We have been compiling personal injury settlements and verdicts in a few different Maryland counties in recent years. We have pulled these from our own cases, jury verdict reports, and cases our friends and colleagues have handled.
According to the Personal Injury Valuation Handbook study put out by Jury Verdict Research, the average wrongful death jury award for the loss of a woman is as follows:
| Year | Award Median | Probability Range | Award Range | Award Mean |
| 2004 | $ 1,125,000 | $ 341,750 - $ 2,650,000 | $ 5,104 - $ 45,500,00 | $ 2,836,536 |
| 2005 | $ 1,168,744 | $ 387,500 - $ 3,387,936 | $ 3,620 - $ 30,000,000 | $ 3,215,919 |
| 2006 | $ 1,200,000 | $ 446,231 - $ 3,000,000 | $ 1,550 - $ 15,000,000 | $ 2,324,140 |
| 2007 | $ 881,739 | $ 331,541 - $ 2,180,343 | $ 12,000 - $ 65,000,000 | $ 3,378,401 |
| 2008 | $ 1,000,000 | $ 91,827 - $ 2,875,000 | $ 3,858 - $ 93,000,000 | $ 4,416,843 |
| 2009 | $ 1,167,145 | $ 317,689 - $ 3,132,750 | $ 49,672 - $ 16,577,118 | $ 2,170,622 |
| 2010 | $ 2,400,000 | $ 1,300,000 - $ 5,315,000 | $ 25,000 - $ 71,000,000 | $ 8,652,577 |
| Overall | $ 1,172,500 | $ 350,000 - $ 3,000,000 | $ 1,550 - $ 93,000,000 | $ 3,301,389 |
You can find information as to how the victim's age factors into average verdicts here.
How does this compare to adult men? Men have a higher average award; woman received a slightly higher median award. I'm not looking at the raw data but the differences appear to be statistically insignificant.
This data excludes, for some reason, loss of services. The median loss of services awarded to surviving spouses of women, 49 years old and younger, was $562,500. Spouses of women age 50 recovered a median loss of services award of $742,591. Minor children of women killed in tort cases received a median loss of services award of $1,000,000, and adult children received a surprising median award of $200,000.
Jury Verdict Research looked at plaintiffs' jury awards to get an idea of the value of different types of business negligence injury.
The most frequently injury, not surprisingly, was disc injury claims which made up 12% of the total cases. Interestingly, emotional distress was the next most frequently reported injury at 10%. No, I don't know exactly what this means, either, but let's go with it. Back strains, I'm think mostly soft tissue injury, was 7 percent. Bad faith, death and spinal nerve cases each comprised 6 percent of the total plaintiff awards. Brain injury cases accounted for 5 percent, while head injuries, knee injuries, leg injuries, and shoulder injuries each accounted for 4 percent of the cases. All other injuries each made up 3 percent or less of the total number of plaintiff awards.
| Injury | Award Median | Probability Range |
| Disc Damage | $ 141,475 | $ 45,000 - $ 502,161 |
| Emotional Distress | $ 100,000 | $ 16,900 - $ 477,283 |
| Back Strains | $ 13,139 | $ 5,591 - $ 34,661 |
| Bad Faith | $ 103,000 | $ 42,361 - $ 537,511 |
| Death | $ 1,160,000 | $ 383,278 - $ 3,500,000 |
| Spinal Nerve Injuries | $ 141,821 | $ 40,179 - $ 750,646 |
| Brain Damage | $ 577,000 | $ 123,237 - $ 3,108,000 |
| Head Injuries | $ 50,000 | $ 19,000 - $ 163,562 |
| Knee Injuries | $ 140,000 | $ 50,000 - $ 412,501 |
| Leg Injuries | $ 374,000 | $ 120,000 - $ 1,452,635 |
| Shoulder Injuries | $ 117,000 | $ 51,039 - $ 384,250 |
| Overall Injuries | $ 150,000 | $ 37,500 - $ 736,875 |
(Again, probability range is the 25th to 75th percentile of verdicts.)
