Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

My blog post on Thursday left the impression that Allstate had produced all relevant documents that plaintiffs' lawyers have been demanding. Apparently, after reviewing all of the documents, this may not be the case. Click here for the Time-Picaqune (New Orleans) article on what plaintiffs' lawyers say is still missing.

Back in January, I wrote about Allstate’s on going war with the state of Florida (and Missouri) in which it arrogantly racked up more than $4 million in fines for refusing to turn over documents that they had been ordered to produce and which had been requested by the insurance commission in Florida. On Friday, Allstate not only produced 150,000 pages of responsive documents it had protected as proprietary, but it made the documents available on Allstate's website.

In defending some of the documents, a company spokesperson said that many lawyers misinterpreted the documents that refer to how Allstate deals with claims from other parties, not from policyholders. The Allstate spokesperson said many of the documents, which had been picked apart by plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers, refer to claims-handling practices for car accident claims that have been incorrectly assumed to be applied to homeowners’ policies as well.

If this is true, I see Allstate’s point. Accident lawyers whine about Allstate’s bad offers in third party cases. In car accident cases in Maryland, I don’t think GEICO, Progressive, Nationwide, MAIF, or State Farm are making offers that are any different than Allstate’s. But that is not my point. The insurance companies have no obligation in third party cases to make fair offers. Insurance companies can do whatever they want. This is why we have lawsuits.

Moreover, the reason why insurance companies will not pay fair value on my accident claims is because two things have to happen before a bad offer turns into a lawsuit: (1) the accident lawyer has to be willing to file the claim, and (2) the plaintiff has to be willing to file a lawsuit and wait for their recovery. With respect to the former point, accident lawyers who fear filing suit rarely tell their clients they will not file suit. Instead, the lawyer tells the client that it is a great offer and they should accept it. The main reason insurance companies make bad offers is because lawyers let them. The idea that insurance companies – again in third party case – have an obligation to be fair is as absurd as the notion that personal injury lawyers should have the goal of being fair. In the adversary system, if your goal is to be fair, you are doing your client a disservice. This is not to say that you should not recommend fair settlements, but it certainly should not be a plaintiffs’ lawyer’s goal.

First party insurance cases where the insurer has a duty to their insureds to fairly provide compensation for their injuries or losses are a different matter altogether. In these cases, I think there is ample evidence that Allstate has failed to meet their obligations and I would not be surprised if these documents intentionally blur the lines between smart strategies in third party cases where the insurance company has a legitimate objective to pay less than fair value on claims and first party cases where the insurance company has a legal and ethical obligation to pay their insureds fair value for their claims.

Last week, I received a call from an insurance company (Progressive) asking how many occupants were in our clients’ vehicle in a car accident case our lawyers are handling. Sadly, it appears someone saw our clients get in what was a pretty serious accident, noted the vehicle information, and then pretended that they had been involved in the accident. Progressive called me and asked if I can get an affidavit from my clients stating that this person was not in the vehicle. I appreciated where the adjuster/investigator was coming from because he wanted to close his file, but I did not see how it helped my client to provide an affidavit, and I could conjure up scenarios where it would not be helpful to me to help them.

I felt knocked off balance for a second after denying Progressive’s request, losing my moral high ground. But then I quickly asked the adjuster if Progressive was willing to accept service in a few cases I was getting ready to file or if they were going to require me to spend needless money and jump through the hoops of hiring a process server to serve the defendants individually. Instantly, the order of the moral universe was restored. Wherever you are at this moment, you probably felt a jolt of unknown origin. The lesson, as always: if your game plan is never give a quarter, don't ask for one.

Another needless hoop insurance companies make you jump through in auto accident case in Maryland is obtaining accurate identifying information for the defendant driver. Once settlement negotiations have failed, the next step is to file a Complaint. But to effectuate service of process, you need the defendant’s address. It is not uncommon for our only information regarding the defendant driver to be a name and insurance information. If his name is Joe Brown or Steve Smith, it can be difficult in car accidents where no police report is filed, the defendant has moved since the accident or the defendant gave a false address.

Of course, this could all be made easier if the insurance companies were willing to cooperate. But they will rarely (read: never in auto accident cases) voluntarily provide their insured’s information for service.

