Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

• Above the Law provides us with what will be a Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog Top Ten Nominee for craziest lawsuit of the year. (Ignore the fact that there is not such a list.) I can't believe Overlawyered has not picked it up yet.
• The 11th Circuit wants experts to cite every study they have relied on in forming their conclusions. The Drug and Device Law Blog views this as a big win for defendants. But defense experts in any case - particularly in medical malpractice cases - love to cite unnamed studies and literature.
• A former medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland (Montgomery County) is sentenced to 5 years in jail for stealing $1 million from his clients. He has to go to jail for this. But it is a sad story. The insane part of the whole thing is how he got caught, falling for one of those email schemes that I get about 10 times a week. The lawyer is asked to collect on a non-existent claim for a contingency fee, he receives a big settlement check, and then sends the client a check. If the lawyer does not wait until the check clears and the scammer gets his portion of the check, the lawyer has made a disbursement on a phony check. In this case, his IOLTA account had a bounced check which sent off alarms that lead to his downfall. Think about it: this lawyer steals $1 million from his clients while handling malpractice cases (and I can't even figure out the scheme), gets away with it for years, and goes down by falling for an insane email scam that seemingly fools no one. It can't be easy for a malpractice lawyer to steal a million bucks. It would be like beating Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in tennis only to lose in straight sets to my 3 year-old son. I feel bad for the guy, I really do. But if he gets out in 15 months when he is eligible for parole, he is actually getting off pretty lightly for stealing $1 million. This case is also historic because it is the first good thing to come from spam email in human history.
• Unemployed lawyer goes on a hunger strike. Gets lots of attention. One minor detail: she is not going hungry and she is not unemployed. Setting these details aside and the fact that the whole thing was inane to begin with, she is a real American hero. But I love how the Huffington Post identifies her law school in the first paragraph as a "fourth tier" law school. The article never elaborates as to why it was relevant to the story or who designated the school as "fourth tier." It had to be U.S. News & World Report, right? Are these rankings such an infallible gold standard that they need no introduction? The irony is - and I subscribe to and enjoy U.S. News & World Report - I bet they would be out of business by now without this ranking of schools gimmick they came up with that seemingly everyone agrees is flawed (yet impossible not to read).
• Ford Rollover Verdict Overturned (citing myself)
• Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice reports on bartenders getting criminally charged for pulling stunts with fire. It is a good thing that Brian Flanagan and Doug Coughlin did not try to pull this stuff.
• Popehat points out that Laura Schlesinger has no clue what the First Amendment does. I don't have a link, but Jon Stewart also very comically did the same thing last night.
• Eric Turkewitz rounds up the legal round ups.
• Everyone loves a Top Ten list. Chris Earley provides one for why he likes arbitration as a means of resolving disputes.
• To get us to ten, I link back to my story on judicial elections in Anne Arundel County.

• Johnnie Cochran Middle School (ABA Journal).
• If you name your child Adolf Hitler, you cannot have that child anymore (Above the Law).
• Broken bat lawsuit claim by a fan who sues the team, the batter and the player from whom the batter borrowed the bat (Legal Blog Watch).
• Links to links (Overlawyered's links of the day)
• Police officer lets woman off a DWI in exchange for letting him fondle her breasts. She complies. Then he calls the next day wanting more. How do we know she is telling the truth? Security cameras (Jonathan Turley).
• Avvo has the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog ranked as the 113th best (i.e. most visited) legal blog. But there are few personal injury law blogs ahead of me. So there.
• Eric Turkewitz on the endless time wasted waiting for pre-trials and other court proceedings to begin. (Note to self: Eric's blog is ranked ahead of mine. Stop linking to him.)
• Accutane verdict is overturned. (This one comes from the Drug and Device Law Blog which is ranked one below me on the Avvo list. Even I can admit this blog should be ranked ahead of mine. So click on this link.)

If you are a regular Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog reader, I want to keep you. I've read so many good blogs that I stopped reading because I just kinda forgot about them.

This is one more way to subscribe.

