Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

I have a serious injury case with GEICO. Unfortunately, GEICO only has a $100,000/$300,000 policy and no underinsured coverage (and no evidence the defendant has meaningful assets). GEICO did the right thing and offered up the policy. It is a shame but that is the way it is in many car accident cases in Maryland. Your accident claim is only as good as the defendant's ability to pay and the insurance limits in the case. The best lawyer in the world can't change that.

The plaintiff is a mom who had her young son in the car with her. The boy received treatment for minor injuries but he suffered a great deal of trauma from witnessing what his mother endured. The son is fine now and his mom is grateful. The client demanded $4,000 to settle her son's claim.

This was first relayed to the GEICO rep by one of the paralegals as an aside to her calling to accept the policy limit's offer for the child's mother. The GEICO adjuster berated the paralegal, explaining Maryland law and how judges and juries operate in Maryland. I called him today. Fighting hard for you, my readers, I repeatedly sought permission to record the call. They state they are recording our calls for "quality assurance", yet the adjuster specifically denied this. Alas, I could not get any such permission.

Continue reading "GEICO Claim Adjuster: My Fun Call Today" »

• A whole bunch of Maryland lawyers write about random car accidents they read about in the Baltimore Sun. Why? Because the whole world benefits when Maryland accident lawyers rewrite Baltimore Sun articles describing accidents. It is extra special when they include the names of the victims. Hey, they might even Google the accident and find you.
• Workers' Compensation in the United States: The First 100 Years. Not as spine tingling as the movie. But what a great ending!
• Day on Torts (John Day) writes about a new case the Tennessee Supreme Court will be hearing about whether experts can rely on the opinions of other experts in the case.
• There is a new uninsured motorist car accident case opinion out of Georgia. Look at all of those links. None of them are to the actual case. Pretty tricky, huh? More to come. This is the case. The summary? GEICO offers policy limits. State Farm takes a verdict and tries to get a collateral source set off, namely its own PIP payments. The Georgia Supreme Court rolls its eyes.
• A Cleveland Browns fan sues over the NFL lockout. Obviously, he has standing to sue and the case is oh so ripe. Everyone's crazy cousins are coming out of the closet on this. The otherwise lucid Sally Jenkins from the Washington Post becomes unhinged on the subject, urging this exact type of lawsuit. Incredibly, she gives voice to the head of the Sports Fans Coalition. Really? The Sports Fan Coalition? Her argument rests on an insane syllogism. The public financed the stadiums for the fans and the local economy so the fans deserve a football season. Accordingly, the owners have an obligation to give them one. Don't they still have an obligation to pay their rent? But, wait, it is a sweetheart rent deal. If that is the case, public officials should have put a lockout clause in the lease. If they didn't, why are we blaming the owners? Did they think that an impasse and a lockout were impossible because, you know, rich people with lots of leverage on opposite sides of a dollar always agree on everything. The reality is both players and owners have leverage and they are exerting that leverage. Good for them both. Why am I ranting about this? Because dumb lawsuits devalue real lawsuits. Let's repeat that again, this time aloud: dumb lawsuits devalue real lawsuits.

Continue reading "Personal Injury News/Random Rants" »

On Monday, I wrote about the plaintiffs' lawyers' flawed economic model. Now, an ABA Journal survey tells us that social media does not help clients find lawyers and blogs don't work either. Okay, our law firm is heading back to the Yellow Pages. No, wait, the ABA Journal says the Yellow Pages are beyond awful now (only 8% would use the Yellow Pages).

So how do you get cases? Apparently, "trusted sources" are the most popular way for consumers to find an attorney. Forty-six percent surveyed would ask a friend, family member or colleague for an attorney referral; 34 percent say they would contact an attorney they know or whom they have used before.

This strategy works great in picking a good movie or restaurant. It is the worst possible way to pick a lawyer for a serious personal injury case.

Continue reading "Attorneys, Blogs and Social Media" »

Jake Brigance gave one of the greatest closing arguments ever in A Time to Kill. This remains true even though Matthew McConaughey has tried to cheapen my memories by making so many "not so very good" chick flicks.

In the real world, closing arguments rarely sway a jury like Jake Brigance's did. How rarely? According to David Ball's new book, only about 1 in 12 jurors change their mind during a closing argument. This is actually a good thing. It underscores that most juries make decisions based on how they process the evidence, not which party has the best lawyer orator.