The average business liability claim is worth a lot more than the average personal injury claim. Why? The first, and most obvious, businesses typically have deeper pockets because they have better insurance coverage and assets to stand behind verdicts than most car accident cases. We have handled a lot of car accident wrongful death cases where the recovery is $100,000 or less simply because there is no coverage. Serious injury and death business liability cases are also getting higher value because these injuries do not discriminate as much based on age. Many malpractice cases involve older patients - they are getting more treatment than younger people - so they tend to get less in terms of future economic damages and their life spans are just not as long.
Jury Verdict Research has some interesting statistics on verdicts on money damages awarded at trial in premises liability claims.
Also included in the report is a look at median awards in different types of premises liability cases. So, at least theoretically, we have on average the same injuries but different defendants. The median award for premises liability claims against owners/operators of industry property was the highest at $250,000. The median awards for other premises liability cases, according to the studies were: $125,000 against recreational facilities; $114,726 against government property; $95,883 against service establishments; $75,000 against residential property owners; and $82,500 against retail stores.
I'm probably overstating the case. Owners of industrial property are far more likely to be mixing with dangerous activities, I'm sure. Still, the differences in the data is pretty striking. Juries definitely consider who their plaintiffs and defendants are and that invariably gets factored into the verdict. It really shouldn't. But juries are human beings.
The statistics below chart the top and the bottom of the middle 50 percent of all awards (for the Probability Range and Award Range, the first number is the 25th percentile; the second is the 75th percentile).
| Year | Award Median | Probability Range | Award Range | Award Mean |
| 2004 | $81,000 | $25,950 - $300,000 | $68 - $12,200,000 | $452,919 |
| 2005 | $92,061 | $38,150 - $283,401 | $108 - $11,153,857 | $363,809 |
| 2006 | $77,281 | $21,822 - $300,000 | $250 - $15,839,000 | $409,651 |
| 2007 | $100,000 | $21,101 - $372,022 | $1 - $102,714,734 | $848,110 |
| 2008 | $117,028 | $35,714 - $474,842 | $879 - $24,162,000 | $784,839 |
| 2009 | $96,768 | $25,542 - $334,000 | $75 - $5,500,000 | $429,767 |
| 2010 | $85,000 | $29,554 - $350,000 | $2,050 - $16,000,000 | $673,556 |
| Overall | $92,611 | $28,328 - $336,373 | $1 - $102,714,734 | $562,441 |
JVR has done a national analysis of jury awards for spinal nerve with disc damage for the years 2004 through 2010.
One thing the study underscores is what every plaintiffs' lawyer has figured out by osmosis if nothing else: age matters. Young people generally recover much better than older people like me. Shoot.
The overall median award to plaintiffs age 18 and under was $43,997 while the median award to plaintiffs between the ages of 19 and 29 was $67,612. Plaintiffs between the ages of 40 and 59 who suffered spinal nerve with disc damage received a median award of $103,723 and plaintiffs age 60 and older received a median award of $100,000.
The interesting thing about the age numbers is that at some point you see they begin to turn again as juries increasingly begin to blame age for the injuries. I bet if you took this up to 70 and 80 you would see the numbers continue to drop.
Anyway, these are the numbers:
Continue reading "Average Disc Injury Verdicts and Settlements" »
I'm fortunate in that I don't get many headaches, a blessing I attribute to good hydration and genetic good fortune. On the rare occasion that I do get them, they are debilitating. It is really hard to enjoy much of anything in life with anything north of a mild headache.
Juries struggle in figuring out how to value personal injury cases when the primary injury is a head injury that caused, and may be continuing to cause, headaches.
Why? Because headaches are largely subjective. So the credibility of the plaintiff - which is usually 90% of the game at trial - becomes the entire game because you can't know the pain level inside someone's head. Instead, you have to decide if you believe that their report of pain is what they say it is.
According to Jury Verdict Research, the average verdict for headache injuries is $33,423. The median verdict is $11,092. Putting this in context, the average award in a personal injury case nationally is approximately $791,756. So verdicts in headache cases are 5% of the national average? Wow.
