Howard County traffic accident police reports where the injuries are not fatal are now available on-line. Only motor vehicle accident police reports will be made available on-line. To get the report, you have to pay $5 and certify that you were involved in the accident or you are an accident attorney or insurance company representing someone involved.
You can get more information here.
The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned a $31 million verdict in a Ford rollover case stemming from a catastrophic accident in 2001 that caused brain damage to a 12 year-old boy. This was a difficult case. A mother was driving with four children who were not wearing seat belts and the mother took her eyes off the road and swerved to get back on the road. The question was whether the design of the Ford Bronco was a substantial contributing cause to the child's injuries.
Obviously, a jury found that it was and sent a powerful message to Ford: $16 million in actual damages and $15 million in punitive damages.
The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the verdict for a lot of reasons. I won't go into all of them but there are two reasons set forth for the court's reversal that I think are of particular interest.
First, the court found that it is improper for lawyers in closing arguments "to arouse passion or prejudice." The court cites these statements made during the plaintiff's lawyer's closing argument as improper:
1. "This is how Ford looks at this. That little bit of thirty people being killed every year didn't matter. Those thirty people, those thirty extra people getting killed in a year didn't matter to them because it was just a little bitty number."
2. "It does matter about those people getting killed. Those thirty people do count. Those thirty people--that's thirty more people that got killed that year. If you expect these vehicles to last about twenty years, that's six hundred more people getting killed using this vehicle as opposed to a Chevy S-10 Blazer. That's serious."
3. "And that doesn't count the paralyzed people, the quadriplegics, the people with serious injuries, the thousands of people that have been in these events because of this rollover propensity of this vehicle that they knew about, and they knew it since day one but they chose profit over safety every time because they looked at it as numbers. They didn't look at it as lives, as people."
4. "I submit to you that the evidence is that they did it because they thought it was a little, small number. . . . [T]hey did not look at it as thirty lives a year[], they didn't look at it as six hundred lives. That's how they should have looked at it, but that was not how they did it."
5. "They got together at the highest levels of Ford Motor Company and they made a judgment that rather than delaying and improving the Bronco II, they were going to sell the vehicle as it was and that they were going to risk people's lives and they were going to risk serious injuries like we have here today. They were going to risk people's brains."
6. "Jesse Branham is here today with a brain injury and six hundred other people, or however many it is, lost their lives, and numerous others have brain injuries or are paralyzed, quadriplegic, have extremely serious injuries. We believe that you should tell Ford Motor Company what you think about this kind of thing."
The court found these improper because they relied on evidence that was inadmissible, because it asked for damages for harm to others, and because it improperly inspired the jury to act on passion as opposed to reason. All of these arguments are flawed.
If the evidence is inadmissible, then that is the basis to overturn the verdict. There is no need to tie it to an improper closing. Presumably, this would be true in any case where evidence was inadmissible.
Additionally, the court believes these statements led to asking for damages for harm to others. But the attorney is asking for punitive damages. We don't have punitive damages in Maryland without proof of actual malice - which eliminates 99.999% of cases like this from being considered for punitive damages. But if you are asking for punitive damages, it seems to me that you have to give the context of why there was a risk of harm to more than just the plaintiff. (Plaintiff's lawyer also got into evidence the salaries of certain executives at Ford which does sound pretty incredible. But, again, our law firm has never handled a punitive damages case so I really can't speak to the standard for admissibility in these cases.)
Continue reading "$31 Million Rollover Verdict Overturned" »
A few weeks ago, I reported on a verdict we got against State Farm in Baltimore County. I inadvertently stumbled on the Maryland Daily Record article on the case today.
This doctor in a case John Bratt tried recently was not, ah, particularly comfortable with his own explanation of why he destroyed 1099s that came to him. Gee, I wonder why that would be? Could it be because there is not an accountant in history that actually recommends not looking at and then destroying tax documents?
This is the testimony at trial:
I'm not going to name the expert because I don't think it is right to raise these issues online because the expert does not get to argue his position. (This blog typically does not name any non-public figures.) But, really, how do you defend this answer?
I spent a good portion of last week preparing for a trial scheduled for today that settled on Friday. It is a little depressing how many man hours our firm spends every year preparing cases for trial that settle. But every time you really prepare for a trial, you learn and, sometimes more importantly, relearn law and strategies that help you down the road.
