Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

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:

• Head Lacerations and Contusions: $10,016
• Concussions: $22,638
• Skull Fractures: $100,000
• Cranial Nerve Damage: $160,095
• Head and Skull Injuries, Overall: $14,034

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:

• Arm amputations: $3,500,000 (75% of verdicts over $1,000,000)
• Arm and Elbow Nonfractures, Arm Nerve Damage and Arm Amputations: $61,863 (13% of awards over $1 million).
• Elbow Injuries without a Fracture: $13,420 (2% of awards over $1 million)

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:

• Heart attacks: $443,750
• Gallbladder injuries: 259,117
• Liver injuries: $221,185
• Spleen injuries: $40,342
• Overall: $225,000

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.

Jury Verdict Research published data on verdicts in severe leg injury cases over the 10 years prior to October 2010. By severe, I mean severe: crush injuries and amputations. The average verdict in these cases is approximately $4,000,000 and the median verdict is $2,400,000 for injuries to one or both legs, as well as leg injuries resulting in varying degrees of leg amputations. The leg amputation categories include both traumatic and surgical amputations.

I was surprised by the relatively insignificant difference between above the knee and below the knee amputations: $3,958,003 average/$2,588,649 median above the knee versus $4,930,186 average/$3,727,500 median below the knee. The average value for bilateral amputations jumps to $13,392,589 average. But the median is $5,012,500 which is a statistically insignificant difference from a single above the knee amputation.

This is interesting data and useful to use in negotiating your case. But asking the numbers to make sense is asking too much.

• Valuing cases: how lawyers, claims adjusters, and ultimately, juries determine money damages in personal injury cases
• Value of fractured and broken legs in car accidents.

In the past, I have written on the value of fractured and broken legs. Now, in a relentless, unyielding effort to cover the settlement and trial value of every single bone in the human anatomy, let's thin slice broken legs a little thinner: femur fractures in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.

This month's Metro Verdicts Monthly graph on the front of their publication compares verdict and settlement amounts for femur fractures in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Since 1987 the median verdict or settlement amount of a femur fracture case in the District of Columbia has been $250,000.00, and in Virginia it has been $200,000.00. However, the median verdict or settlement in a femur fracture case in Maryland has been $75,000.00. The national average is $167,000.

Continue reading "Value of Femur Fractures" »

The average premises liability verdict is $643,099, according to Jury Verdict Research's review of premises lawsuits around the country. The median verdict in premises liability cases is $98,160. Premises liability claims against recreational facilities were higher. The average verdict is $1,007,704 and the median verdict is $125,000. JVR defines these cases, as any premises liability lawyer would suspect, as a lawsuit which is brought against an individual, business, landlord or organization responsible for the maintenance and safety of a property or structure.

When possible, I try to include average and median data. Average verdict data includes large often uncollectable verdicts that tend to distort the reality. While both the silly case that never should have been filed and the $58,000,000 verdict don't really apply to the valuation of your case, the former distorts the result more than the latter. Then again, all verdict data undifferentiated by specifics of the case ultimately should be filed away under "very interesting but ultimately useless."

It is also worth noting that this is a study of successful premise liability verdicts where the plaintiff prevails. Factoring in the losses, the average award is much lower. Most premise liability lawyers who handle premises cases regularly handle only serious injury or death cases. Clearly, the bar in terms of the severity of injury required for a good lawyer to accept the case is higher in premises liability cases than in auto accident cases where, generally speaking, the path to proving liability is more clear and certain.

• What Is the Value of Your Case?
• Overview of Slip and Fall Cases

Jury Verdict Research conducted a study of its database of verdicts and found that the average jury award in a bicycle accident case is $279,970. Underscoring how high jury verdicts distort the average verdict, the overall median money awarded in bike accident cases is $50,000. Moreover, Plaintiff's only prevail in 41% of the cases that go to trial.

I think the relatively low success rate of bicycle accident cases at trial is a general bias against bikes that may be even stronger than the bias against motorcycles. Many jurors, who typically drive cars, simply think bicycles shouldn't be on the road.

Obviously, the big problem with bicycle accidents as opposed to car and truck accidents is the lack of a strong steel foundation designed to withstand an impact. But the low hanging fruit to reduce the extent of injuries in bicycle accidents is simply wearing a helmet. The most serious bicycle injuries - and there were 630 fatal bike accidents in this country last year - usually involve a head injury. Wearing a bike helmet is estimated to reduce head injury risk by 85 percent. Maryland has a bike helmet law for those under 16 years-old but no law for adults.

I think there should be a mandatory bike helmet law in Maryland. To make my point, I'm going to slide down what libertarians call the slippery slope of paternalism. I really do appreciate their concern about creating (or furthering, as they would argue) a nanny state. But... that said... we already have helmet laws for motorcycles and seat belt laws in Maryland. A bike helmet law on public roads just makes sense because it would save lives at the cost of such a minor imposition.

There is a verdict in Metro Verdicts Monthly in Prince George’s County that I’m amazed has received no media coverage. The Plaintiff, a 17 year old baseball pitcher, received a $52,703 verdict for the right arm fracture he suffered while throwing a pitch in a baseball game.

