Reams of studies on the relationship between driver fatigue and big rig truck accidents are just a Google click away. No one has seriously disputed this premise since federal regulators first limited commercial truck driver road time in 1940. Accordingly, truck drivers have long been required to record driving and…
Pat Malone writes a guest blog on Don Keenan’s Trial Blog arguing that confidential settlements undermine public safety and justice. 2013 Update: the link is now broken, but this post is still worth reading. His point is that confidential settlements make it harder for future plaintiffs to get evidence and…
In the United States alone, approximately 581,000 knee replacement surgeries are performed each year. Getting a knee replacement is a big deal: if you need a replacement, you have really run out of options with the knee problems that you are having. So knee replacement surgery is the last line…
I love talking to jurors after a trial. You spend days looking a seven or eight people (6 plus alternates in Maryland) and you get to know them. Sort of. But, really, you have no clue. Because jurors are incredibly poker faced. If they are showing “how to avoid giving…
For those of you who do not practice in Maryland or don’t handle car accident cases, the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund is a unique to our state creature. It is a state-owned insurance company that insures high-risk drivers. Most other states just require insurance companies to insure high-risk drivers if…
Medicare announced today that it has implemented a $300 threshold for some tort liability subrogation cases. This is monumental news for accident lawyers who often get bogged down trying to settle in claims where there is some minor Medicare payment out there that “could” be related to the car accident.…
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals sided with State Farm over the Maryland Insurance Administration this morning in Washington v. State Farm. The appeal rose from a consumer complaint who alleged to the Maryland Insurance Administration that State Farm failed to notify the consumer of an increase in his premium.…
In DRD v. Freed, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the constitutionality of the Maryland cap on noneconomic damages. I was a big Fred Flintstone fan. So when the court in Freed said the cap was “embedded in the bedrock of Maryland law” because it has been around for 17…
The history of “bad cholesterol” has had a checkered past. Bayer’s cholesterol-reducing blockbuster Baycol allegedly caused over 100 deaths. Bayer paid over $1 billion to settle the Baycol cases. Now come Crestor and Zocor, two more widely prescribed prescription-strength drugs designed to lower “bad cholesterol”. Both drugs allegedly cause serious…
Plaintiffs’ lawyers put a lot of energy into writing what we call a demand: a letter that sets forth the injured victim’s case and attaches the medical records. I sometimes use the phrase “demand” even though I don’t like it. Inherently, battles with insurance companies in these cases are adversarial.…