The trial was an auto accident case pending in Prince George’s County. The evidence in the case would show a classic chain reaction car accident: Vehicle #2 rear-ends Vehicle #1 and Vehicle #3 hits Vehicle #2 which hits Vehicle #1. Plaintiff felt two impacts which could only happen under this fact pattern.
Plaintiff’s treating orthopedic surgeon would testify that the injury is related to the accident. The problem – which caused me a momentary freakout – was that the doctor could not parse which accident caused the injury. How could the doctor possibly know which accident caused the injury?
We have joint and several liability in Maryland and there is no question that there can be more than one proximate cause of an accident. But my fear was that because the first impact was clearly more significant than the second this fact would highlight to the court that Vehicle #3 may not have been a significant contributor to Plaintiff’s injuries. So, the driver of Vehicle #3’s lawyer (Erie Insurance) could argue that there is no evidence that his negligence actually caused injury. Then, Vehicle #2’s lawyer (also, ironically, Erie) would argue, you know, that same logic applies to us. Even if our drivers are negligent, the joint argument goes, how is this different from a drunk in a bar throwing a punch that never lands? Negligence in the air is not negligence.
I couldn’t put my hands on it right away but I was confident there was Maryland law that would save me from this argument. See Thodos v. Bland, 542 A.2d 1307, 75 Md.App. 700 (Md. App., 1987) and, even better, Consumer Protection Division v. Morgan, 387 Md. 125 (2005). But even with that law, I was struggling with the rationale. I wanted a source more reliable than my own argument of “it would be even more unfair if the plaintiff could not recover in such a case.”
Continue reading "Chain Reaction Car Accident" »
When an insurance company gets a claim, the first thing it does is look for ways to deny the claim before getting to the merits. I don't say this derisively. This is how the game is played.
One insanely overused method of avoiding getting to the merits of a case is claiming the defendant driver was not a permissive user. Insurance companies often take remarkably strained views of what is required to allow permission for another to use the owner's vehicle.
This morning, in Agency Insurance v. State Farm, a wrongful death car accident claim, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals gave Maryland insurance companies a little bit more ammo for this defense. The opinion was written by Judge Irma S. Raker, one of the more conservative judges on the Maryland Court of Appeals who is now retired and was specially assigned to the CSA. The case involved two passengers who were killed in an accident in Frederick County. The battle between these insurance companies was over permissive use. The court found that the vehicle owner's daughter, a senior in high school who was killed in the accident, did not have permission to give permission to her boyfriend to use the vehicle.
But here's the thing: the boyfriend had used the vehicle before with the owner's permission. The only argument State Farm had was that there was no specific permission in this case. The only person who could have rebutted that testimony would have been the owner's daughter who was killed.
I believe the court slices too thinly over the question of whether the daughter's boyfriend had permission to drive her mom's car. Because there are too many variables at play. When she allowed the boy to drive the car before, was it made into a big deal or was it a "sure, of course" type response? Assuming there was not a fatal accident, how mad would she have been if she had learned that the boy was driving the car? There should be a bright line rule to avoid this Serbonian bog and it should err in favor of coverage.
Continue reading "Permissive Use of an Automobile" »
Good news for plaintiffs to start of the week. Rod Gaston, a lawyer in our office, tried a Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) case in Baltimore County last week against a State Farm insured. The offer in the case was $37,000. After hearing evidence for three days, the jury returned after an hour with a $663,821.15 verdict.
Paul Luvera provides a really good outline on cross examining experts on bias.
Our firm has spent a lot of time, effort and energy trying to be able to effectively use this outline by getting the answers to the question defense experts sedulously avoid: how much do you make testifying in accident cases and how much have you made from this law firm/insurance company?
I think we have fought this issue as hard as anyone in Maryland, recently getting a helpful Maryland Court of Appeals opinion that makes more clear what Maryland law is on the scope of the expert's obligation to produce financial records.
I know a lot of insurance defense lawyers in Maryland think we do this to harass their experts. I get why they think this. There is too much gamesmanship in Maryland accident cases between plaintiffs' accident lawyers and the insurance companies. Both sides are guilty of this. But with this expert issue, the reality is that jurors do care more about bias then they do the doctor's pedigree. We care about this issue so much because we think it makes a difference to jurors.