Luckily, in Maryland, the Annotated Code of Maryland provides the Maryland accident lawyer a means to obtain this information fairly quickly and cheaply. Maryland Courts & Judicial Proceedings Code Ann. § 6-311 requires a self-insurer or liability carrier to disclose the defendant driver’s “last known home and business addresses, if known” once the Plaintiff files the proper certification. That section requires a Plaintiff to file a certification with the clerk of the court in which the action is filed and serve it on the insurer or self-insurance plan that provides benefits to the defendant driver. The certification must: 1) state that the defendant had applicable insurance coverage at the time the accident occurred; 2) set forth the reasonable efforts made, in good faith, to locate the defendant; and 3) state that the defendant is evading service, or the whereabouts of the defendant are unknown to the plaintiff.

Once a certification conforming to these requirements is filed and served on the insurer or person that has the self-insurance plan, they must disclose to the plaintiff the last known address information for the defendant driver.

You can find here a sample certification for a Maryland auto accident case. Most other jurisdictions have similar statutes.

The case of Titan v. Advance was decided yesterday by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Titan is a case where the Plaintiff alleged negligent repair of a roof that led to the clogging of a roof drain, which then resulted in the flooding of the Plaintiff’s premises on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, at Crown Industrial Park. After a three day trial, the jury found in favor of the Defendants.

As you might have expected, the amount of rain after the job was completed was relevant. Defendants introduced, over objection, a certified copy of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s weather reports from Baltimore-Washington Airport, which reported rain patterns at the airport between the day roofing work was done and the date of the flooding off the roof. Plaintiff objected that the weather at Baltimore Washington Airport on that day was not relevant because it was 10 miles from the site.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Arrie W. Davis, found that the documents were relevant because the parties disputed the amount of rainfall. The court further found that in spite of the length of the documents, the jury could reasonably interpret the recorded rainfall amounts and no expert opinion was needed to explain the documents. As to the 10 miles between Baltimore Washington Airport and the site of the property, the court concluded this went to the weight of the evidence as opposed to admissibility.

Interestingly, the Plaintiff filed a claim with its own insurance company, Hartford, who paid some, but not all, of Plaintiff’s damages claim. Specifically, it did not pay all of Plaintiff’s business interruption loss. Plaintiff originally sued Hartford who prevailed on the always raised, but rarely used, affirmative defense of accord and satisfaction. As a part of the settlement in which Hartford paid a nominal amount, Hartford released its subrogation claim in this case.

In another issue of interest to personal injury lawyers, the question of when the existence of insurance can be introduced was also at issue. In most accident and medical malpractice cases where the client is being sued individually, plaintiffs want to get into evidence that the defendant has insurance to cover the claim. In Maryland, under Maryland Rule 5-411, generally evidence of liability insurance is not admissible. In this case, Plaintiff was cross-examined about its dealings with Hartford. Apparently, one of the Plaintiff’s agents made assertions to Hartford inconsistent both with Plaintiff’s contentions at trial and statements the agent was now making. The court found that the plain language of Maryland Rule 411 makes clear that evidence of insurance is admissible when offered for another legitimate purpose.

Certainly, the trial court did not commit reversal error in admitting this evidence. Usually the court will make every effort to shield the insurance issue from the jury by encouraging a stipulation that the statements were made, but still not disclose to the jury that they were made to an insurance company. In this case, given the context of the quoted testimony, it would have been very difficult to mask from the jury that there was underlying property insurance.

This is a worthwhile case for Maryland personal injury lawyers to read, both on the issue of admissibility of insurance, and with respect to the admission of weather reports, although the case does not break any new ground. You can find the Titan v. Advance here.

Last week, we were talking about the hot water Allstate found itself in with the state of Florida. This week, we look to Mississippi where Attorney General Jim Hood has opened a new hurricane Katrina related criminal investigation of State Farm, which he says is different from the earlier “crimes against policyholders” investigation. Hood had agreed to end that earlier investigation as part of a January 2007 settlement in which State Farm paid the attorney general’s office $5 million in costs and reopened policy holder claims from hurricane Katrina.

In response to an August subpoena for records from the grand jury investigation, State Farm filed a declaratory judgment action seeking to stop the investigation, and by September, had obtained a temporary restraining order. Now in mid-January, Hood has asked another federal judge to lift that order. That motion is still pending.

