Most personal injury appellate opinions involve a high level of human suffering. If you stopped and connected with every opinion that involved human suffering, you would spend all day looking into the abyss. Every wrongful death case is awful. But this appellate opinion last week from Indiana just has unbelievably…
Will strict liability for pit bulls in Maryland cost the state $30 million in state and local tax revenue and cut back rental incomes to the tune of $144 million? Hard to believe. But these folks have numbers to make their argument. If these estimates are even half right, it…
This blog post is an exception to the usual “personal injury related only” rule on this blog. The Maryland Court of Appeals (Maryland’s “supreme court”) ruled unanimously today that Maryland must recognize as married same-sex couples who legally wed in other states. A married same-sex couple from California sought a divorce…
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals issued its opinion on Friday in WMATA v. Williams, a workers’ compensation claim that addresses how far the chain for causation can go before the court decides that a later “related” injury is just too attenuated. Although I do not handle workers’ compensation cases,…
There were no personal injury appellate opinions this week in state or federal court in Maryland this week but there are a few cases elsewhere worth a read: In Morse v. Davis, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a $1.25 million verdict (actually $2.5 million reduced by the cap) in…
Last week, in Hendrix v. Burns, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals dealt with the question of what plaintiffs’ lawyers can admit into evidence in a car accident case when the defendant stipulates to liability. In car accident cases, many defense lawyers loathe admitting responsibility. There is always a chance…
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court stuck down a $5 million verdict in an Ethicon endocutter design defect case last week, finding that the trial court was not restricted to considering only one use of the device and that it correctly applied a risk-utility analysis. The case talks about product liability risk-utility…
Forbes, via Overlawyered, has an interesting article on Houston lawyer, Steve Susman’s efforts to cover lawyers on both sides of the aisle to try more jury trials… and make cases easier to try. How? Buy reaching stipulations on all the dumb things lawyers argue about. Great idea that will never…
This blog is directed primarily to other personal injury lawyers around the country. I try not to focus too much on issues specific to Maryland because there are not enough lawyers in Maryland to maintain a readership. Even when I’m analyzing Maryland personal injury cases, I try to make the…
In all the hubbub about Robert McDonald’s selection to the Maryland Court of Appeals, I neglected to mention the new Circuit Court judges: Baltimore County District Judge Nancy Purpura (Baltimore County) William Rogers Nicklas Jr., a personal injury lawyer (Frederick County) Harford County prosecutor Melba Elizabeth Bowen (Harford County) Howard…