This does not mean that jurors think or even I think that because an expert makes a large amount of money for testifying it means that the expert is lying. I think there are some experts - including some defense experts - who testify regularly and still shoot straight. But let's not kid ourselves either: there are a lot of frequent flyer experts whose opinions are colored by who is paying them.
Metro Verdicts Monthly graph this month is the median verdict and settlement value of shoulder surgery lawsuits that have gone to trial over the last 23 years. The average settlement/verdict in Washington D.C. is $59,500. Maryland is less than half that: $42,636. The average settlement/verdict in a wrist fracture case in Virginia is $60,000.
You can find here some old data on rotator cuff injury cases.
If you polled personal injury lawyers who handle car accident cases, most would chose Allstate as the "worst of the worst" among insurance companies to deal with on accident claims.
Personally, while I would not put Allstate at the top of my list of insurance companies I want to draw, I certainly would not put them last either. First, I think Allstate claims adjusters respect good lawyers and good law firms and I think their offers reflect the quality of the lawyers involved in the case. Second, if you are patient and willing to go back and forth, I think Allstate will give you less of a low ball final offer than many other insurance companies do. I also think Allstate claims adjusters, to their credit, are less likely to fold just because a lawsuit is filed. Allstate is going to pay more - as any insurance company is - as the case gets closer to trial but Allstate does not have the reflexive "settlement failed, suit has been filed, let's now make a decent offer" response that is becoming the new SOP. This trend seems to be in vogue. A number of insurance companies, most notably GEICO, Progressive, and State Farm (if you are dealing with Team 22 or Team 23 in Maryland), make accident attorneys file a lawsuit in order to receive a reasonable offer. Allstate claims adjusters are more likely to come up with something reasonable to settle the claim before suit is filed. That does not mean our lawyers don't have to file a lot of lawsuits in Allstate cases. But Allstate typically makes it a little tougher call for our clients to make.
The bad rap on Allstate is in part because they are big. Insurance companies are inherently reviled and there is more of Allstate to hate than many other insurance companies: Allstate claims adjusters receive six million - six million! - car accident, property and bodily injury claims a year, paying out $15 billion in claims. Allstate has a strong market share in Maryland in car insurance and other third party personal injury claims insurance.
As a result of being big, Allstate also get the press. Famously, Allstate claims practices infamously changed in the 90s when Allstate hired the consulting giant McKinsey & Co. to overhaul its claims practices. In a PR screw-up that I bet has cost Allstate millions of dollars, McKinsey used boxing gloves in a slide presentation to Allstate claims representatives to symbolize the Allstate philosophy. Another piece of advice McKinsey gave, which really resonated with claimants after the advice was implemented, is stalling those claims where the victim did not rollover on settlement. This advice was given 15 years ago but Allstate still uses it in far too many cases today. Allstate claims adjusters commonly continue to stall and delay to hope to wear down third party claims and often uninsured motorist claims made by its' own insureds. But, let's be realistic: every insurance company does this. You just notice Allstate a little more because they are the elephant in the room.
Continue reading "Allstate Claims" »
Ask any accident lawyer about the use of statistics in valuing personal injury accident cases, and you will get an almost universal answer: they have little or no utility. Yet I've never looked away from average verdict data and I've never known a personal injury lawyer who did. Even if you conclude it is useless, you can't help but be curious.
Jury Verdict Research published a 10 year study on knee injuries. Our law firm has gotten pretty good results in knee injury cases. The study confirms this is for pretty good reason. The average knee injury verdict is $173,552. But with more serious knee injuries, that average jumps higher. The average cartilage and ligament damage jury verdict is $347,831. Conversely, a knee strain verdict averages $70,055.
Statistically, I think accident victims are always better off hiring a lawyer for many reasons not worth fully exploring here. But if there is any type of accident claim where an injured victim can justify proceeding without a lawyer, it is in the classic soft tissue/whiplash injury accident case with clearly no permanency. The benefit an experienced accident lawyer can bring to a case is going to vary inversely with the severity of the injury. While, obviously, I’m not offering legal advice to you if you are not a client of our law firm, this is a generalized list of what you should consider in handling your own soft tissue whiplash injury case in Maryland without a lawyer:
Recorded Statements
You can settle your own case and still not give a recorded statement. The myth is that if you are honest, a recorded statement can’t hurt you. It is not true, for reasons that are discussed more fully here. There is no obligation to give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company in Maryland.