Yet almost every personal injury lawyer goes into a closing trying to convert jurors who are unlikely to be swayed. So what should a lawyer be doing in closing? Instead of trying to win an argument, the number one job of a lawyer in closing is to arm jurors who are with him/her already.

Continue reading "David Ball on Damages Part 2" »

• The University of Baltimore is on the rise according to U.S. News & World Report. Apparently, they rank law schools. Who knew?
• Comments on David Ball's latest iteration on how to maximize damages in personal injury cases. This will be a regular feature if more people start reading it - Google Analytics is not showing y'all read it in massive number. Yet if I put "lawyer and sex" in the title I can't keep people away. You guys worry me sometimes.
• Why there is no such thing as a personal injury settlement calculator (I wish there was)
• Eric Turkewitz asks if tort reform costs lives because it leads to more medical malpractice
• The Volokh Conspiracy writes about mercury controls.

Continue reading "Personal Injury Blog/News Roundup" »

Metro Verdicts Monthly's cover graph is hip replacement settlements and verdicts in Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia.

The graph just says "hip replacements" so there is really no context. I'm going to assume that these are primarily injury cases and not product liability claims because those claims - most notably against DePuy, Stryker, and Zimmer - do not make up a substantial part of the verdicts and settlements involving hip replacements since 1987.

With that introduction, the median verdict/settlement in hip replacement cases:

Maryland: $385,000
Virginia: 275,000
Washington, D.C.: $175,000

I slavishly report this verdict data to you when I see it but this is probably more worthless then the verdict and settlement statistics I usually give you- which are seemingly interesting but also ultimately worthless.

I read an interesting article in the Washington Post yesterday about the downfall of big Washington, D.C. law firm heavyweight Howrey, who closed its doors earlier this month. It is an unbelievably steep fall for a law firm that had $570 million in revenue in 2008.

In my heart, I really wished and wish this law firm and all of the people in it the very best. It's true, scout's honor. But every plaintiff's personal injury lawyer gets a little feeling of validation for their career path as news continued to percolate about the demise of big defense law firms.

But that validation got stopped in its tracks when I read this sentence:

Revenue in the litigation business tends to be lumpy. You get paid only when there is a case to be tried and then often only after the trial is over. Howrey, in particular, had come to rely increasingly on revenue from such contingency fee cases, which rose to $35 million in 2008 and then fell to $2 million a year later.

Quickly, I had to jump off my high horse. That's our business model.

Continue reading "Plaintiffs' Lawyers and Rainy Days" »

Yesterday, I wrote that we would be buying David Ball's 3rd edition of "Damages." Little did I know we had already ordered the book. I am going to write about things in this book that grab me, in no particular order at this point.

Ball writes: "Among the hollowest of advocacy moments can be when counsel says, in opening, that his client has lost one of her great pleasures - say, gardening.

This got my attention quick. I don't think I have done this. I know I have. Right down to the example: gardening.

Ball's point is that just throwing out boiler plate suffering like loss of "gardening" without human context, can come off as hypocritical and will "turn even the friendliest of jurors into enemies." You have to find out exactly what they are talking about when they say they "miss gardening" and you have to make sure you understand - really understand - what the client was doing and why the loss of it is a real absence in their lives.

Continue reading "Damages by David Ball, Part 2" »

The Washington Post reports on an $11.5 million wrongful death verdict against the Prince George’s County Police Department, finding a police officer liable for a fatal shooting. I'm reiterating my ongoing objection to the Washington Post's refusal to tell us how much is actually collectable after a personal injury verdict, a complaint I made just last week.

The Post did the same thing in this story. I really think the Washington Post is the best newspaper I've ever read. Can't someone provide this information to us?

David Ball's book, appropriately titled "Damages", is now out.

You have already bought the first two editions of a book that is just ridiculously priced, $105 for a paperback. Insane. Ball has never had a jury trial and is not even a lawyer. But buy it anyway. We will and would even if it was 10 times the price.

You don't have to accept every premise in the book. I don't. But Ball's view on how to maximize the value of a personal injury case has evolved a great deal in recent years and it is worth keeping up with him. Some of the very best personal injury lawyers still rely on their gut when making decisions as to how to approach trials. But even if you are a "go with your gut" personal injury lawyer, having a little bit of science and psychology behind you is a very helpful thing.

This is a copy of the book's table of contents.