Since the Supreme Court found in 1977 in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona that lawyers have a right to advertise on the grounds of the public has a right to information from lawyers, the general public has been accustomed to awful commercials from lawyers, mostly personal injury accident lawyers replete with sirens and crashing cars.

Still, relatively few lawyers had the resources to put on television commercials. Almost all were personal injury lawyers because the numbers just didn't work for domestic or criminal lawyers because there is no possibility of a large payday in those cases. The malpractice and accident lawyers that were advertising on television were making a substantial investment in branding their law firm.

So awfulness of personal injury lawyer commercials was regulated more by fundamental economics than the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Advertising lawyers did not risk their investment and their brand by going too far over the top.

Then came YouTube. Now every lawyer with a camera has an opportunity to put their television commercial into the stream of commerce. Unlike the marketing titans, they have no reputation to lose. So it is the wild west.

Overlawyered provides an embedded link today to one of the worst. It is not a personal injury lawyer but a domestic lawyer ad. It is like a Saturday Night Live sketch you and I would put together on the fly if we were trying to mock lawyer advertisements.

Every time one of these videos gets made, a tort reform cadet gets his wings.

As predicted here, President Obama will nominate Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. What? Virtually everyone predicted Kagan?

My Kagan pick was based on one thing: age. The other candidates are too old to hope for a long legacy. Kagan's two big competitors, Judge Merrick Garland and Judge Diane Wood, are 57 and 60 years-old. The Republicans started this, picking justices younger justices. President Obama is carrying on this dubious legacy.

I read an editorial in the Washington Post a week or so ago suggesting term limits because of this problem of presidents discriminating (in a loose sense of the word) against older Supreme Court candidates because well-qualified candidates are disadvantaged at the height of their legal careers.

It is always heresy to suggest the our capital "F" Founding Fathers made a decision that did not stand the test of time, but isn't this a real problem? Life tenure, this Post editorial argues, is a relic of a time when life was a lot shorter.

I'm actually not sure that is true. I would think this would make the case even stronger for nominating young justices that are going to last. If people are dying younger, get in younger people, right? I think it is probably more political than it was in the past. I usually dislike for the nostalgic past that probably never was. But I do think this is the problem and presidents of both parties are falling prey to it.

Again, holding out Maryland up as the gold standard for the second time in the last week, I don't think recent Maryland governors have fallen prey to this tendency to grab someone young and Maryland's relatively liberal governors (and Governor Ehrlich) seemed to have looked for the right people without allowing rampant idelogy to control their choice.

Continue reading "Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court" »

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A Houston personal injury lawyer has threatened the city of Houston, a concession company and Continental Airlines, claiming it is their fault he left his Polo coat behind at an airport food court.

Normally, when a lawyer is under attack for doing something stupid, foolish, insane or [fill in your own adjective here], he is identified as a personal injury lawyer when he is really not. But, alas, I Googled the guy and he certainly a personal injury lawyer.

Well, maybe this is like the McDonald's case where the facts are taken completely out of context. But, alas, his demand letter is on line and it is exactly what it appears to be: he's mad because no one grabbed the coat that he left.

In that case, I have another defense. If a congressman tickles his staffer, no one assumes that everyone in Congress is a tickler. Why is everyone so quick to judge one personal injury lawyer on what another personal injury lawyer does? Why is the whole profession implicated?

The answer to my question is simple: that is the way it is. And while no one hates Congress because of their propensity to tickle staffers, people do hate personal injury attorneys because of the perception they are trying to bully their way into money to which they are not entitled (which is rarely, but sometimes, true). So sometimes you have to take your lumps and move on.

I get at least a call a day from some service or another that generates leads for personal injury claims, mostly accident or pharmaceutical drug product liability claims. They all leave the same message, pretending like they are either referring lawyers or victims themselves without actually saying as much, keeping it as vague as possible while trying to generate enough interest for a callback. The giveaway that they are marketers: they always overuse the phrase "personal injury," wielding it like a sword without realizing that neither victims nor referring lawyers use that phrase in the context in which they are using it. "This is Mike, I'm calling you from Atlanta about personal injury cases." Personal injury lawyers just don't talk that way.