That is the short answer. The longer answer is more complicated. In some cases, our accident lawyers do allow the client to give a statement for reasons that are too complex to address here. In uninsured motorist cases in Maryland, arguably you are required to give a recorded statement as a condition of recovery.
Get Pictures of Accident and Injuries
Get photos of your car, any visible injuries that you have, and the scene of the accident. This is critical to establishing liability and the scope of your injuries. There are lots of studies that say there is no correlation between the severity of the property damage and the victim’s injuries. But, intuitively, these studies don’t make sense to any of us. We all figure that the more serious the accident, the more likely there are to be serious injuries. Insurance companies definitely feel that way and offer more in “good impact” cases.
Collect All of the Medical Records and Bills
The guts of a soft tissue injury claim are contained in the medical records and medical bills. Collect them all. The insurance company is obligated to compensate you for all medical bills that you incurred from the accident, regardless of whether these bills have already been paid by PIP or health insurance. Insurance companies have made billions pretending this rule – called the collateral source rule – does not exist when settling accident claims with victims without lawyers (or with clueless lawyers).
Medical Treatment
How much medical treatment should you get? If you treat too little, the insurance company says you are not really hurt. If you treat too much, the insurance company says you are milking the bills to try to get a better settlement offer. In the end, the best way to maximize the value of your soft tissue injury case is to listen to your body and your health care providers and do what you and they think you should. Serendipitously, this also happens to be the best thing for your case. (Parenthetically, if you are thinking of getting additional medical treatment or tests because you want to increase the value of your case, please stop reading this. I don’t want to help you.)
Figure Out the Statute of Limitations
Again, going forward without a lawyer – actually, going without a good, experienced accident lawyer – comes with risks. One of those is getting the statute of limitations wrong. It seems easy enough. But there are so many ways to get it wrong. Without having a lawyer review your case, you are taking a risk because there are general statutes of limitations and sometimes more specific statutes in some jurisdictions. In most cases, you will be fine without a full analysis of the details of the statute of limitations issues, but obviously, you are running a real risk. If you think this is a risk worth taking, at least do some research. In many states, including Maryland, the time allowed for bringing a claim against a governmental agency or its agents or employees has a statute of limitations that is a small fraction of the general statute of limitations (and it is hard to always know in what capacity the defendant driver was acting at the time of the accident).
Talking to Your Health Care Providers
Tell your doctors and your health care providers everything that they need to know about your current condition and past medical history. But also keep in mind that everything you tell a health care provider may well show up in your medical records. So if you knocked over a convenience store 10 years ago, you might want to keep that under your hat.
Don’t Lie to Your Doctors… Or the Insurance Company
The big mistake we see people make time and time again is that they shade the truth or flat out lie, thinking that no one will ever know. Who could possibly know that I hurt my back 8 years ago in a skiing accident in Colorado? The insurance company - that is who. It is counterintuitive for some but the best way to maximize the value of your case is to be completely truthful to everyone at all times. You don’t have to offer up every skeleton in your closet. But it does mean that you should not tell anyone anything or put it in writing unless it is 100% accurate. Do liars sometimes get over on the insurance companies? Absolutely. But, I’m telling you, statistically, the liars and exaggerators do not do as well as clients who play it straight.
Continue reading "Settling Soft Tissue Car Accident Injury Cases Without a Lawyer" »
I almost universally like Progressive insurance adjusters. Progressive's claims adjusters seem nicer, more professional, and less inclined to take cases personally than a lot of other insurance companies. I can say the same thing about Progressive's lawyers. Most are decent, straight shooters and good lawyers. Oh, yeah, Progressive's stock (NYSE:PGR) has done fairly well since early February.
I've fully exhausted the list of nice things I can say about dealing with Progressive. This insurance company just does not make fair settlement offers in car accident cases. I believe that in a given case if you could line up all of the insurance companies and ask each one to make an offer based on their evaluation of the injuries from a car accident, Progressive would give the lowest settlement offer on that case. I also think Progressive would be the first to deny liability in an accident case.
