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Maryland Personal Injury News and Updates
Jarashow, Kiessling and Asti: Hometown Annapolis' View
9 Sep 2010 at 11:31am
Hometown Annapolis has a good editorial on the details of the upcoming election between judges Ronald Jarashow and Laura Kiessling and Alison Asti. The editorial voices a similar sentiment to the one I expressed here last week, endorsing Jarashow and Kiessling. The editorial also underscores the insanity of the process we employ to elect trial judges. Even if you believe trial judges should be elected, you simply cannot believe that the primary/general election system we have in Maryland for judicial elections makes any logical sense.
Car Accident Statistics from the CDC
8 Sep 2010 at 2:48pm
The Centers for Disease Control released a study that provides a wealth of information that puts the risks and costs of car, truck and motorcycle accidents in this country in context, particularly with respect to teenage drivers:
Vehicle accidents cost $100 billion in medical care and productivity losses every year. Almost 4% of the economic losses involve children.
Every 10 seconds, a victim of a car accident is treated in an emergency room for accident related injuries. Almost 40,000 people die in accidents every year.
Not surprisingly, motorcycle accidents cause the most significant injuries. Motorcycle accidents comprise 6% of the total but 12% of the overall costs. Pedestrians and bicyclists are in a similar boat, causing 5% of the motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries and 10% of the economic costs.
Teenagers are four times more likely to be involved in auto accidents. New rules such as driving curfews and other restrictions are helping reduce the number of car accidents involving teenagers. But a few smart rules don't flip a number like "4 times as many." The only answer is to change the law that gives teenagers their licenses. But there is no real inertia for that because (1) it has always been this way, (2) it is more convenient for parents than having to continue to chauffer their kids, and (3) teenagers have jobs and their inability to get to their jobs would have economic repercussions. Oh, and yes, changing the law to not allow teenagers to drive could and would probably start an armed revolution. But the fact that nine teenagers a day die in car accidents - most of which are the teen driver's fault - is a bitter price to pay. I don't know of a single reasonable person who supports raising the driving age to 20. But still. It is a bitter price we pay. (And, yes, I know I just said that twice.)
Male teenage drivers are twice as likely to be killed in crashes as females. This is another "what do you do about this?" statistic. We allow for insurance companies to charge higher premiums for teenage boys. Why can't we make different driving ages for boys and girls? Oh, forget it, I guess I know why we can't.
One in every three teenage deaths is the result of a motor vehicle crash.
Moot Court Resources
8 Sep 2010 at 2:04pm
We have started a moot court resources section of our website to help student mock trial competitors get ready for competitions. My wife coached a moot court team at Severna Park High School a few years ago that made it to the state semifinals. She has some good ideas on items we can add to make the site more useful. We will be posting additional information in the coming weeks. If there is anything you believe we should add, let us know.
Article on Our $1.1 Million Malpractice Verdict
8 Sep 2010 at 9:49am
There is a Maryland Daily Record article out on our $1.1 million dollar verdict in the malpractice verdict in Baltimore City a few weeks ago.
Howard County Traffic Accident Police Reports
2 Sep 2010 at 3:31pm
Howard County traffic accident police reports where the injuries are not fatal are now available on-line. Only motor vehicle accident police reports will be made available on-line. To get the report, you have to pay $5 and certify that you were involved in the accident or you are an accident attorney or insurance company representing someone involved.
You can get more information here.
How to Teach Lawyers Not to Steal
31 Aug 2010 at 12:50pm
An Ohio lawyer has been suspended for two year years suspension for submitting ?false and fraudulent? time sheets. Theoretically possible for the workaholic? Sure. But three of her bills reflecting more than 24 hours of work in one day, once billing 90.3 hours of work during a 96 hour period. In another, she billed 139.5 hours of work during a 144 hour period.
Although the number of lawyers who pad their bills is probably on the downside in 2010 as more companies are looking for more ways to trim legal budget fat, lawyers who bill by the hour have been padding their bills since Emperor Claudius lifted the ban on lawyers billing more than 2,000 years ago. Little known fact: Abraham Lincoln was a notorious bill padder, sometimes charging clients five times the number of hours taken to complete the task. There was scores of client complaints about Lincoln about his billing. (Before you pass this information along, consider the possibility that I'm completely making this up.)
An...
Facebook Says Guilty
30 Aug 2010 at 4:36pm
What do the players in the World Series of Poker have in common with jurors? Poker faces. Unless you really (really, really) have a jury, they usually don't give that many tells.
Of course, now we have a cheat sheet with Facebook. Apparently, a Michigan juror pronounced a criminal defendant guilty while the trial was still, ah, ongoing. Everyone is so enamored with social media and its intersection with how it impacts jurors and lawsuits, so these stories make big news. But just how many times has this happened where it never leaked out? I'm pretty sure I could confess to a felony on Facebook and no one would really be paying that much attention.
While we are talking about Facebook, please join our Miller & Zois fan page.