Juries are more inclined to believe older people... or they think young people should just deal with it. The median award for those under 18 was a $7,463. For plaintiffs between 19 and 39, the median award was $8,858. Once you get over 60, the awards rise to $13,454.
Continue reading "Settlement Value of Headaches in Personal Injury Cases" »
Jury Verdict Research has some interesting data on which injures comprised the largest proportion of cases in which the victim was awarded over $1 million. Here is the category followed by its relative percentage of million dollar verdicts: 
Did you see any major surprises here? I didn't except for seeing leg injuries with 50% more million dollar verdicts than paralysis injuries. Thankfully, I think this might be most attributable to the fact that paralysis is, relatively speaking, a rare injury in a car accident.
Where are the million dollar verdicts geographically? The Southwest - comprised of Arizona, California (which I suspect did a lot of the heavy lifting to push these numbers), Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah - has the highest percentage of million dollar verdicts with 19%. The Northwest - with Alaska (which generally has high awards actually), Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming has the lowest percentage of million dollar verdicts at 7%.
Continue reading "Where the Million Dollar Verdicts Are" »
The much anticipated list of judicial hellholes is out. Baltimore made the list once again.
The write up on Baltimore begins with the notion that for evidence that Baltimore is a judicial hellhole, well just ask Miller & Zois.
Baltimore has been described as an up-and-coming Judicial Hellhole for years, but don’t just take our word for it. Plaintiffs’ firms, such as Miller & Zois, advertise Baltimore as “a favorable jurisdiction for plaintiffs’ injury lawyers.
Is Miller & Zois calling the city a jurisdiction "favorable" for plaintiffs' attorneys tantamount to prove that Baltimore is a "judicial hellhole" for defendants? If so, I really need to adjust my expectations.
But that is just the start. This report prefers rhetoric to exactitude at every turn and basically reads like a college term paper that was turned in a that last minute. It complains "Judge Glenn" - actually retired Judge Glynn - is rigging the asbestos docket. How? The report does not exactly say. It implies it is by consolidating the cases. Yes, the asbestos cases in Baltimore are consolidated. Baltimore joins a zillion other jurisdictions that have done the same thing. Why? The cases are consolidated on causation, not product identification or damages. This is not a class action lawsuit. The cases are consolidated on damages because it is simple to prove. If you got mesothelioma you either got it from asbestos or you were a vermiculite miner. Call me crazy, I'm willing to let the court figure this out for scheduling purposes.
This is how this report reads from top to bottom. The whole premise of this beat down of Baltimore is just filled with unsupported innuendo. The impression left is that asbestos cases being filed in the city are because of forum shopping, Plaintiffs' attorneys looking to get to these juries. But the auto plants, shipyards and steel mills, as well as many of the other defendants (Locke Insulators, for example) are located in Baltimore. That's not forum shopping, it is filing a lawsuit where the harm occurred.
The downright fictions and convenient distortions continue. Baltimore juries are not "notoriously biased against business defendants.” No evidence is cited. The report really focuses on asbestos cases. Yeah, Baltimore juries are mad at asbestos defendants. So is pretty much every jury under the sun that have had a chance to evaluate the evidence.
Continue reading "Source: Miller & Zois Thinks Baltimore Is a Hellhole" »
The first case I tried for Miller & Zois 10 years ago was a herniated disc injury case. Since then, we have handled literally hundreds of disc injury accident claims. We spend a lot of time fine tuning the science and the arguments to make at trial in these cases. 
I have always been particularly interested in verdict statistics in disc injury claims. Yesterday, I found some interesting data that looks at the median value of herniated disc injury claims based on the type of vehicle crash. The data provides two things: median verdict and a probability range of verdict.
Of the two, I think the most interesting is probability range. In this Jury Verdict Research Study, probability range is defined as the middle 50 percent of all awards arranged in ascending order in a sampling, 25% above and 25% below the median. In other words, it provides the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile of verdicts. I believe that for plaintiffs with a good law firm, who know how to prepare and try a disc injury case, I think the 75th percentile is probably the median.