Two questions come to mind: who would you sue and what would be the cause of action? Apparently, Plaintiff’s lawyer found answers to both of these questions. The jury found that the tournament organizer, Baseball Players Association, built the pitcher’s mound too big and too deep.

Defendants argued what you would expect them to argue: the mound was fine, the plaintiff just threw the ball really hard and these things happen. Defendant’s lawyer apparently also argued that there was no proof that Plaintiff had, as he claimed, a scholarship offer at Delaware Tech and that he failed to follow his doctor's orders for rehabilitation.

Continue reading "Pitcher Gets Verdict for Bad Pitcher's Mound" »

This month, Metro Verdicts Monthly graphs the median verdict and settlement value of back fracture cases over the last 23 years. The median settlement/verdict in Washington D.C. is $52,500. Maryland has a slightly lower median of $43,126. The median settlement/verdict in a back fracture lawsuit in Virginia is $125,000. These are back fracture cases where there is no paralysis.

Most back factures come from some sort of trauma, usually from a car accident or falling. The reason the numbers may sound lower than you are might expect is because many back fractures are not as serious as the ominous sounding "back fracture" would suggest. When I was in high school, I hurt my back swinging a baseball bat at baseball camp in Florida. A chiropractor worked on me for a while but I made no progress. I went to an orthopedic doctor and, low and behold, I had a fractured back. It ruined my baseball season and I had to wear a back brace for eight weeks but I never suffered any ill effects after removing the back brace.

Continue reading "Back Fracture Verdicts" »

Obviously, there are a lot of vexing injuries that occur in car and truck accidents. Foot and ankle injuries rank high on this list of hard to solve accident injuries. There are so many bones in the foot and the bones are so small. Just too many things can go wrong.

According to a Jury Verdict Research study, the overall median jury award for foot injuries is $98,583. More serious foot injuries see a corresponding rise in value. Multiple fractures to a foot increase the median verdict to $144,000. In foot injury cases where both feet are fractured, the median rises to $296,940. For plaintiffs' lawyers repeating the "scope property damage does not matter" credo, it is hard to ignore the conclusion that if you have suffered fractures to both of your feet, you were most likely in an extremely serious accident.

Another Jury Verdict Research study found that 39% of the foot injury cases that went to verdict were suffered in auto, truck or motorcycle accidents. A remarkable 11% of serious foot injury cases were in motorcycle accident cases. This stat underscores how dangerous motorcycles are compared to cars or trucks.

One thing I really suggest in foot injury cases is finding an accomplished doctor with a focus on foot and ankle injuries. Baltimore is uniquely blessed in world renowned foot surgeons. If you have an orthopedic problem with your foot - from a car accident or anything else - take advantage of the abundance of riches we have and get yourself someone extremely well-qualified to chart the best path to recovery for you.

• Value of Your Injury Claim (how do adjusters, lawyers and juries determine value of cases?)
• Value of Foot Injury Cases in Your State (some idea of how value varies by jurisdiction)
• Value of Amputated Toe Cases (verdict data)

One of the most difficult decisions an accident lawyer has to make is whether to take a case with fatal or catastrophic injuries where there is a significant dispute in liability - typically he said/she said.

Nothing you read in this blog post is going to make that decision for you. In these cases, most of the ballgame is witness credibility and the intricate details of how the accident happened (which, parenthetically, I think most juries get right). But it does not hurt accident lawyers to inform this case specific decision making process with a little bit of data.

Jury Verdict Research this month published data on the success rates in turning car accident cases, defined as vehicle accidents between parties traveling on the same road in either the same direction or opposite directions. These are the recovery probabilities by type of turning case:

Parties Traveling on Same Road in Opposite Directions: 61%
Defendant Turning Left: 66% (I'm surprised it is this low)
Plaintiff Turning Left: 44% (I'm surprised it is this high)
Defendant Turning Right: 43%
Plaintiff Turning Left: 52%
Plaintiff Turning Right: 34%

The lesson? It helps to represent the party that is not making a turn.

The average jury verdict in turning collusion cases is $156,472 which is inflated by large verdicts, including one for $35,835,684 that was included in the study. The median jury verdict in car accident turn cases is only $14,000. Two percent of the verdicts in these cases exceeded $1 million.

Nora Freeman Engstrom writes an amazing article for the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics titled Run-of-the-Mill Justice. She writes about settlement mill law firms, writing with a 60 Minutes investigative journalism style that names names, calling out a few law firms she has labeled as settlement mill firms. Engstrom characterizes these firms as "characterized by their high claim volume, aggressive advertising, significant delegation to non-attorneys, entrepreneurial focus, and quick resolution of claims, typically without initiation of suit."

There are about 10 different facets of the article I find interesting. I found of particular interest the idea that settlement mills create a "one size fits all" (my words, not hers) kind of justice. Under this system, individualized pain and suffering does not exist for settlement purposes.

What matters, then, for car accident settlement purposes in non-serious injury cases is the amount of the medical bills, what the injuries are, and how much damage was done to the vehicles. Plaintiffs' car accident lawyers have blamed this on a paradigm shift in the thinking of insurance companies in the 90s, This article argues, quite convincingly, that many plaintiffs' lawyers are unindicted co-conspirators in this system.