• Part I of my commentary on Damages
• Part 2

The feds have charged a Silver Spring car accident lawyer and three other people in a pathetic scheme to induce people in car accidents to fake their injuries to make personal injury claims. If you saw this episode of Law & Order, you have the gist of the allegations.

This news has insurance companies screaming "I told you so" and tort reformers dancing in the aisles. Guilt-free Schadenfreude. It is pretty much a win-win for everyone, really.

Continue reading "Car Accident Lawyer Accused of Fraud" »

A Prince George's County, Maryland jury awarded $3.3 million in a mother and daughter pedestrian wrongful death case. The case is beyond tragic. A young woman and her unborn child were killed. The defendant was the state of Maryland and the claim was that the state should have put in a sidewalk, guard rails, or something so pedestrians are not easy targets for cars and trucks going down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Not mentioned: this verdict will not be collectable under the Maryland Tort Claims Act which limits recovery to $200,000. Arguably, this was a pretty important detail that should have been mentioned in this Washington Post article on the case.

Judge Roger W. Titus handed down a new opinion last week on the interplay between Maryland health claims arbitration and medical malpractice cases in federal court. The nutshell: regardless of what you may have thought, there is no interplay. At all.

Willever v. United States is a medical malpractice wrongful death claim, alleging medical negligence at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda after the death of a U.S. Army captain. Plaintiffs, who lost their husband/father, sought summary judgment on the grounds that the government did not file a certificate of a qualified expert with attached report saying the hospital and its employees complied with the standard of care or that any departure was not the cause of death.

Judge Titus denied the motion, finding:

• Maryland's health claims arbitration rules conflict with the Federal Rules of Procedure and cannot be applied in Federal Court
• Maryland's health claims arbitration system rules are procedural, rather than substantive, which means they don't apply in federal court in Maryland.
• Sovereign immunity prevents the U.S. government from being subject to the certificate and other statutory requirements for malpractice cases in Maryland.
• Even if none of these three rules listed above were not the law, Maryland's health claims arbitration statute merely allows summary judgment for Plaintiffs at the court's discretion and the court would not exercise such discretion in this case. (This makes the opinion bulletproof on appeal.)

In Mayo-Parks v. United States, 384 F. Supp. 2d 818 (D. Md. 2005), the court came to a very different conclusion, finding that Maryland health claims arbitration rules have some substantive aspects that must be honored by federal courts. Judge Titus disagrees, taking this opinion head on: "This Court has carefully reviewed the opinion as well as the original court file in the Mayo-Parks case, and concludes both that the holding in that case was dictum and that the reasoning was unsound." So there.

Continue reading "Maryland Health Claims Arbitration in Federal Court: New Decision" »

There are over 150 million blogs. (source: Blog Pulse.) There are over 25,000 legal blogs (source: my best guess). Maryland lawyers have their fair share of blogs. Below is a list. I'm sure I did not find all of them but I think I've found most. Some of these blogs are great blogs and some are of the "there was a car accident last night on the Baltimore Beltway and Joe Smith was injured" variety that were clearly written by a mediocre college student. I don't need to tell you which is which; you can figure that out for yourself.

First, my favorite Maryland lawyer blogs (our active blogs) and then the full list:

• Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (which needs no introduction in the civilized world)
• Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog (us)
• Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog (us)
• Maryland Lawyer Blog (us)
• Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog (us)

• Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog (Some marketing company? I have no idea – last post March 5, 2011)
• Maryland Accident Attorney Blog (Silverman | Thompson | Slutkin | White – last post March 1, 2011)
• Maryland Accident Lawyers Blog (Saiontz & Kirk – last post March 2, 2011)
• Maryland Car Accident Attorney Blog (Lebowitz & Mzhen – last post March 5, 2011)
• Maryland Personal Injury Attorney Blog (Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, P.A. – last post March 4, 2011)
• Maryland Injury and Disability Law (Greenberg & Bederman – last post March 3, 2011)
• Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog (Patrick A. Malone – last post March 3, 2011)
• Maryland Personal Injury Attorney (Steven H. Heisler – last post March 2, 2011)
• Trucking Accident Lawyer Blog (Lebowitz & Mzhen – last post March 1, 2011)
• Washington DC Injury Attorney Blog (Kenneth J. Annis & Associates – last post March 3, 2011)
• Maryland DUI Lawyer Blog (Bruce M. Robinson – last post March 3, 2011)
• Maryland Criminal Attorney Blog (Silverman | Thompson | Slutkin | White – last post March 1, 2011)
• Maryland Nursing Home Lawyer (Dever & Feldstein - last post February 28, 2011)
• Maryland Divorce Attorney Blog (Robert Flanagan – last post March 5, 2011)
• Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog (Andrew G. Slutkin – last post March 4, 2011)
• Baltimore Criminal Defense Attorney Blog (Law Offices of Todd K. Mohink – last post March 3, 2011)
• Maryland Criminal Law Lawyer Blog (Law Offices of Richard P. Arnold – last post March 5, 2011)