Top 10 Stories of Today
25 Aug 2010 at 12:10pm
Above the Law provides us with what will be a Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog Top Ten Nominee for craziest lawsuit of the year. (Ignore the fact that there is not such a list.) I can't believe Overlawyered has not picked it up yet.
The 11th Circuit wants experts to cite every study they have relied on in forming their conclusions. The Drug and Device Law Blog views this as a big win for defendants. But defense experts in any case - particularly in medical malpractice cases - love to cite unnamed studies and literature.
A former medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland (Montgomery County) is sentenced to 5 years in jail for stealing $1 million from his clients. He has to go to jail for this. But it is a sad story. The insane part of the whole thing is how he got caught, falling for one of those email schemes that I get about 10 times a week. The lawyer is asked to collect on a non-existent claim for a contingency fee, he receives a big settlement check, and then sends the c...
$31 Million Rollover Verdict Overturned
23 Aug 2010 at 1:18pm
The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned a $31 million verdict in a Ford rollover case stemming from a catastrophic accident in 2001 that caused brain damage to a 12 year-old boy. This was a difficult case. A mother was driving with four children who were not wearing seat belts and the mother took her eyes off the road and swerved to get back on the road. The question was whether the design of the Ford Bronco was a substantial contributing cause to the child's injuries.
Obviously, a jury found that it was and sent a powerful message to Ford: $16 million in actual damages and $15 million in punitive damages.
The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the verdict for a lot of reasons. I won't go into all of them but there are two reasons set forth for the court's reversal that I think are of particular interest.
First, the court found that it is improper for lawyers in closing arguments "to arouse passion or prejudice." The court cites these statements made during the...
Back Fracture Verdicts
23 Aug 2010 at 1:16pm
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 effect...
E-Filing in Maryland
20 Aug 2010 at 3:03pm
The Maryland State Bar Association Newsletter reports that Maryland's judicial electronic case management system will be up and running in Anne Arundel County in 2012 and throughout the state by 2015. This system sounds like it will be much like the system used in the federal court system. The expected cost to bring this e-filing system to fruition is expected to exceed $50 million.
Anne Arundel County Judicial Elections
18 Aug 2010 at 11:04am
We have a big race in Anne Arundel County for Circuit Court that is getting surprisingly little attention in the media. Alison Asti is challenging sitting Circuit Court Judges Laura Kiessling and Ronald Jarashow.
The problem with this election is that most people - I think most people - make a reasonably informed vote when voting for president, Congress, state legislatures and other elected offices in this Country. But I don't think the majority of people, even Anne Arundel County lawyers, are in a position to make an informed call on judges. Our law firm tries a lot of personal injury cases and we have not tried a case in front of either Judge Kiessling or Judge Jarashow. So there are probably 11 lawyers in Maryland who are in a position to have been in front of these judges and know Ms. Asti well enough to thin slice who would be the best judge. And I wouldn't even defer to those 11 people.
What are the issues in the campaign? No one is suggesting the other side is not qual...
Loss of Chance/Opportunity: New Opinion from Michigan
16 Aug 2010 at 9:43am
The Michigan Supreme Court came out a few weeks ago with a very interesting opinion in favor of the Plaintiff in a malpractice claim that most likely would fail in Maryland.
The doctor's malpractice attorneys argued that the allegation that the doctor's negligence caused a reduction in the risk of stroke from 10 to 20 percent to less than 5 to 10 percent was not enough to get the claim to a jury because the loss was not sufficient enough to meet the burden of proof on proximate causation. The doctor argued that Michigan law is whether the opportunity to achieve a better result was greater than 50 percent. Under this law, if the plaintiff could not prove that receiving the alleged appropriate treatment would have decreased his risk of injury by 50%, plaintiff's claim would fail.
Thankfully, a divided Michigan high court found that this is not the law and that malpractice cases such as this should be decided under a simple principle: the plaintiff is required to prove that the d...
Malpractice Verdict in Baltimore
12 Aug 2010 at 5:32pm
Miller & Zois lawyers Laura Zois and Rod Gaston obtained this afternoon a $1.1 million verdict for our client in a medical malpractice (lap chole) case in Baltimore City.
Medication Error Verdicts
12 Aug 2010 at 9:27am
A new Jury Verdict Research study found that the average verdict in an improper medication case is $3,539,541. The median, which many consider to be a more accurate number, is $1.2 million. Verdicts ranged from $2,074 to $35,500,000. But only 28% of medication error plaintiffs recover at trial. I think the problem in many medication error cases where plaintiffs do not prevail is causation because sometimes the medication error compounds a larger pre-existing health condition and it is difficult for the jury and the doctors to sort it out.
Incredibly, 1.5 million people are victims of medication errors every year, according to an Institute of Medicine study from a few years ago. Of course, most of these errors are relatively harmless. We get frequent calls from people who are justifiably angry that such a careless error was made. But, more often than not, they don't have a case because they were not significantly injured (in the malpractice sense of the word, anyway). Still, ...
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