Anyway, these are the numbers:
| Accident | Median | Probability Range | % of MVA Herniated Disc Cases | Truck Accidents | $208,341 | $66,975 - $605,101 | 10% | Overall | $54,538 | $17,575 - $180,017 | 80% | Intersection Collisions | $50,000 | $17,500 - $136,745 | 19% | Turning Collisions | $47,781 | $20,000 - $160,000 | 9% | Rear-End Collisions | $47,500 | $12,500 - $140,000 | 35% | Chain Reaction Collisions | $40,000 | $10,478 - $150,000 | 6% |
The first thing that really stands out is the gap in the range, which is particularly pronounced as you might expect in truck accident crashes. I'm also surprised at how relativly low the statistics are for intersection accidents.
They are all motor vehicle accidents. What really surprises me is how much more the value of herniated disc injuries explodes when taken outside of the motor tort context:
The graph in Metro Verdicts Monthly this month is on nursing home verdicts and settlements in Virginia and Maryland over the last 25 years.
The median nursing home verdict/settlement in Virginia was $287,500. In Maryland, the median verdict was $150,000. Virginia seems about right. I think the Maryland data is wrong. Again, I have no idea how Metro Verdict Monthly compiles this data.
Jury Verdict Research did a study that found that nursing home plaintiffs get a median award of $329,000. Defense lawyers are not eager to try these cases for a reason: plaintiffs win at trial a stunning 63 percent of nursing home jury trials. So, statistically speaking, you are more likely to win at trial a nursing home case than a rear end accident case. Crazy, right? Why more lawyers are not pushing for nursing home cases is beyond me. The are not as lucrative as they once were (new med mal cap) but they are still good cases that also, not for nothing, really help protect nursing home patients.
Metro Verdicts Monthly's cover graph is failure to diagnose breast cancer settlements and verdicts in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
By some estimates, between 8% and 12% of cancer cases are initially misdiagnosed. It is hard to call one type of cancer misdiagnosis case more tragic than another. Every misdiagnosis is going to decrease the chance of treating and defeating the cancer. But, many cancer misdiagnosis cases are not medical malpractice cases because the cancer is so aggressive, but breast cancer misdiagnosis cases are fueled by tragedy because breast cancer is often extremely manageable when caught early, and often fatal when missed.
Continue reading "Breast Cancer Misdiagnosis Verdict/Settlement Statistics" »
I have recently received a good bit of heated interest in my last two posts (here and here) on the Maryland Court of Appeals opinion in Tracey v. Solesky, in which the court held that in dog bite cases involving a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull mix, plaintiff no longer needs to prove that the dog in particular, or pit bulls in general, are dangerous.
There is no question that dog bite claims make up their fair share of serious personal injury claims. Here are some statistics:
Continue reading "Dog Bite Lawsuit Statistics" »
Does Maryland Need a Dram Shop Law?
(Note: In a crazy coincidence, I wrote this blog post just moments before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided Troxel v. Iguana Cantina, a dram shop/premises liability case which reverses a Baltimore County trial court's finding of summary judgment for the defendants essentially because Maryland has no dram shop law. The Court of Special appeals reversed, calling the case a premises liability case. The court lays out the the sometimes hazy line between premises liability and a dram shop claim. At least this is what I think the opinion does I just glanced at the case, amazed by the coincidence. But, boy, this case looks teed up for the Maryland Court of Appeals to impose dram shop liability if that is where the court wants to go.)
The aptly named "Club Blaze", a Georgia strip club, was hit with a $1.75 million verdict in a wrongful death car accident case in Georgia.
These facts read like a preposterous hypothetical concocted by someone intent to prove that every state needs a dram shop law. A man went to a strip bar and managed to drink himself to a .398. Five times the legal limit in Georgia (and Maryland). I bet I have ever been half that drunk in my entire life. I also bet you he had a tab for one at the strip club, making it painfully obvious how he was getting home. So he left the strip club and did what is exactly par for the course when your BAC is .398: he killed himself and two young women, one of which left behind two small kids.