At issue is whether this is a continuation of the “crimes against policyholders” investigation or whether this is a validly new and different claim not covered by the agreement of January 2007. The focus of this new investigation has not been openly identified by the attorney general. There is speculation that it has to do with the handling of National Flood Insurance Program claims.

Homeowner policies cover wind and rain damage. Separate rising water/flood damage insurance is subsidized by the federal government, but sold through insurers. Some politicians and lawyers have accused insurance companies of fraudulently over-billing the federal government for flood damage claims.

Hood is asking the temporary restraining order banning him from investigating the criminal handling of Katrina claims by State Farm be dissolved. Yet attorney Edwin Snyder, a consultant for Hood, said, “The operative phrase is ‘Hurricane Katrina claims.” If it’s unrelated to that and it’s new, it’s available to investigate.”

I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think the Mississippi Attorney General is looking to take a second bite of the apple when he has already agreed to taking just the one bite. The earlier agreement appears to have resolved any outstanding Hurricane Katrina claims. But this story and the post last week on Allstate’s troubles in Florida underscore that the corporate culture of arrogance is not something that these insurance companies can selectively flash. The same executives that once tried to bully personal injury victims and their lawyers, often with great success, have moved up the food chain. Now, they make corporate policy decisions that no longer impact just individual claims but the entire company. Dealing with politicians requires a certain level of diplomacy and respect. Yet these insurance company executives have embedded in their DNA (at least their professional DNA, a distinction fairness requires) the paradigm of arrogance and obstruction. Why else do you think the state agencies and politicians are getting so riled up?

I’ll admit that I just made up this theory about ten minutes ago, but you have to admit - it makes some sense. Of course, you might also be wondering whether some of these politicians have some other agenda beyond justice in vilifying these insurance companies. But why interrupt a great tale of good versus evil with such nuance?

One question that has remained unanswered is whether Maryland’s new bad faith law is retroactive. On Dec. 17, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled that the Maryland legislature intended Maryland’s new first party bad faith law to be retroactive. In Schwaber v. Hartford, a case involving insurance coverage for a roof leak, Judge Motz had initially dismissed Plaintiff’s bad faith action prior to the effective date of the first party bad faith bill (2007 Md. Laws 150). Plaintiff sought to re-file the claim after the bill passed.

Interestingly, Hartford agreed that the Maryland legislature had intended the new bad faith statute to be retroactive, and instead objected on state and federal constitutional grounds. Judge Motz chose to defer ruling on these objections or certifying the state constitutional questions to the Maryland Court of Appeals, unless or until it becomes clear that resolution of these constitutional issues are necessary to the outcome of the litigation. So while it is not a slam dunk that this new law will pass constitutional muster, the court's finding that the bad faith law was intended to be retroactive is a great step in the right direction.

You can find Judge Motz's opinion here.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Many plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers are complaining that State Farm’s profit surged to $5.6 billion in 2006 — up 75% from $3.2 billion in 2005. State Farm’s CEO, Ed Rust, Jr., received a $5.26 million dollar pay raise last year and is now earning $11.66 million. Implicit in this complaint is the idea that State Farm’s lowball offers and hardball tactics are the reason why their profits are so high and their CEO is overpaid. I think these complaints are misplaced for a lot of reasons.

First, General Motors took a $39 million loss last quarter. While this statement is misleading as well, it underscores the obvious: big companies can have large profits and large losses. A number like $5.6 billion in a vacuum means nothing, particularly for a huge company like State Farm. If you think the insurance companies make too much in profit, put your savings in a company like Allstate, which is publicly traded. But be careful: Allstate, for example, has underperformed the market in the last ten years. Insurance companies are hardly the Google of the stock market and I really don't think there is any evidence that their profits are historically excessive. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong.)

Second, with respect State Farm’s CEO’s salary, State Farm is a Fortune 100 company. If high CEO salaries are a problem (and I don’t think they are for reasons that are not worth getting into here), it is not specific to the insurance companies. Big company CEOs are making a ton of money in every business.

