Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

Clearly, the new Republican tradition is to pay homage to Ronald Reagan whenever you have a segue to do so - and even when there's not. Everyone has forgotten Iran-Contra and those Marines in Lebanon and focused on the fact that he presided over 8 years of relative peace and prosperity and his contribution to our victory in the Cold War. At a debate back for the RNC Chairmanship, Grover Norquist asked the candidates, "Who is your favorite Republican president?" Every one of the six candidates picked Reagan. Poor Lincoln. Even Democrats look back on Reagan and point out - maybe correctly, I don't know - that Reagan is not conservative enough to win the Republican nomination in 2012.

I found on my Google +1 (come join me there, and Miller & Zois too) a post from someone who worked for Reagan, that looks at what he actually said about tort reform. Apparently, all of his years of public life, Reagan gave only one tort reform speech in his political career in which he specifically said the issue is one for individual states. He never followed up on this speech.

Continue reading "Was Ronald Reagan for Tort Reform?" »

USAA's release for minors includes this language:

I/We do hereby state that said minor is completely recovered from any and all injuries sustained as a result of said accident and promise to bind myself/ourselves jointly and severally, my/our heirs, administrators and executors repay to the said ________________________ his/her heirs, successors and assigns any sum of money, except the sum above mentioned that he/she/they may hereafter be compelled to pay because of the said accident.

USAA is trying to put itself in the best position that it can to prevent minor plaintiffs from later disavowing the settlement. But it is silly to suggest that having the child's parents affirm that the child has completely recovered is of any help. You could even argue it makes the problem worse: the parent(s) did not even know the child was so severely injured.

Continue reading "USAA Release for Minors" »

I have not been blogging as much as I would like in 2012. I have been working a good bit on our "new" Maryland car accident lawyer website. The site was actually built in 2002, but it was mostly a shell site that only linked back to the Miller & Zois website. We recently gave the website a new design and are starting to add content. That is a reason why there is not a lot of genuine fresh content: it is hard work. It also provides less immediate satisfaction. People will read this blog post within minutes of publication but some of these long, detailed web pages take a lot more time and the search engines might not notice that it exists for months.

Besides the usual, "We are the best, you should hire us!" dribble, we are looking to eventually build this into a "how to" center specific to personal injury car accident cases for Maryland lawyers, similar to the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Help Center. This is beginning of this effort but the goal is to restructure this page so that it takes a lawyer handling a car accident case from intake through appeal. This is the beginning but there should be a lot more to come.

My partner, Laura Zois, was selected by SuperLawyers as one of their Top 50 women attorneys in Maryland for 2012.

It is a pretty unbelievable honor. There are thousands of female lawyers in Maryland lawyers. I only recognize one other female personal injury lawyer, the well respected Alison Kohler, on the list.

Congratulations Laura!

I was always into statistics. When I was little, baseball statistics were the outlet. I was doing Moneyball when Billy Beane was still learning what a double steal is. (This is hyperbole for effect.)

Like a lot of us, I began to look at risk very differently when I became a parent. Now I'm more interested in what the authors of Freaknomics tell us about what matters when raising a child. (Here's the transcript of a podcast I recently listened to which I found more than a little depressing. Among other things, it really makes you question the efficacy of piano lessons.)

Freaknomics interests me because it uses statistics to assess risk that questions largely held assumptions. I try use statistics in parenting to make sure my kids are avoiding the risks that we can reasonable avoid. Clearly, car accidents are on a big blip on the radar screen. Car accidents are a major risk of serious injury and death for young children, a far greater risk that 95"% of the things that you worry about as a parent.

Drunk driving is a big risk factor for car accidents. It never occurred to me to look at where in Maryland drunk driving is the greatest. So I read with particular interest these statistics on the number of drunk driving cases in Maryland in 2010, sorted by county, as well as the number of DWI cases tried in court in 2010 and the resulting verdicts:

• Montgomery: 3,512 DWI cases filed. There were 5,324 cases tried in 2010 resulting in: 1,858 Guilty verdicts, 98 Not Guilty verdicts, 2,585 Probation Before Judgment [PBJ] verdicts, and 1,029 "other" verdicts (which include Dismissed Cases, Nolle Prosequi, Stet, Merged Cases, Jury Trial Prayers, and Miscellaneous Others)
• Prince George's: 2,733 DWI cases filed. There were 2,206 cases tried resulting in: 75 Guilty, 34 Not Guilty, 185 PBJ, and 1,912 other - 1,425 of which were closed as Nolle Prosequi.
• Baltimore County: 2,459 DWI cases filed. There were 2,563 cases tried resulting in: 715 Guilty, 86 Not Guilty, 1,312 PBJ, and 450 other.
• Anne Arundel: 2,009 DWI cases filed. There were 2,468 cases tried resulting in: 590 Guilty, 74 Not Guilty, 1,200 PBJ, and 604 other.
• Howard: 1,440 DWI cases filed. There were 1,694 cases tried resulting in: 337 Guilty, 41 Not Guilty, 943 PBJ, and 373 other.
• Baltimore City: 982 DWI cases filed. There were 969 cases tried resulting in: Guilty, Not Guilty, PBJ, and other.
• Carroll: 935 DWI cases filed. There were 816 cases tried resulting in: 156 Guilty, 36 Not Guilty, 424 PBJ, and 200 other.
• Harford: 909 DWI cases filed. There were 1,094 cases tried resulting in: 461 Guilty, 19 Not Guilty, 484 PBJ, and 130 other.
• Frederick: 900 DWI cases filed. There were 1,027 cases tried resulting in: 273 Guilty, 16 Not Guilty, 448 PBJ, and 290 other.
• Charles: 794 DWI cases filed. There were 1,135 cases tried resulting in: 376 Guilty, 13 Not Guilty, 513 PBJ, and 233 other.
• Worcester: 662 DWI cases filed. There were 1,053 cases tried resulting in: 439 Guilty, 36 Not Guilty, 482 PBJ, and 96 other.
• Washington: 642 DWI cases filed. There were 859 cases tried resulting in: 267 Guilty, 4 Not Guilty, 387 PBJ, and 201 other.
• Calvert: 626 DWI cases filed. There were 968 cases tried resulting in: 285 Guilty, 16 Not Guilty, 510 PBJ, and 157 other.
• Cecil: 585 DWI cases filed. There were 285 cases tried resulting in: 41 Guilty, 7 Not Guilty, 65 PBJ, and 172 other.
• St Mary's: 510 DWI cases filed. There were 736 cases tried resulting in: 376 Guilty, 13 Not Guilty, 307 PBJ, and 109 other.
• Wicomico: 489 DWI cases filed. There were 818 cases tried resulting in: 275 Guilty, 18 Not Guilty, 317 PBJ, and 208 other.
• Allegany: 341 DWI cases filed. There were 557 cases tried resulting in: 219 Guilty, 2 Not Guilty, 232 PBJ, and 206 other.
• Queen Anne's: 321 DWI cases filed. There were 583 cases tried resulting in: 227 Guilty, 8 Not Guilty, 222 PBJ, and 126 other.
• Talbot: 276 DWI cases filed. There were 372 cases tried resulting in: 99 Guilty, 56 Not Guilty, 155 PBJ, and 62 other.
• Caroline: 258 DWI cases filed. There were 308 cases tried resulting in: 125 Guilty, 10 Not Guilty, 74 PBJ, and 99 other.
• Dorchester: 182 DWI cases filed. There were 225 cases tried resulting in: 97 Guilty, 13 Not Guilty, 59 PBJ, and 56 other.
• Garrett: 181 DWI cases filed. There were 297 cases tried resulting in: 77 Guilty, 3 Not Guilty, 129 PBJ, and 88 other.
• Somerset: 167 DWI cases filed. There were 195 cases tried resulting in: 68 Guilty, 5 Not Guilty, 83 PBJ, and 39 other.
• Kent: 119 DWI cases filed. There were 179 cases tried resulting in: 60 Guilty, 6 Not Guilty, 72 PBJ, and 41 other.

Statistically, what jumps off the page is the number of not guilty verdict drunk driving cases in Ocean City. There are more not guilty verdicts in drunk driving cases in Ocean City than in Prince George's County. I'm assuming that it is because they have so many seasonal police officers it is tough to make cases stick. You have a 31% chance of getting a not guilty verdict in a drunk driving case in Ocean City and a 2% chance in neighboring Somerset County. That's crazy, right? (Why have we never read an investigative news piece about this?)

Of course, these are misleading statistics if you are trying to avoid drunk drivers in Maryland. This data shows not just drunk drivers but enforcement. Drunk drivers hit our roads somewhere between 88 to 500 times on average before getting in trouble, according to various experts and studies.

There is some good news here, too. Drunk driving charges are declining in Maryland. A total of 22,032 DWIs were filed in 2010, down from 23,904 in 2009, and 25,466 in 2008. Assuming that enforcement efforts have remained the same or increased, this is encouraging.

The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog was named one of the Top 25 Tort Blogs by LexisNexis.

LexisNexis is now taking votes for the best tort blog. Normally, I would send you over there to vote for me but I think you have to register to vote and that might be a big much to ask. (If you insist, you can go here.)

I really do not know much about the process of selecting these blogs. There was some voting, although I'm not sure whether that was the only mechanism for selection on this list. Ultimately, I don't care. If someone wants to say something nice about my blog or the shirt I'm wearing, I'm happy and grateful. I'm not going to thin slice it. So thanks LexisNexis.

LexisNexis is starting a New Top 25 Tort Blogs. The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog is on the list of nominees.

These awards are silly popularity contests that have nothing to do with the quality personal injury law blogs. The only true measure of this blog is the devotion of its readers, defined by the number number and frequency of visits by other personal injury lawyers. This is all just a silly Nexis-Lexis marketing ploy.

(It may also be that this is all sanctimonious dribble, I'm in denial, and I really want to make this Lexis-Nexis top tort blogs list. If you subscribe to this theory, please "vote" for the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog by adding a comment in the box at the bottom of this page.)