The author overlooks that settlement mill auto accident law firms are just one contributing cause. The opposite extreme is equally to blame, lawyers who have very small practices and no real marketing presence that do that exact same thing. Take the case, send in the medical records and bills, and settle the case for whatever you can. There are tons of local lawyers parading as lawyers suited to handle car accident claims. The bigger problem? These same lawyers get serious injury accident cases, typically car accidents, where the victim's financial future is at stake. These lawyers take the case because they can't resist and the results are often disastrous. Settlement mill law firms often have the good sense to refer these cases out, realizing they are asking for a legal malpractice lawsuit. Often, the guy with the office on the corner that does wills, criminal, domestic, and everything else under the sun does not have this same sense.

Of course, it is a mistake to label every solo general practitioner as incompetent to handle large auto accident cases just as it is a mistake to assume every firm that runs massive amounts of television commercials as settlement mills.

What is a good plaintiffs' auto accident lawyer to do if he does not want to get caught up in this mess that has been created? If you have a client who wants to settle their auto accident claim quickly and at any price, you are going to be a victim of this system. There is no way out. But if you have a client that wants to maximize the value of their case, there is a simple answer: file suit and request a jury trial. The insurance company is either going to pay at least a reasonable value on the claim or it is going to go to trial where a jury is going to give you the fair value of the case. Because a jury is the ultimate definer of the fair value of a case.

While not as fun as, say, baseball statistics in the pre-steroids era, I really do enjoy looking at statistics on personal injury lawsuits. The Department of Justice just released a new report on personal injury lawsuit statistics (which I found via TortsProfBlog). The data, as always with this stuff, is older - 2005. But it is still incredibly interesting. Here is a sampling:

• Personal injury lawsuits accounted for about 60% of the estimated 26,948 tort, contract, and real property cases. The big venues are trying less cases. The number of personal injury lawsuits conducted by state courts in our 75 most populated counties declined approximately a third from 10,278 trials in 1996 to 7,038 trials in 2005.
• Verdicts are down a bit, but not much is changing. The median damage awards garnered by plaintiffs in personal injury lawsuits declined from $38,000 in 1996 to $31,000 in 2005. Personal injury plaintiffs prevailed from 1996 to 2005 consistently about half of the time. The percentage of plaintiffs prevailing in automobile accident cases increased a bit from 58% in 1996 to 61% in 2005, but medical malpractice lawsuits became less successful: medical malpractice plaintiffs won in 19% of malpractice lawsuits in 2005 and 23% in 1996.
• Nearly 60% of tort trials were auto accident lawsuits.
• Approximately 15% of tort trials were medical malpractice lawsuits. It takes six days to try the average malpractice lawsuit.
• Approximately 5% of tort trials were product liability lawsuits. Of the product liability lawsuits that went to trial, plaintiffs prevailed in about 40%.
• An amazing 25% of product liability lawsuits are either asbestos claims or other toxic tort lawsuits.
• Judges found for plaintiffs in 56% of tort trials, while juries ruled in favor of plaintiffs in 51% of tort trials.
• Plaintiffs prevailed in less than a quarter of lawsuits involving medical malpractice, non-asbestos (other) product liability, and false arrest or imprisonment trials.
• During 2005, plaintiff winners in tort trials in the national sample were awarded an estimated
  $3.6 billion in compensatory and punitive damages (not shown in a table). The overall median final award of $24,000 in jury trials and $21,000 in bench trials did not differ statistically.

Continue reading "Personal Injury Statistics" »

Posted by Ronald V. Miller, Jr. | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Personal Injury Verdicts

I once had a jury ask the judge to see my damage exhibits in a case where I had asked for over $800,000. We all knew what that meant: Plaintiff's verdict. The judge gently chided the defense lawyer for making no offer in the case. I took a deep, satisfied breath with confidence that a jury verdict was imminent.

Because of how I'm leading the story, you know what happens next. The jury came back with a defense verdict.

So, I take with more than a few grains of salt any question that a jury has during deliberations. The Sacramento Bee reports that jurors in a wrongful death case in Sacramento asked for an adding machine that went up to ten digits.

In spite of my story above, I would still view this as a favorable sign for Plaintiffs.

In response to a call from one doctor for medical malpractice reform in Montana, Thomas C. Bulma, a Missoula lawyer, points out the following facts:

• Only one Montana dentist has been the subject of a lawsuit in Montana in the past 10 years. The dentist prevailed.
• Only one podiatrist was sued. The podiatrist prevailed.
• There have been 24 medical malpractice trials in Montana in the last 10 years. Ten years.
• Plaintiffs in Montana have won 5 medical malpractice cases in the last 10 years.

Let's play along and agree that medical malpractice premiums are going through the roof in Montana. We should place blame for this on medical malpractice lawyers? What exactly is a Montana dentist or podiatrist paying in malpractice premiums given the one lousy claim in the last ten years. Exactly how much of those premiums are "administrative costs" (which include profit)?