Finally, and I think most importantly, I think it is misplaced to expend energy complaining about low ball offers. Setting aside first party obligations where the paradigm is a little more complex, insurance companies should be trying to do whatever they ethically can to decrease payouts. It is our job as personal injury lawyers to do the opposite. We are not shooting for fair offers, we are trying to get as much as we possibly can for our clients. They call us greedy personal injury lawyers and we call the insurance companies, like State Farm, cheapskates. But maybe this is not the worst thing in the world. We have an adversarial system that has been in place for a few hundred years and I think it works. To the extent that it does not, it is clearly not a perfect system. It is just the best system.

State Farm and their brethren are going to play tough. That’s okay. If personal injury lawyers hold up their end of the bargain and fight back, the system will work just fine.

I had a jury trial in an auto accident case in Anne Arundel County against State Farm last week. It was a soft tissue injury case with over a year of treatment. It was a case we inherited from another lawyer who retired last year.

The biggest weakness of the Plaintiff's case is that he had few doctor visits before complaining of the soft tissue injury upon which the claim was based. The Defendant's biggest weakness was their liability defense never actually made any sense. The Defendant was, however, very old and very sympathetic. Because the jury is never told insurance is going to pay the claim, you have to expect this to be a factor in the amount of the recovery even if they do suspect there is insurance behind the Defendant.

The jury found for the plaintiff, but awarded only a little over $16,000. State Farm was thrilled, and I was depressed for a few days. They won and I lost. That is how we both saw it and marked our scorecards accordingly. But here's the thing: State Farm only offered $5,000 on the case. It underscores how unreasonable State Farm's offers can sometimes be when it views a jury award of over three times their offer to be a success.

I shouldn't single out State Farm. We have "lost" a lot of trials were the verdict was a great deal higher than the last settlement offer, particularly in smaller cases in difficult venues. (If you are not a Maryland personal injury lawyer, Anne Arundel County is a relatively affluent county whose juries are considered conservative, particularly in cases that involve subjective complaints of pain without any positive diagnostic findings.)

A part of the reason why insurance companies don't feel compelled to make fair offers is because too many personal injury lawyers do not want to try the case - they take the settlement offer. If more personal injury lawyers held the insurance companies' feet in the fire and made them try cases where the offers are unreasonable, we would have many fewer unreasonable offers. Of course, we settle a lot of cases where the offers are unreasonable, because the client does not want to go to trial. But I think too many lawyers convince their clients to settle personal injury cases that really should be tried.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Allstate Insurance Co. will now fairly compensate thousands of Washington drivers for out-of-pocket medical expenses in a class action settlement. In 2005, Allstate was sued for arbitrarily limiting PIP payments for car accident victims. Allstate used Colossus to determine the average pay rate for a procedure in the geographical area and then paid out only 85 percent of what it found to be the average amount. To be clear, they did not pay what they thought was fair; they paid 85% of what they thought was fair. In an unrelated story, Allstate takes 100% of the premiums from their insured. This practice underscores the insurance company motto of taking premiums and denying claims.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, I blogged last week about a former Allstate employee’s testimony that revealed Allstate’s alleged systematic bad faith in a first party bad faith case in Kentucky.

I also blogged back in May about the newly strengthened first party bad faith bill that passed in Washington, which has much sharper teeth that Maryland’s new first party bad faith law, allowing for three times the actual damages incurred plus attorneys’ fees and expenses. I cannot help but wonder if that precipitated settlement in this Washington bad faith case.

A former Allstate claims adjuster supervisor tells all in a first party bad faith trial in Kentucky. My response: I am shocked - shocked - that there is gambling going on in this establishment.

To read more about the former Allstate employee's testimony, click here.

One new bill that came out of Annapolis this year, and is set to become Maryland law on October 1, 2007, is aimed at limiting one of the predatory insurance practices: the “don’t hire a lawyer and I’ll give you a quick settlement” tactic. Among the major auto insurance carriers in Maryland, I do not see GEICO, Allstate, or State Farm doing this aggressively or systematically; Nationwide does it a good bit; and Progressive does it with absolute zeal.

This bill will not limit the practice itself but it will give injury victims not represented by a Maryland lawyer the opportunity to void any release signed within 30 days of an accident within 60 days provided certain conditions are met such as providing written notice and, of course, returning the proceeds.

To Progressive’s credit, it does not appear that they are nearly as aggressive in very serious injury cases, but it amazes me to hear from my personal injury clients the lengths to which Progressive will induce quick settlements in smaller cases. Progressive adjusters show up on the injury victims’ doorstep (apparently every adjuster is smiling and friendly) with a checkbook eager to “make this thing right.”

