Maryland lawyer, the other by a Maryland doctor. The lawyer is, appropriately, disbarred. The doctor never stopped treating patients, receiving only a public reprimand.

It is not optimal that the best way to police doctors in Maryland is malpractice lawsuits. But meaningful discipline from the Maryland Board of Physicians is simply not a deterrent because meaningful discipline is so rare.

The Maryland Bar Journal just published an article on an interview with retired Howard County Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, who talks about the jury trial system in Maryland.

One amazing fact Judge Sweeney offers is that the no-show juror rate in Baltimore City is approximately 60%. As lawyers, we just get the final version of what comes out of the jury panel, so you do not get a feel for how many people in the jury pool did not show.

If you are a Baltimore City juror who did make it to jury duty, when you learn that 60% of your fellow jurors did not bother to show up, I suspect there are two reactions: (1) get mad, and (2) feel emboldened next time you do not want to show up for jury duty yourself.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway took a bath this year. But in Buffett's annual letter to shareholders, he seems pumped about how GEICO is faring in the car insurance market. Buffett noted that under GEICO chief executive Tony Nicely, GEICO did its part to keep Berkshire Hathaway profitable, increasing GEICO's market share to 7.7% of the auto insurance market last year (over 19% in Maryland). Buffett makes clear in his report that he is bullish on GEICO:

As we view GEICO's current opportunities, Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere.

This is a funny quote but, then again, everything sounds a little funnier when coming from a billionaire.

One thing is for sure: GEICO's business model in recent years has included a willingness to absorb more litigation costs because GEICO is far more willing to eschew reasonable settlements in favor of forcing injured accident victims to file a lawsuit than GEICO was seven years ago. I don't say this derisively. Obviously, this business model is working for GEICO. But it does create a lot more work for Maryland accident lawyers and delays justice for injury victims.

Mega law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge announced yesterday it has cut the starting salaries of its first year lawyers by $20,000. (The original version of this post said "to $20,000." Now that really would have been news!)

There has been delay in reducing starting associate salaries even while these large firms are laying off scores of lawyers. Why? Well, let’s say you’re a musclehead who works out at the gym 7 days a week. Then disaster strikes. You get a job or, worse still, a family. Now you can only work out 4 days a week. What do you cut out of your workout? The bench press? No, how much you can bench is the musclehead signature statement of strength.

Starting associate salaries is like the bench press for major law firms. Bizarrely, you seem to lose more street cred firing lawyers and staff than you do lowering the salaries of your first year lawyers. That’s my take on it anyway, which is thankfully, from a distance.

LawyersUSA has an article today on a frequent topic on this blog: "independent" medical exams. There are a number of quotes from me in this article.

Lawyers handling wrongful death cases encounter an awful argument from defense lawyers in cases where the victim is 65 years-old and older: you have to discount the value of your claim because the victim was old, anyway. The argument is so callous no lawyer would directly make this argument to a jury, especially in a jurisdiction like Maryland where there is a meaningful cap on wrongful death and survival action damages.

The “victim was old anyway” argument is offensive and cold…but not, relatively speaking, entirely untrue. And once you get past how awful it sounds, the differences do make sense. The money damages awarded in a wrongful death claim with a young victim having 70 more years of expected life should be higher than with an older victim having only 20 more years of expected life because the victim's family will be without them longer and the victim missed out on a lot more life.

The reason why the argument is so offensive is not the underlying premise – older victims get less – but the “How big was the loss, really?” way in which it is pitched. The reality is that juries still place values on these losses. According to Metro Verdicts Monthly, juries have over the last 22 years awarded an average verdict in Maryland wrongful death cases of $1,337,824 involving victims 65 and older. Washington, D.C.’s average is slightly higher, $1,443,818. Incredibly, and this really underscores jurisdictional differences, Virginia’s average verdict in wrongful death cases involving victims 65 and over is an abysmal $685,535, less than half that of the District of Columbia.

Continue reading "Value of Wrongful Death Cases in Maryland Where Victims Is 65 or Older" »

The New York Times has a good article today on Independent Medical Examination doctors, including a doctor referred to by New York injury lawyers as "Doctor Says-No." We have a number of IME doctors in Maryland that must be related to him because they have the exact same last name.

The New York Times would not have written this story if it did not have examples of patients possessing the great weapon of the modern age: "I've got it on tape." The article has examples of doctors who told the patient one thing in the evaluation - which the patient's taped with their phones - and put the opposite conclusion in the report.

In Maryland, our lawyers are seeing a new wave of IME doctors replacing the old guard of discredited doctors that juries stopped believing long ago. Below are a few tools to fight for your clients to get fair defense medical exams.

My colleague John Bratt (author of the Baltimore Personal Injury Lawyer Blog) is in the middle of a battle in a Montgomery County case where the expert is refusing to meet the very same conditions imposed against this same expert by a judge in another case we had with him in Montgomery County. In another accident case my colleague Rod Gaston has with the same doctor, the doctor was ordered to produce his financial records. Bizarrely, the insurance company withdrew the doctor but he still filed an interlocutory appeal. I'm looking forward to finding out who has been paying his legal fees for all of this. My bet: the insurance company.

(Note: I have fixed the New York Times link, as requested. Thanks to all for bringing it to my attention.)

Continue reading "IME Doctors Caught on Tape" »