Their frequent calling cousin is "I work directly with Google" or the more boldly audacious "I'm with Google." The claim is identical in almost every case: "I'm 'with Google' and I am going to work exclusively with one personal injury lawyer in the Baltimore area. I can get you on the front page of Google in 24 hours." Again, the caller's purpose is to mislead you into thinking you get guaranteed high placement on Google through some magical trick as opposed to what it really is: pay-per-click advertising.

I always respect anyone's job and I remain polite to everyone, including cold callers. Between college and law school, I got my stockbrokers license, Series 7 license, the whole 9 yards. I think I made about three cold calls before my short lived career died. (I did make some decent progress with one guy on Smith Avenue in Baltimore pushing tax free bonds... I still remember that the calls I made were on that street because I probably looked at the list for hours before making my first call.) It was just brutal and I respect anyone strong enough to keep making call after call. Still, I do resent the fact that the messages are almost invariably intended to mislead the gullible.

Miller & Zois will contribute a dollar to Doctors Without Borders for the Haitian Relief effort for every new fan we add on Facebook. So if you are not already in, become a fan by clicking here. We have already donated a dollar for each current Facebook fan we have to date.

I'm tempted to add here my trite commentary on the scope of this tragedy. But at this point, we all get it. It is unspeakably horrible world sometimes. All we can do is pray and send money.

The reality is that Haiti has been a disaster forever. But if the world throws its heart and soul (and checkbook) at Haiti, is there a chance that Haiti can overcome its history of corruption and instability and can be rebuilt better and stronger than it was before?

Also, if you want to do your own Facebook friend drive or any other hook you can think of to raise money, let us know and we will plug it for you.

Last week, I announced our Miller & Zois new Facebook page. We had 31 fans. Today we have 325 and we continue to advance forward every day. I think that is pretty cool.

If you are a regular reader, please click here and become a fan.

I can not long argue that social media is a passing fad. You can now follow Miller & Zois not only on Twitter but also now on Facebook. All of our blog posts are linked on Facebook and Twitter. So become a fan of Miller & Zois today. You can find Miller & Zois on Facebook. Become a fan by click on the link. (You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.)

One thing I have been doing though Facebook is keeping track of lawyers in other states when we have potential clients that come in from other jurisdictions. If you want to be on the list of referring attorneys that we use, please sent us an email though our Miller & Zois page after you have become a fan, telling us of your areas of practice and what part of your state you cover.

Five Miller & Zois lawyers were represented on the Maryland Superlawyer 2010 list: Ron Miller, Laura Zois, Rod Gaston, John Bratt, and John Cord. This honor is accorded to less than 5 percent of the total number of lawyers in Maryland.

Some have questioned honors like these. Eric Turkewitz in his New York Personal Injury Blog specifically questioned how much gravitas the Superlawyers award should have. Of course, some awards are so powerful that it is impossible to question whether politics and other factors impact whether an honor is bestowed, such as the Nobel Peace Prize and the Time Magazine Man of the Year. Oh, wait, bad examples.

You get my point. Every honor is tainted with some measure of politics or something else that qualifies the purity of the award or accomplishment. So you graduated as your class valedictorian. But did you really work harder than everyone else or were you just good at taking exams? Yes, your child turned out great but was it the luck of the draw or your spouse's genes or were you really a great parent? So I think when you get an honor, particularly one like Superlawyers that puts you in an exclusive class of Maryland lawyers, I think you should happily smile and be proud.

I'm also proud of what this shows about the depth of our law firm. Five of our lawyers received mention in SuperLawyers. Our goal in bringing new lawyers aboard was to make sure that every lawyer that touches a Miller & Zois file could handle a case at the highest level. Does this award prove that? No. But it is definately a point on the right side of that question.

I am going to be speaking to the North Carolina Advocates for Justice in Greensboro on Friday, December 11th on maximizing the value of personal injury claims and the related issue of dealing with insurance companies.

