Articles Posted in Auto Accidents

Nora Freeman Engstrom writes an amazing article for the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics titled Run-of-the-Mill Justice. She writes about settlement mill law firms, writing with a 60 Minutes investigative journalism style that names names, calling out a few law firms she has labeled as settlement mill firms. Engstrom characterizes these firms as “characterized by their high claim volume, aggressive advertising, significant delegation to non-attorneys, entrepreneurial focus, and quick resolution of claims, typically without initiation of suit.”

There are about 10 different facets of the article I find interesting. I found of particular interest the idea that settlement mills create a “one size fits all” (my words, not hers) kind of justice. Under this system, individualized pain and suffering does not exist for settlement purposes.

What matters for car accident settlement purposes in non-serious injury cases is the amount of the medical bills, what the injuries are, and how much damage they did to the vehicles. Plaintiffs’ car accident lawyers have blamed this on a paradigm shift in the thinking of insurance companies in the 90s, This article argues, convincingly, that many plaintiffs’ lawyers are unindicted co-conspirators in this system.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided Romero v. Brenes yesterday. This case involved a single-car accident that killed both passenger and driver. A Montgomery County trial court granted the Defendant’s attorney’s motion for judgment at the close of the passenger’s wrongful death case because the trial judge found that the evidence did not establish that the negligence of the driver was a proximate cause of the fatal crash.

Defendant’s argument was essentially “hey, no one saw this accident so no one knows what happened.” Most of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals found a jury could have found that the unexplained loss of control by the driver and the driver’s excessive speed was the proximate cause of this fatal car accident. Continue reading

The Baltimore Sun has written another story (link since removed) about the tragic death of a young woman who was a junior at Johns Hopkins and was killed by a drunk driver who has had nine previous drunk driving convictions.

I’m avoiding writing about this topic because I really could not think of anything meaningful to add. We all get it. The drunk driver is the bad guy. The young woman who was killed had tons of potential that will never be filled on this Earth. Our judicial system let us down. We all get it. Do we need yet another lawyer with a blog post restating the manifestly obvious?

But why did our judicial system let us down? The laws we have are a function of political pressure we give to our politicians. Why do we allow people with nine drunk driving convictions to stay out of jail? Maryland law let us down more than the judicial system in this case.

How many people in Maryland do you think have over three drunk driving convictions? Take a guess. I’ll provide the answer after the jump to give you a chance to think about it.

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After putting my kids to bed last night, I looked at Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback before going to bed. Easterbrook writes on a lot of different topics such as human happiness (an interesting-sounding book I’ve never read), global warming, science, space, theology, and so forth.  So his column during the NFL season is full of digressions about topics unrelated to football. Continue reading

Note: This is an older post that was updated in October 2019

The Maryland Court of Appeals decided Abrishamian v. Barbely, a pedestrian accident appeal from Montgomery County after a jury awarded only half of the client’s special damages (medical bills and lost wages) and gave $0.00 for pain and suffering. The Plaintiff loses this appeal and it is not a close call. The court, however, discusses some interesting law is of interest to the Maryland accident lawyer.

The first issue is no issue at all. The plaintiff’s lawyer asked the judge to recuse himself because the judge’s brother represented the defendant 17 years ago and someone else with the same last name as the Defendant ten years ago. I’d love to know how the Plaintiff’s lawyer learned this and I’d also be curious why he would seek recusal for such an attenuated connection. Had the court gone the other way, it would have really brought havoc to the justice system in Mayberry. Would they have to transfer every case to Mount Pilot?   Anyway, we have a legitimate sample motion to recuse on our website if you are interested.

(Brief intermission: one of the great unsolved mysteries of my childhood was the distance from Mayberry to Mount Pilot. Someone once said a four-hour drive, but Barney Fife said it was 12 miles. Barney was not the most credible person but 12 miles is specific and he had no reason to exaggerate, given the context. I just don’t know. In an unrelated story, I may have watched too much television as a child. Let’s just get back to this case.)

The second issue is far more interesting. Defendant’s doctor was asked on cross whether he had a copy of the Plaintiff’s medical insurance card. Plaintiff’s lawyer objected before an answer could be given, and the judge sustained the objection. Plaintiff’s lawyer argued the trial judge should have granted a mistrial because the question violated collateral source rule. This is a long-shot argument—a mistrial is not out of the question if the question was inappropriate, but it is a Dr. Sam Beckett quantum leap from that to a mistrial as a matter of law. (The court also noted that a question may not be “evidence” subject to the collateral source rule.) Continue reading

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway took a bath this year. But in Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders, he seems pumped about how GEICO is faring in the car insurance market. Buffett noted that under GEICO chief executive Tony Nicely, GEICO did its part to keep Berkshire Hathaway profitable, increasing GEICO’s market share to 7.7% of the auto insurance market last year (over 19% in Maryland). Buffett makes clear in his report that he is bullish on GEICO:

As we view GEICO’s current opportunities, Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere.

This is a funny quote but, then again, everything sounds a little funnier when coming from a billionaire.