Why does Progressive do this? Largely because it often has so little to lose. My theory with Progressive is that it tries to compete on the Internet for car insurance buyers fighting hard for the lowest price. These are often the same buyers who are not willing to set their liability insurance limits at a reasonable amount. When you trademark the phase "Name Your Price" in selling insurance, you are probably not selling a ton of coverage. So with its small insurance policies, often $20,000 in Maryland, Progressive can stick its neck out knowing that, in the end, it can fold before trial and their exposure is limited.
For example, we have one tough case where a man's life was pretty much destroyed by a car accident in Ocean City. It is a rear end accident, he only has around $20,000 in medical bills but he needs a future surgery. So what is Progressive's settlement offer in the case? $5,400.
So Progressive hires its own expert to say the guy is not hurt, right? Actually, no. Progressive's own expert did an "independent" medical exam and found that all of the medical bills were related and agrees that all of the treatment was necessary. Don't take my word for it, this is the defense expert Progressive hired in the case. (Here is a redacted copy of Progressive's doctor's independent medical exam.) I think it is beyond ridiculous that this expert suggests that half of his surgery should be attributed to his preexisting condition because he had "mild degeneration of the cervical spine" before the accident. But even if all of the plaintiffs' treating doctors get the Ebola virus, even if Progressive's expert becomes our expert, our recovery at trial is going to be far, far in excess of Progressive's policy limits.
Progressive has a small in-house defense firm in Maryland and does not have the resources (I should say has not set aside the resources - Progressive has lots of resources) to wage war with plaintiffs' lawyers throughout Maryland. So Progressive will often increase their settlement offers substantially after a lawsuit is filed. In this case, Progressive has rung up a lot of legal bills but will still have to settle the case for the policy limits. It would have saved Progressive a lot of litigation costs to properly evaluate this case at the outset.
The Maryland Daily Record published a three part series over the last month on mediation in Maryland personal injury cases, a piece I wrote with the Honorable Clifton J. Gordy . You can read the articles on-line but you have to be a subscriber to the Daily Record to read the entire article.
I stumbled on an interesting Chicago Law Review article today by Eric Posner (Judge Richard Posner's son) and Cass Sunstein (now with the Obama administration). I like Sunstein's views on a number of issues, including animal rights.
The subject article is how the legal system assigns money damages to the loss of human life in wrongful death cases with an eye towards creating greater uniformity. The authors approach this question like it was a mathematical equation to be solved. For grief, the authors conclude that $500,000 is a good starting place, suggesting this formula as the paradigm to determine compensation in wrongful death cases:
To derive a willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid grief from a spouse's death, one would need to (1) determine the average length of time that the grief persists (for example, until remarriage); (2) find an equivalent happiness difference in an area of life that has been reliably monetized (for example, willingness to pay to avoid disease or depression); (3) convert this difference into annual units; and (4) multiply (1) by (3).
I understand the goal of uniformity and I even understand the formula. The problem is homogenizing the equation for everyone. Values vary because juries vary but also because facts vary wildly from case to case. Moreover, the formula is artificially low because it uses how much you will spend to avoid a loss to determine how you value the loss. For example, if you are willing to pay $5 to avoid a 1/100,000 risk of death to your spouse, than the loss of your spouse is worth $500,000.
Continue reading "Wrongful Death Compensation: How Much?" »
Paul Luvera discusses a tough issue for Plaintiff's lawyers: do you clue the jury in during your opening statement as to how much you are going to ask for in closing? I struggle with this and often opt for a middle ground. I lay out the foundation of what I'm going to ask for: medical bills, wages, and the formula I think is appropriate (x per day for the rest of her life). This way, I'm getting them used to the idea without having to spit out a number without any evidence.
As Paul points out, a one size fits all rule is difficult because each case depends on different facts. One critical question has to be considered: is the cap an issue? If what you have is clearly a cap case and minimal or no economic damages, you can dial back a bit on the damages argument which might help you avoid the risk of losing credibility. Because every time you ask for money - which is what a plaintiffs' lawyer does by definition - you do lose some measure of credibility with a jury.
One of the issues in this post - raising the damage amount in voir dire - is not of much interest to Maryland personal injury lawyers because our voir dire is so ridiculously limited.
Paul also points out that David Ball feels pretty strongly about putting up a number in opening. Which is reason enough to consider it in every case.
In its final day in session, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill that will place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November to raise the jury prayer amount in civil cases in Maryland. Currently, any case pled in District Court in Maryland for more than $10,000 can be "bumped up" to a jury trial. This bill would increase that amount to $15,000.