Most Maryland personal injury lawyers do not want to admit this, but while it is always the safest play to contract an injury lawyer after an accident, smaller injury cases can often be settled without a lawyer. Personal injury lawyers do add value to smaller cases but often it is not much more than the contingency fee the lawyer charges. Because insurance companies generally put a value on the quality and reputation of a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer, I think our law firm adds value well above our fee in small personal injury accident cases. But do you need to hire our law firm or another lawyer in smaller cases? I think it depends on the case but, often, the answer is no.

I certainly have respect for Progressive as an insurance company. I like almost all of their adjusters and I do not think this “quick settlement” practice is unethical; however, in my opinion, Progressive is the last insurance company I would expect to make a reasonable offer in a “quick fix” situation. If I were to give all of the major insurance carriers in Maryland the exact same case, I would expect Progressive’s offer to be the lowest. It is generally a struggle for accident victims with or without personal injury lawyers to get Progressive to offer fair value without filing a lawsuit.

Early on in the development of the case point no one knows the actual value of the case because the extent of the injuries and the harm from those injuries is still unknown. Accordingly, almost invariably, any early settlement is imprudent. Why do people take a quick settlement then? Because some injury victims are either naïve or they need money fast. Arguably, then, this new Maryland law could go further and make all quick settlements voidable. To what extent should society protect people from themselves? This is a political and philosophical question beyond the scope of the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog, but I think this law probably strikes the right balance by providing some protection for accident victims while also giving insurance companies some ability to rightfully be able to settle smaller personal injury claims without waiting for an indefinite period of time before they can close the claim.

As regular readers of the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer blog are aware, I have been a critic of the MAIF because of the speed with which it reviews cases, the offers it makes which almost invariably cause reasonable car accident lawyers to file suit because the client's best interests demand a lawsuit, and because the it invariably makes its lawyers (and our lawyers) jump through discovery hoop after discovery hoop in large cases before offering its policy limits on the eve of trial when the policy limits should have offered from jump street.

In this Baltimore Business Journal article, MAIF's executive director since 2004, M. Kent Crabbe, talks about some of the challenges MAIF faces as an "insurance company" operating under a somewhat unique and complex regulatory scheme, including why it may be more difficult for MAIF to recruit and retain quality people. I put "insurance company" in quotes not derisively (well, kind of) but because technically under the Maryland Insurance Code, MAIF is not an insurance company.

I spoke today to one of the more competent MAIF adjusters who told me that the bar is being raised at MAIF with respect to responding in a professional and timely way to personal injury claims. I'll save my "picking the bar off the floor" joke (well, I guess I didn't save it) and hope that there are real changes in store at MAIF. I realize that government agencies are always going to struggle to keep up with for profit businesses in terms of efficiencies, but I have seen many other Maryland state agencies - including MVA in recent years, believe it or not - that seem to run far more efficiently.

Yesterday, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire's signed into law a bill to strengthening Washington's first party bad faith law. Maryland recently passed its own first party bad faith law but Washington's is much stronger. Although the Washington law regrettably excludes health insurers, it eases the stringent requirements for first party bad faith lawsuits, allowing policyholders who are treated unreasonably by their own insurance company to recover three times the actual damages. Now that is a first party bad faith bill was some real teeth. The Washington law also allows for an award of attorneys' fees and costs to the claimant.

I'm hoping that the success of the new Maryland first party bad faith bill will bring about a more stringent law in the future in Maryland. Virginia, which has a similar statute to Maryland's (Virginia Annotated Code §38.2-209), could also use a stronger law that will do more to discourage insurance companies from making the motto of "taking premiums and denying claims" a common business practice in Maryland and Virginia.

We are handling a red light/green light auto accident case that occurred in Towson, Maryland a few years ago that resulted in substantial permanent injuries to our client. Trial is a few months away. The insurance company for the Defendant is the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund (MAIF). Their attorneys recently filed a motion to bifurcate the trial into two separate trials for liability and damages.

The Defendant would not seem to benefit if the case is bifurcated. The concern raised by Defendants – the cost and effort of the liability case – is of no consequence to the insured Defendant. So, practically speaking, why was this motion filed?