Our receptionist has gotten promoted and we need a new one. If you or someone you might know is interested, call Tiffany at 410-553-6000. Incredibly, we have four former receptionists who are still with our firm. So there is definitely room for growth.

If you read and like this blog, could you please nominate it for a the ABA Top 100 list? This is the nominating form. Thanks.

Hello Blog. I'm back.

I just got back from vacation and then a trial in Baltimore City. Laura Zois and I won a $537,000 verdict for our client in a slip and fall case. It does not match the $2.5 million verdict awarded to our clients last week in Rod Gaston's case (see Daily Record article) but it is still a good 10 days for Miller & Zois clients.

I'll write more about our trial later and try to put some of the samples from the trial in the help center on our website. We may even order the transcript to post on line because it includes so much of the David Ball/Don Keenan reptile themes that I have talked about on this blog.

This was a really fun case to try and it reminds me of why we do what we do. But I'm glad to be back to my usual routine which includes regularly posting to this blog.

These are the Alexa statistics for the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Avvo has a ranking of lawyer blogs - based on Alexa statistics.

There are only a few personal injury blogs ahead of the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. But using page views or unique visitors is a poor indicator for this blog anyway. If it was, you would see more "What do you do when you are in an accident?" posts.

Instead, the purpose of this blog is to attract potential accident, malpractice and product liability lawyers looking for co-counsel, consistent with our firm's strategy of teaming up with lawyers to co-counsel with on serious personal injury cases.

The plan, then, to spell it out, is to continue to build a readership base of personal injury and other lawyers. (To do this, frankly, I need to keep posts like this to a minimum.) The plan is to give lawyers news and information they can use while underscoring our experience in catastrophic or wrongful death cases. So when you are looking for co-counsel to help you maximize the value of your client's case (and frankly to maximize your own fee), you call Miller & Zois.

• Our co-counsel relationship with referring lawyers
• Firm overview (who we are and the kind of cases we are taking)

• The Volokh Conspiracy asks about a question that was left out of the Squawk Box coverage I saw this morning: does IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn have diplomatic immunity in the United States. In spite of the fact that I enjoyed diplomatic immunity as a teenager - man it felt cool - I think the whole idea of it is infuriating. If some French hotshot in a $3,000 a night hotel raped an American, we need to make sure we can hold him accountable (or at least make sure the French do).
• There are more reports of arrests in a personal injury settlement scam, this time in Florida. On Thursday, deputies issued warrants for 53 people involved in a fake injury, fake treatment, settlement ring. As this St. Petersburg Times article points out, this is a tax against the honest. Florida motorists are believed by one study to pay $83 more in annual personal injury protection premiums because of fraud. Of course, Florida brings much of this on themselves with their silly no-fault system.
• Max Kennerly gives a long dissertation on his philosophy of Google, search engine optimization, and the balance between writing a credible blog that is an important part of the conversation and also making your blog productive for your practice. I breakdown my similar theory here.
• We are starting out slowly announcing it because we are completely redoing the blog format with Justia's help. But the Miller & Zois Kids Foundation has a blog that is eventually going to blow past this one. You can find our new inchoate, but soon to be next big thing, blog, called Miller & Zois Kids Blog, here.
• Brooks Schuelke has to be just wringing his hands over what Texas has done and continues to try to do to destroy legitimate personal injury claims. What? He is doing that right now? Okay, I'll link to it.
• House Bill 5 has made it out of committee in the House. It strikes me as a political speech instead of a piece of legislation. The chance of this bill passing approaches zero.
• Baltimore City looks to score a new courthouse. What is wrong with the old one? It is 1,000 years old and has 5 amazing - really nice - courtrooms and the rest are awful.

Continue reading "Monday Morning PI Roundup" »

Dan Snyder is easy to mock. I will probably do it in this post. So when he filed his lawsuit against the Washington City Paper for defamation, I instinctively rolled my eyes. So did you. We all did.

Continue reading "In Defense of Dan Snyder" »

You have to blog. Really just hire someone to do it.

Check out the quality you get back when you do this. You can read this entire post of just read the last paragraph.

Then I turn to the recent post which talks about why not to use homemade penile extenders. I'm sure "homemade" is an important caveat to the warning.

• 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" »

• 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" »

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" »

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" »

The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog is now ranked #61 on the Avvo Top Legal Blogs.

Okay. This is an honor that will be hard to put on a t-shirt. For lots of reasons. But if you look at the 60 blogs ahead of us, there are few personal injury related blogs. So, I'm pretty pleased about that.

This news is particularly sweet because I get snubbed every year by the ABA's list of top 100 legal blogs. My goal in writing this blog is to develop a readership base, not to develop a client base. So I don't need to win an Oscar, I'm thrilled to win the People's Choice award. (Note to ABA Blog People: I don't really mean this. Pick me next year. Please.)

Avvo simply uses Alexa to compute the rankings. There is no doubt that Alexa's ability to rank legal blogs and other websites is somewhat flawed. But I do think Alexa is a decent barometer. If you look at the 60 blogs ahead of the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, you will see they are mostly very good blogs.

So there.

• Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog also rising