In Maryland, if an uninsured motorist insurer waives subrogation against the at-fault driver in an underinsured motorist case, it also waives its liability defenses. Depending upon who you ask, this has either always been the law in Maryland (as Maryland high court tells us in Maurer v. Penn National) or…
Click to enlarge ESPN is running a story about an NFL player who was arrested last night for public intoxication. I think if public intoxication was a regularly enforced crime, we would need to build more jails. But I was interested in something the player reportedly said to police: “I…
Allstate has agreed to pay New York $1.2 million as part of a $10 million regulatory settlement involving Colossus, its infamous computer software that values personal injury auto accident claims. Under attack was Allstate’s use of Colossus, a software program Allstate and many other insurance companies use to determine the…
According to one study, driving distracted kills 5,500 people in car and truck accidents every year in this country. Don’t let the title of this blog fool you. It is beyond dispute that texting while driving is a growing part of this problem. The Baltimore Sun reports that 25% of…
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 context, particularly regarding teenage drivers: Vehicle accidents cost $100 billion in medical care and productivity losses every year. Almost 4% of the economic…
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 hard case. A mother was driving with four children who were not wearing seat belts and the…
A few weeks ago, I reported on a verdict we got against State Farm in Baltimore County. I inadvertently stumbled on the Maryland Daily Record article on the case today.
George Washington Law Review has published an article titled, appropriately, Against Summary Judgment. The premise of the article is that summary judgment is an archaic procedural device that usurps the role of the jury. Nonsense. Summary judgment resolves cases that juries should not have to decide because the law bars…
I spent a good portion of last week preparing for a trial scheduled for today that settled on Friday. It is a little depressing how many many hours our firm spends every year preparing cases for trial that settle. But every time you really prepare for a trial, you learn…
When an insurance company gets a claim, the first thing it does is look for ways to deny the claim before getting to the merits. I don’t say this derisively. This is how the game is played. One insanely overused method of avoiding getting to the merits of a case…