Plaintiff should have used marijuana? People get in car accidents and they get badly hurt. So insurance defense lawyers end up making some crazy arguments. But in Glesby v. MacMillian, a Maryland car accident case, the defendant reached a new height of insanity: arguing that the plaintiff should have used…
Can you strike a juror based on sexual preference? This week, the 9th Circuit took this issue on. SmithKline Beecham v. Abbott Laboratories is a case of two giant drug companies fighting each other over what I’m sure is already obscene profits involving the sale of an anti-HIV drug. In…
If you badmouth an out-of-state company on the Internet, are you subject to personal jurisdiction in the state where the company resides? In Fertel v. Davidson, a federal court in Maryland was given this interesting question with an interesting set of facts. A 52-year-old artist, who was in a…
Are they really going to settle these Subway foot-long lawsuits? Subway just got hit with a lawsuit alleging that its Footlong subs are not actually a foot long. Plaintiffs who ate what is probably an 11-inch sub, are seeking money damages for their injuries. The case was filed in New…
A Florida judge was disqualified from a wrongful death tobacco case after comparing the defendant’s former CEO to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. No-brainer decision? I’m not so sure. Here is what happened. During the trial, a hearing was held outside of the presence of the jury on whether a…
In Bailey Lumber & Supply Company v. Robinson, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed a $1 million award in a slip and fall case, finding that while plaintiff’s medical expert – an internal medicine doctor – could testify about the plaintiff’s hip problem, he did not have the expertise to offer…
As the Maryland appellate courts continue their summer of personal injury enuni, we turn our attention to a uninsured motorist case issued by the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, in New London County Mutual Insurance Company v. Karoline Fontaine. This opinion works through some issues about uninsured policy provisions, something…
A few months ago, the Maryland high court ruled in Tracey v. Solesky, that in dog bite cases involving a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull mix, a plaintiff no longer needs to show that the dog in particular, or pit bulls are dangerous to bring a claim against both…
New Dog Bite Opinion in Minnesota We have our own issues here in Maryland with dog attacks and dog bites, particularly now that no one really knows what the law is and whether it will change regarding pit bulls (see our post on Tracey v. Solesky). Right now, the legislature…
The University of Baltimore School of Law has a new dean. Ronald Weich, former Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice, will take the helm at UB. I discuss now Dean Weich and the other candidates for the top spot at UB law school here. He…