Insurance companies commonly bump up small district court cases that are filed for more than $10,000. This practice leads to massive numbers of car accident cases before Maryland juries making it hard to argue that we are properly utilizing precious juror time.
Car insurance companies have, of course, historically opposed this bill. But this was not your classic "business v. trial lawyers" battle: a lot of support for the bill came from small businesses who do not like having to spend their resources on lawyers battling in Circuit Court that which could be fought much cheaper (for all parties to the litigation) in District Court.
Why, then, are car insurance companies opposed to this bill? You would think that they too want to save legal costs. But their motive is simple: they want to be able to threaten Maryland accident lawyers with the time and costs of going to trial if they will not press their clients to accept below market settlement offers.
What would have been great is if this bill had a cost of living escalator because in 10 years, $15,000 is going to be worth $7,500 and we will be back to the drawing board.
The bill is not law. The voters will have to approve this constitutional amendment in the fall. But I think it will pass. When I vote these state constitutional issues, I almost always vote "yes". Why? Because given the absence of public debate that would make me more knowledgeable on the topic, I defer to the Maryland legislature figuring they put it on the ballot for a reason. If they put some crazy zoning issue on the ballot, I don't know what it is about but assume it is for a good reason (again, given the absence of informed debate). I suspect most Maryland voters are like me and will do pretty much the same.
Yesterday, the Maryland Daily Record published the first of a three part series I wrote with retired Judge Clifton J. Gordy (now a mediator and arbitrator) on mediation in serious personal injury and wrongful death claims. The article is for both plaintiff and defense lawyers looking to make mediations as productive as possible. Take a look at yesterday's article and look in coming editions for the final two parts.
The Maryland Senate passed HB 825 which increases the minimum minimum limits of car insurance liability coverage in Maryland from $20,000.00/$40,000.00 to $30,000.00/$60,000.00. The Maryland House of Delegates has already approved the bill and the Governor is expected to sign the bill in the near future. The bill will go into effect next year.
Again, this bill is long overdue and is not going to provide a real solution to serious injury and wrongful death cases where there is inadequate insurance. It is a moderate but meaningful step in the right direction.
The Baltimore Sun's Jay Hancock continues, improperly, to be given a license by the Baltimore Sun to blog about tort claims while having a limited understanding of Maryland tort claims. I think, and maybe it is just me, this is a bad idea.
He notes in his blog some great news: traffic deaths for Maryland in 2009 were 550, which is 550 too many but down from 614 in 2007 and 707 in 1990, even though Maryland has many more drivers on the road today than it did in 1990. Hancock goes on to assume that we "can be reasonably sure that traffic deaths are a good proxy for accidents, injuries and lawsuits generally," concluding that Maryland accident lawyers "want a raise" by increasing minimal auto insurance policies drivers must maintain in Maryland.
First of all, I don't know why we can be reasonably sure that deaths are a good proxy for accidents. Gee, you are a newspaper reporter, can you look up accident statistics in Maryland to find out the trend in the number of personal injury claims? Moreover, the belief that Maryland accident lawyers will see an appreciable difference in income by raising the insurance limits from $20,000 to $30,000 isn't valid because, as one of the comments to the post points out, there are not that many cases that are (1) valued between $20,000 and $30,000 and (2) where there is no uninsured motorist coverage. Sure, our law firm and every other personal injury law firm is going to have cases like this but, relatively speaking, it is a drop in the bucket. Trust me, Maryland trial lawyers looking to push legislation that puts more money in their pockets, don't rank this bill among their top 10. But it does help some victims that are likely going to get an unfair result anyway.
Hancock also claims - as he has before - that lawyers typically take 30% of the recovery. Actually, that is not what is typical. Hancock goes on to say that auto accident cases often settle for the policy limits. I would love to know what Mr. Hancock thinks the average auto accident case settles for in Maryland. I think he would be surprised.
I read Jay Hancock pretty regularly. He's a smart guy and a good writer. And his blog post is actually not an assault on Maryland accident lawyers: he is stating a rather obvious economic argument. But if you read his articles about medical malpractice lawsuits or car accident claims, you just get the impression that he really has no idea what he is talking about. This is the Baltimore Sun, not the Mayberry Times. Can't The Sun find someone to write on these legal issues that has something north of surface knowledge?
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