Did you know State Farm has a blog? They don’t call it a blog. Instead, it is a learning center that educates consumers with “articles, discussions, videos, and financial calculators to help you make informed decisions” about car insurance, what to do after an accident, and so forth. You know…
On Monday, a man calls our office. He only has a few minutes to talk. He tells our intake specialist that his brother has been at Shock Trauma in Baltimore since the beginning of the month and that he was hit by a commercial vehicle. The man briefly describes his…
A fedora will no longer suffice. Starting Monday, the ridiculous pass that mopeds and scooters in Maryland have been given on the most basic safety precautions will end. Moped and scooter drivers now must equip their death traps by wearing a helmet and some kind of eye protection. Scooter drivers…
If you have a pulse, you are familiar with Johnson & Johnson’s pain reliever, Tylenol. I’ll bet you anything if Tylenol was a person, it would be one of the 20 most recognizable people in the world. I project Tylenol just above Lady Gaga and just below Bill Clinton. Johnson…
Tort lawyers rarely spend a ton of time worrying about whether their clients have indemnified the defendant for their own negligence because it rarely comes at issue. You rarely contract with the person causing you harm unless you are a patient and the world has not gone so mad as…
We frequently get letters and phone calls from prisoners. It is hard not to discount these cases. It is not just the “People in Jail Are Less Likely to Be Credible” problem. It is also the “People Who Have Tons of Time on Their Hands Tend Chase Windmills” problem that…
I guess the summer is over. The Maryland Court of Appeals is back in business, issuing several appellate opinions over the last few weeks. First on our hit list is Duckett v. Riley, a medical malpractice case filed in Prince George’s County in 2003. New medical malpractice opinion Anyway, every…
Click to enlarge How much is a car accident claim worth? It really depends on how you adjust your lens. According to Jury Verdict Research, the median jury award for plaintiffs’ verdicts in 2010 for vehicular accidents was only $19,806. That’s not much. Yet the average award in a vehicle…
This quote leads off an article in Property and Casualty 360: To me, a claims man is a surgeon. That desk is an operating table. And those pencils are scalpels and bone chisels. And those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation, they’re alive, they’re packed…
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…