On Wednesday, a Baltimore City jury awarded a 78-year-old Owings Mills woman $2 million in a medical malpractice case stemming from a failed surgery that led to three successive leg amputations. After the verdict, Defendant’s lawyer gave this quote to the Maryland Daily Record: “This reaffirms my long held view…
Articles Posted in Personal Injury Verdicts
Legal Malpractice Settlement and Verdicts in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C.
Metro Verdicts Monthly recently provided data on legal malpractice settlements and verdicts in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. The median legal malpractice settlement/verdict in Washington D.C. was a whopping $262,500.00. In Virginia and Maryland, the median legal malpractice settlement/verdict was $212,500.00 and $140,211.00 respectively. What explains the incredible disparity between Washington,…
Maryland Lead Paint Jury Verdict
The Maryland Daily Record reports that a Baltimore jury awarded $82,000 to an 8-year-old boy who only briefly exhibited elevated levels of lead in his blood. In May 2000, the boy’s level was four micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. In December, his level rose to 29 micrograms. I…
The Impact of Race and Poverty on American Tort Awards
I stumbled on a 2003 study titled “Race Poverty, and American Tort Awards,” written by economists Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University in Virginia and Eric Helland of Claremont-McKenna College in California published in the Journal of Legal Studies that offer some interesting observations on how race and poverty levels…
West Virginia Supreme Court Applies Medical Malpractice Cap in Interesting Case
The West Virginia Supreme Court, applying West Virginia’s medical malpractice cap, affirmed the trial court’s decision to cut a $10 million medical malpractice verdict against a West Virginia hospital and one of its doctors down to $1 million. (This is the same thing that happened to us in Maryland 10…
Jury Trial with State Farm
I had a jury trial in an auto accident case in Anne Arundel County against State Farm last week. It was a soft tissue injury case with over a year of treatment. It was a case we inherited from another lawyer who retired last year. The biggest weakness of the…
$4 Verdict in Anne Arundel County Drowning Case
The Maryland Daily Record yesterday reported on a $4 million verdict an Anne Arundel County jury awarded to the parents of a 5-year-old boy who drowned in the Crofton Country Club pool in 2006. The parents of Connor Freed sued D.R.D. Pool Service, Inc, who managed the pool for the…
Legal Climate: How Does Your State Compare?
The Institute for Legal Reform apparently ranks states in terms of the legal climate for businesses. The study is flawed. The results are from a survey of the 1,599 in-house general counsel lawyers working for larger corporations – not exactly an unbiased group. For personal injury lawyers, it is also…
Wrongful Death Settlements and Verdicts in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia
Metro Verdicts Monthly’s graph this month is median settlements and verdicts in wrongful death claims in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The median wrongful death settlement in Maryland is $850,000. In Virginia and the District of Columbia, the medians are $675,000 and $750,000, respectively. Previous blog posts have discussed motor…
The Value of Personal Injury Cases: A Jurisdictional Comparison
In the last couple of weeks, I have has put out a lot of data on compensation awards in medical malpractice cases and in auto and truck accident cases. In my research on these posts, I found some other data comparing different states’ verdicts. I thought it was interesting for…