Zostavax Trials Set for 2020
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has selected the initial “bellwether” cases in the Zostavax MDL. The bellwether Zostavax cases will be grouped into two categories and prepared for five proposed trial dates that will take place between fall 2020 and summer 2021.
You never know how mass tort cases are going to go. But I do think the Zostavax cases might be ripe for settlement long before these cases ever go to trial.
In Armacost v. Davis, the first appellate tort opinion in Maryland in 2019, the Maryland Court of Appeals was asked to examine whether a trial court’s instructions to the jury were inappropriate and prejudicial in a medical malpractice case alleging negligence after a four-level cervical discectomy and fusion surgery performed by the defendant left the victim with claims of permanent injury. The Maryland high court ultimately held that:
1) The trial court did not mislead the jury as to the applicable law by first giving them general negligence instructions before instructing jurors on the standard of care applicable to the defendant brain surgeon’s actions.
2) The trial court did not abuse its discretion by telling jurors how much longer they would be required to deliberate after they had previously expressed concerns over the length of the trial.
What is the value of head injury cases?
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 hard to enjoy much of anything in life when you have anything north of a mild headache.
Juries struggle with 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.
Get Your Case Settled for a Good Value
I believe car crash injury victims are always better off hiring counsel for many reasons not worth fully exploring here (but I do here). But if there is any type of claim where an injured victim can justify proceeding without a lawyer, it is in the classic neck or back soft tissue/whiplash injury traffic collision case with clearly no permanency.
My belief has always been that the benefit of experienced counsel can bring to a case is going to vary inversely with the severity of the injury. If you have a permanent injury, you are foolish if you don’t hire a lawyer. (I wouldn’t handle my own case either because that is also an awful idea.)
A quality attorney in those cases is statistically going to get you a lot more money – put a lot more money in your pocket – than you would get for yourself. The same is probably true in soft tissue neck/back injury cases, too. But car accident lawyers cannot run from the fact that the difference is much less significant. Some people just prefer the path where lawyers are not taking money away from their settlement. So be it. As long as you understand you run a risk just like you run a risk when you try to install your own bathroom floor, just typically with a lot more money at stake.
Most personal injury lawyers have had more than a few encounters with consumer bankruptcy proceeding. Personal injury clients frequently file personal bankruptcies.
It is therefore important to know how personal injury claims, settlements, or awards are treated in bankruptcy. The question everyone wants to know is will the client get to keep some or all of their settlement or judgment?
The short answer is yes – as long the settlement proceeds are compensation for pain and suffering or future lost wages.
We have been getting a lot of calls from Atrium C-Qur hernia mesh victims. These poor people have a lot of questions and concerns and we try to lay some of those out for you here.
The C-Qur hernia mesh products are a line of polypropylene surgical implants that were manufactured by Atrium Medical Corp. The C-Qur hernia mesh products were one of several types of implant devices used in hernia repair surgery between 2006 and 2015. Hernia repair is one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the U.S. each year.
Knee dislocations are relatively rare in automobile accidents. But we have seen a number of these recently so I’m writing today about these injuries and to give you some idea of the potential settlement value of these claims.
Knee dislocations occur from athletics, high energy impacts, such as a car crash, or low impact falls in people that are extremely overweight. A dislocated knee is non-functional, often painful, and induces large abnormal strains on the collateral ligaments. Because of the potential for neurovascular damage associated with the injury, knee dislocations are considered to be one of the most serious knee injuries.
Note: post was originally in 2012. It has been updated in November, 2018 to discuss a new martial privilege case, Sewell v. State, now pending before the Maryland Court of Appeals with a decision coming any day now.
I never find myself writing about marital privilege. But I do have an interest in modern technology and how it will impact pre-trial discovery and admissibility of evidence. Which takes me to the 4th Circuit opinion U.S. v. Hamilton.
This case involves the bribery conviction of a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates who also served part-time as an administrator with the Newport News, Virginia public schools system. Basically, the guy pushed for and got a salary from Old Dominion University in exchange for getting funding for a million dollar program called Center for Teacher Quality and Education Leadership. (FACT: 89% of all “education centers” with titles as goofy and ambiguous as this one are hopelessly corrupt.)
Anyway, a key piece of evidence in the takedown of this guy is an email that he writes to his wife about how he is trying to get this salary out of the deal, which he writes from his public school computer. So the question is whether the marital privilege applies because he used his work email account.
For what I think are good reasons, communications between spouses have long been thought to implicate important privacy and confidentiality interests. This has led to a recognition of a marital privilege in both Maryland and federal law that makes communications between spouses presumptively confidential.
Fetal macrosomia is a medical term that means fetal weight at birth is greater than 4000 grams (8 lbs. 13 oz). Compared to the size of other newborns of the same gestational age, this is considered excessive fetal growth. Your doctor will be concerned with the baby’s probable weight at delivery for a few reasons and should want more testing to be done.
Fetal macrosomia is a serious condition in pregnancy. It is well recognized in the medical literature that a major concern in the delivery of a macrosomic baby is shoulder dystocia and the attendant risks of permanent brachial plexus palsy. It requires close monitoring and frequent visits to the doctor’s office. But the reward is a healthier baby at delivery and sometimes a healthier mother, too.
I’m always interested in the Metro Verdicts Monthly graph on the front of their publication which compares verdicts and settlements for a certain type of personal injury claim in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Sometimes I am surprised by the difference in the results.
This month I am astounded by the difference between Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland in median nursing home liability verdicts and settlements since 1987. The median recoveries in Maryland and Virginia are $125,000 and $175,000, respectively. This means that the median settlement and verdict in Virginia is 40% higher than Maryland. Virginia juries are generally more conservative than Maryland so this result is somewhat surprising. But here is what I find surprising: the average nursing home case settlement or verdict in Washington, D.C. is $700,000. I realize there is no cap in D.C. But it is still amazing.