By popular demand, Miller & Zois has just created a Twitter page that links to all Miller & Zois blogs. Okay, maybe popular demand is a little strong but I have gotten a lot of requests. All right, no one actually asked. But if you are not following our lawyers' blogs on an RSS feed, this is another easy way to do it.

We have a lot of lawyers writing a lot of really good, substantive blogs. Check them out.

You can also follow me on Twitter here.

I've joined the 21st Century this year and started using PowerPoint in my insurance law class at the University of Baltimore School of Law. I've been a professor at UB for 11 years, teaching every semester. But after five or six classes using PowerPoint, I really can't imagine teaching without it. It gives the students something more tangible to grab onto and I think it makes a difference.

The only caveat is that you become a little to wedded to the presentation which, if you are not careful, can present a barrier between you and your students. I felt it yesterday for a moment where I thought I was sticking too much to the outline and thinking where my next slide was going as opposed to truly listening to what the students were saying. I got back on track, but I think it is always something to keep in mind.

Anyway, I know for past comments to this blog that I have a few insurance law professors reading this blog. If anyone out there is teaching Insurance Law and is using PowerPoint slides or any other demonstrative teaching aids, I would appreciate it if you would send me what you have. You can review my PowerPoint presentation for my insurance law class here.

The University of Notre Dame provides a good list of tips for giving PowerPoint presentations if anyone is interested.

• Insurance Law Syllabus (my syllabus, using Insurance Law: Cases and Materials by Henderson and Jerry)
• Michael Abramowicz's Insurance Law Syllabus
• Sample Insurance Law Exam

Today, it Jeans Day at Miller & Zois in honor of breast cancer. Everyone who wore jeans today made a contribution to breast cancer research. Cancer is an awful thing but I really think we are going to beat it in my lifetime.

I'm pleased to report that an article that John Bratt and I wrote has been accepted for publication in December in Trial, the flagship publication for the American Association of Justice. The article is about mediations in catastrophic personal injury cases.

Sorry for the self congratulatory, as opposed to substantive, post. I'm walking into a mediation (in a catastrophic personal injury case) in the next 25 minutes.

Above the Law has a post of discussing a thread of comments to another blog post about being an insurance defense lawyer. Basically the question is whether the "low-end of insurance defense" is "toxic." I'm not entirely sure what is meant by "low-end," but I'm pretty sure I've been the plaintiffs' lawyer in cases that would fit this commentator's definition.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by toxic. But if I were State Farm, Allstate or GEICO, and I had a big trial coming up, I would want my average in-house lawyer to try the case over the average big firm litigation lawyer. The vast majority of the in-house insurance lawyers know exactly how to try a case. There are also a lot of fantastic big firm trial lawyers, too. But an in-house insurance defense firm is going to have more depth. There are a lot of big firm litigation lawyers who have just never gotten even a modicum of real trial experience and just don't have a clue how to try a case.

One of my post Labor Day resolutions is to blog more often to continue to grow the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog readership. But I'm still trying to get trying to get back into the flow of things today, so instead of a substance post, I'll just leech off the work of others:

LawyerUSA reports on a $24 million settlement between a Florida company and the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it made illegal, pre-recorded "robo-calls," selling what the feds say was questionable coverage.

I'm fine with the federal government policing this stuff, and, in principle, I'm fine with lawyers bringing claims that help the government enforce our rules.

Still, as a matter of practice, I find it annoying. I remember a guy standing up at a trial lawyers' seminar talking about a Maryland procedure issue in a case where a guy got an unwanted fax. The lawyer said that he "had a client where [such and such] motion was filed...." I'm thinking to myself, "I have clients. This guy does not have a client. He has a guy who got a fax."

Again, it is probably a good thing private lawyers are aiding governmental effort on these consumer issues. And I do not like the calls, either. But it just seems so petty to me. So you get a few extra faxes or have to screen an occasional robo-call? I can recycle the faxes, and caller ID was invented for a reason.

I might lose a few consumer protection lawyer readers with this rant. In fact, I came very close to deleting the email. But it is the opinion I have and if I lose a few readers, hopefully a few others will appreciate the candor and add the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog to your RSS feed.