“Fatima did not die in vain. This case will bring awareness about the long-term effects of a drunk driving. This has devastated our family,” Bird's mother, Lisa Mitchell, said in the news release. “Fatima was my daughter and my friend. We honor her by using this award to send her children to college so they can become the best that they can be.”
I'm impressed this woman's mother is able to take such a high road. I would like to think that I could take this approach if it happened to me. I really do. But I think I would just be sad, angry and bitter every single day until I died.
This lawsuit fails on its face in Maryland. We don't have dram shop laws. So you can serve someone alcohol to the point where he is five times over the legal limit creating a time bomb that not only may go off but is actually likely to go off, and there is no claim. That woman's kids - a four and five year-old - would have to fend for themselves for their college tuition if this tragedy had happened in Maryland.
Continue reading "Wrongful Death Verdict: Justice You Would Not Get in Maryland" »
The Daily Record unlocked the article our verdict in Baltimore City last week. You can find it here.
Saying you suffered a head injury in an accident is sort of like saying your nephew is an actor. He might be Will Smith but he also might be an understudy in a local dinner theater production.
Head injuries vary from headaches that resolve quickly to brain damage that destroys a life. The data on head injury verdicts does not leave a good impression of settlement value of head injury cases:
These may well be the most misleading statistics I have every posted on this blog. Because these are median not average verdict statistics. Almost one-fourth of skull fracture cases result in a verdict over $1 million (which includes skull fractures that cause no real injury - we have seen those). Yet the median is only $100,000. I don't know what the average head injury verdict is - I can't find any statistics - but I'll bet you the average verdict in a case with a permanent head injury is over $1.5 million.
The Maryland Daily Record writes an article about the case Laura Zois and I tried last week and won a $537,000 verdict for our client (subscription required). Cincinnati Insurance, who insured the defendant, offered nothing over the course of discovery but made a $150,000 offer before trial.
Speaking of subscription required, Rod Gaston's $2.5 million wrongful death medical malpractice verdict two weeks ago was the subject of a story in LawyersUSA.
Jury Verdict Research found that the median jury verdict in arm nerve damage cases over the last 10 years was $81,095. This analysis is based on plaintiff verdicts rendered from March 2001 through March 2011. Arm nerve damage is defined by the study as injuries to the median nerve, radial nerve, ulnar nerve, musculacutaneous nerve, and axillary nerve which are all branches of the brachial plexus. Carpal tunnel injuries were, however, specifically excluded from this study.
JVR provides more median verdicts for arm injuries:
| Our law firm has successfully handled scores of serious knee injury cases. We fight for our clients. Call 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line consultation. |
According to a recent Jury Verdict Research study over the last ten years, the average verdict in a serious knee injury case is 359,149. The median knee injury verdict is $114,299. Eight percent of verdicts were over $1,000,000.
How do you define serious? JVR defines it as knee dislocation, fractures, replacements, and aggravation of a preexisting knee injury. I certainly understand the first three categories; aggravation of a preexisting knee injury more subjective and a little harder to define.
Half of these cases are car accident lawsuits and the other half include every personal injury case under the sun. So it is hard to extract much meaning from this average serious knee injury verdict. But there are a lot of numbers in the report that break it down a little further.
Continue reading "Knee Injury Settlements and Verdicts" »
Jury Verdict Research provides a study on median compensatory award for circulatory system injuries:
Metro Verdicts Monthly's cover graph is hip replacement settlements and verdicts in Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia.
The graph just says "hip replacements" so there is really no context. I'm going to assume that these are primarily injury cases and not product liability claims because those claims - most notably against DePuy, Stryker, and Zimmer - do not make up a substantial part of the verdicts and settlements involving hip replacements since 1987.
With that introduction, the median verdict/settlement in hip replacement cases:
Maryland: $385,000
Virginia: 275,000
Washington, D.C.: $175,000
I slavishly report this verdict data to you when I see it but this is probably more worthless then the verdict and settlement statistics I usually give you- which are seemingly interesting but also ultimately worthless.
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