Continue reading "Maryland Legal Blog Directory" »

Jury Verdict Research published data on verdicts in severe leg injury cases over the 10 years prior to October 2010. By severe, I mean severe: crush injuries and amputations. The average verdict in these cases is approximately $4,000,000 and the median verdict is $2,400,000 for injuries to one or both legs, as well as leg injuries resulting in varying degrees of leg amputations. The leg amputation categories include both traumatic and surgical amputations.

I was surprised by the relatively insignificant difference between above the knee and below the knee amputations: $3,958,003 average/$2,588,649 median above the knee versus $4,930,186 average/$3,727,500 median below the knee. The average value for bilateral amputations jumps to $13,392,589 average. But the median is $5,012,500 which is a statistically insignificant difference from a single above the knee amputation.

This is interesting data and useful to use in negotiating your case. But asking the numbers to make sense is asking too much.

• Valuing cases: how lawyers, claims adjusters, and ultimately, juries determine money damages in personal injury cases
• Value of fractured and broken legs in car accidents.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals said yesterday that Allstate is entitled to be as prejudiced as it wants to be.

Of course, and sorry if you clicked on this because you were baited by the title, the court did not mean Allstate can discriminate based on race, creed or religion. Instead, the court said Allstate could discriminate against a slightly less protected class: people in the path of hurricanes along Maryland's eastern seaboard. In other words, the long discriminated against yet unprotected class of rich people who own bay or oceanfront property in Calvert, St. Mary's, Somerset, Talbot, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties, and portions of Anne Arundel, Charles, Dorchester, Prince George's, and Queen Anne's Counties. (Perhaps I oversimplify a bit.)

After a rash of hurricanes a few years ago, Allstate panicked and told the Maryland Insurance Commission that it was no longer going to offer insurance to some property owners on or near the Atlantic Ocean or Chesapeake Bay. The insurance commissioner at the time, Ralph Tyler, who has since moved on to the FDA, agreed Allstate was entitled to withdraw offering coverage to these property owners.

Continue reading "Is Allstate Prejudiced?" »

I reported here last year that the Maryland Court of Appeals - or at least Judge Bell - is looking at whether the Maryland high court should adopt comparative negligence in Maryland. Republicans in the Maryland House of Delegates are trying to beat the court to the punch by introducing House Bill 1129 which would make contributory negligence codified Maryland law.

To my knowledge, I don't think any state in recent history has codified contributory negligence.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided a new malpractice case in Wantz v. Afzal.

Wantz is a Frederick County medical malpractice wrongful death case involving a staph infection following spinal fusion surgery after a slip and fall that allegedly caused the death of Plaintiffs' 77 year-old mother.

During discovery, Plaintiffs' malpractice lawyer proffered three medical experts: (1) a neurosurgeon, who testified in a videotaped trial deposition as to the cause of the woman's paralysis and her likelihood of recovery, (2) a board certified doctor in in internal and geriatric medicine to testify on causation, and (3) a radiologist who testified that had the woman been properly immobilized her paralysis and and subsequent infection would not have happened.

The trial court struck all three experts. The CSA, in an opinion by Judge James R. Eyler, unanimously disagreed on all three experts, finding that on each expert, the trial court abused its discretion.

The doctors argued that the neurosurgeon was not qualified to testify because his only 50 years of experience in neurosurgery was not enough to qualify him as an experts. I'm just kidding, even Med Mutual is not making these kind of arguments. I'm just making sure you are paying attention. The doctors' objection was more thin sliced: the expert's relative inexperience with performing spinal fusion surgery or following patients after such surgery did not provide the necessary experience to offer testimony in this malpractice case.

Continue reading "New Maryland Malpractice Expert CSA Opinion" »