If the case is bifurcated, the chance of a bad faith claim against MAIF evaporates; it would simply offer its $100,000 (an extremely large policy for MAIF, parenthetically) policy limit in the event Plaintiff prevailed on liability because, as Defendant’s motion tacitly concedes, this value of the case is in excess of MAIF’s coverage. Accordingly, while bifurcation would be a loss for Plaintiff, it would also be a loss for the insured Defendant who will lose any leverage that he has to encourage MAIF to settle this case or any claim he has against them for bad faith should they not make reasonable efforts to settle the claim. Should the case be bifurcated and Plaintiff prevails on liability, Plaintiff will proceed on with the damages trial that will likely result in an excess verdict. This would leave MAIF in fine shape, fully insulated from a bad faith claim and protected from allegations that it failed to properly defend its insured by, for example, having a defense medical examination performed on the Plaintiff. Defendant would be left holding the bag.

This takes us back to the flip title of this post: Who's your daddy? What are the chances the Defendant’s lawyer, who was hired and paid for by MAIF, advised his client of these personal risks to him when seeking bifurcation? When defense lawyers serve two masters, or sticking with the pop culture theme, two daddies, conflicts abound. Every defense lawyer in Maryland knows that these conflicts have to be resolved in favor of the client, not the insured.

Most insurance company lawyers our attorneys work with walk this delicate balance well. Obviously, I do not have all of the facts and, of course, there could be facts of which I may not be aware that would change the analysis, most notably the unlikely event that MAIF told the client or his attorney that it would cover any verdict in excess of the policy limits. But, somehow, I doubt it. There is no question that the tripartite relationship between the insured, insurance company and the insurance defense lawyer is complicated. But the insurance defense lawyer owes a paramount duty to his client even if the insurer hired him and pays his bill. While most insurance lawyers are mindful of this duty, it is still way too often forgotten.

The Maryland Daily Record published an article today on Erie Insurance Exchange v. Heffernan, a new Maryland Court of Appeals opinion in an underinsured motorist case. The reporter, Caryn Tamber, does a real nice job of addressing a complicated issue. Any Maryland lawyers handling auto accident or truck accident cases should read the entire opinion. You can find the article, which includes a few quotes from me, here.

The Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog took an unscheduled vacation as we ramp up for two mediations later this month and I also had a trial in Baltimore City earlier this week. Ironically, given this blog's recent obsession with first party bad faith in Maryland, the trial was an uninsured motorist auto accident case with first party bad faith implications. Classic scenario: $20,000 Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund (MAIF) underlying policy with a $100,000 in uninsured motorist coverage with USAA. MAIF did what they usually do: spend a bunch of money wasting time and defending the case but, in the end, putting up their policy. USAA offered an additional $17,000, arguing that our client's injuries were merely "soft tissue" in spite of the fact that it was obvious the woman suffered from a permanent injury. It was an easy call for USAA who knew, regardless of its obligation to its insured, that the maximum recovery was $100,000 ($80,000 of which they would have to pay). A Baltimore City jury awarded exactly $200,000 which was reduced to $100,000.

The Maryland Daily Record wrote a good article on the new first party bad faith law, using my jury verdict as an example. You can find it here.

Thanks for the emails wondering where I have been. I'm back and the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog will have a new post tomorrow.

The Maryland Senate has passed House Bill 425 and the Maryland House of Delegates today also passed the bill which puts a new requirement of good faith for insurance company dealing with their insureds. The bill now heads to Governor O'Malley for his signature. The Governor has previously pledged support for the bill.

This issue has been a reoccurring topic on the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog. See this post, that post and this post. My partner, Laura G. Zois, testified before the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates about three weeks ago on this very issue. I know that after the bill passed the Maryland Senate there was a lot of lobbying efforts from the insurance companies to keep it from passing in the House of Delegates. The vote was pushed back and I began to really doubt whether Maryland would join the majority of states in this country that have first party bad faith. I'm thrilled the Maryland Assembly put the interest of Maryland injury victims and consumers ahead of the insurance company and their lobbyists.

This is a huge win for Maryland personal injury victims and their attorneys who are fighting to get injury victims a fair recovery for their injuries and the benefits of the insurance contract for which they are paying premiums.