Auto Accidents

April 1, 2009

IME Doctors Caught on Tape

The New York Times has a good article today on Independent Medical Examination doctors, including a doctor referred to by New York injury lawyers as “Doctor Says-No.” We have several IME doctors in Maryland that must be related to him because they have the same last name.

The New York Times would not have written this story if it did not have examples of patients possessing the great weapon of the modern age: “I’ve got it on tape.” The article has examples of doctors who told the patient one thing in the evaluation – which the patient’s taped with their phones – and put the opposite conclusion in the report.

In Maryland, our lawyers are seeing a recent wave of IME doctors replacing the old guard of discredited doctors that juries stopped believing long ago. Below are a few tools to fight for your clients to get fair defense medical exams.

My colleague John Bratt is in the middle of a battle in a Montgomery County case where the expert is refusing to meet the same conditions imposed against this same expert by a judge in another case we had with him in Montgomery County. In another accident case, my colleague Rod Gaston has with the same doctor, they ordered the doctor to produce his financial records. Bizarrely, the insurance company withdrew the doctor, but he still filed an interlocutory appeal. I’m looking forward to finding out who has been paying his legal fees for all of this. My bet: the insurance company.

(Note: I have fixed the New York Times link, as requested. Thanks to all for bringing it to my attention.) Continue reading

March 24, 2009

Maryland Auto Accident Cases: A New “Amount in Controversy” Law Passes the Maryland Senate

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Maryland Senate Bill 468 passed today in the Maryland Senate. It increases – from $10,000 to $20,000 – the maximum amount in controversy in a civil action in which a party may not demand a jury trial. Defendants would only be able to “bump up” cases between $20,000 and $30,000 from District Court to Circuit Court.

Any case pled in District Court for more than $10,000 can be bumped up to a jury trial. This practice, which is mostly done by insurance companies in personal injury car accident cases, leads to massive numbers of car accident cases before Maryland juries in cases that should be streamlined into District Court trials.

In fact, auto insurance companies are the problem in getting this bill passed; small businesses, for example, did not oppose this bill. Why are auto insurance companies opposed to this bill? It saves them legal costs to be sure. Is it because insurance companies get better results in front of juries than judges? No. The motive is much more nefarious: they want personal injury lawyers to spend time and resources in accident cases if the lawyers and their clients refuse the insurance companies’ below market settlement offers in smaller cases.

February 11, 2009

Circuit Court Removal by Insurance Companies in Maryland Car Accident Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

There is a battle now in the Maryland state legislature about whether Maryland should increase the minimum jurisdictional amount before a defendant can remove a case from District Court to Circuit Court. Defense lawyers for State Farm and Allstate, the two largest auto insurance providers in Maryland, routinely “bump up” District Court claims to Circuit Court if the amount in controversy is more than $10,000.

So what happens is we have an enormous volume of cases where insurance defense lawyers in Maryland are seeking jury trials in cases that do not belong in Circuit Court. Why? Do they think a jury will give them a more fair trial? Ironically, for the jury-hating insurance companies who continue to argue that juries are out of control, trust in juries is at least one reason insurance companies seek jury trials in Maryland auto accident cases (at least in some Maryland counties where juries are more conservative).

But the primary reason insurance companies seek jury trials in smaller auto accident cases in Maryland is because it tortures Maryland auto accident lawyers. The insurance companies do this, not motivated by spite—well not primarily anyway, but because it is a good global tactic. A significant number of auto accident lawyers in Maryland are reticent to sue. The threat of getting a small case going through the Circuit Court ringer is even more daunting to many Maryland injury lawyers. I’m not saying it should be. But it is for those seeking the path of least resistance.

January 16, 2009

Car Accident Lawsuits: Time Magazine Article

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Time Magazine has an interesting article on auto tort cases. The article has the usual stuff: insurance company complaints about high verdicts, people faking injuries, jackpot justice, the backlog in the courts, and that most personal injury victims only receive small settlements. Here are a few quotes:

The automobile accounts for half to three-quarters of personal-injury suits, fully 25% of all civil cases brought to state law courts. In Chicago, more than 50,000 auto cases are awaiting trial. In Los Angeles, auto liability cases have nearly tripled in the past decade. In New York City, more than 90,000 new cases come up each year. Across the country, Americans pay out $6.5 billion a year in automobile insurance premiums—yet in the past decade the insurance companies have suffered a net loss of more than $850,000 on this business.

Getting his case to the jury so that [the auto accident victim can recover] may take four years in New York City, three years in Boston, over 2½ years in Honolulu or Detroit. Courts in Los Angeles have held the delay to less than two years. In Miami the wait is less than six months—an interval many lawyers consider too short to allow the medical evidence to “ripen.” But in Chicago, at the other extreme, the traffic jam is backed up for a staggering 5½ years.

The article underscores the frustration the public has with the complete thing: car insurance companies, the courts, the lawyers, and the occasional fakers that try to sue.

Oh, one more thing worth mentioning. The article was published in Time over 45 years ago. Continue reading

October 7, 2008

Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund’s Finance Companies Take a Hit

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Baltimore Sun reports today that Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler ordered nine premium finance companies – companies that finance the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund premiums, which consumers are still required to pay in full – to stop charging ridiculously high finance charges. Two of these finance companies also must refund money to consumers because, incredibly, they charged interest in policies never issued. The Baltimore Sun article suggests this will save MAIF’s customers about $100 a year.

These finance companies exist because of a quirk in the law that requires MAIF to make customers pay in full for their premiums. Since most consumers cannot afford this, these drivers turn to predatory lending companies. Everyone from MAIF itself to Ralph Tyler has argued that MAIF should allow its insured drivers to pay premiums over time, like virtually all the rest of us.

Unfortunately, MAIF drivers, who typically have poor driving records and/or terrible credit histories, have no lobbyists in Annapolis. MAIF’s competitors (particularly, as this blog discusses, State Auto) and these finance companies have lobbyists, which is why this nonsense was allowed to continue. Hopefully, 2009 is the year that the Maryland legislature finally gets its act together and gets rid of this nonsense.

October 3, 2008

Personal Injury Claims Against AIG: Will They Get Paid?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I have received several calls from clients with personal injury claims against AIG fearing their claims are unprotected.

Yesterday, we got a call in one of our AIG cases. Someone from Resolute Systems called and said that AIG had given them the assignment of settling large cases. They are setting up settlement conference days in Philadelphia for some pending AIG cases. We were given November 5-6 as dates for these mediations.

I suspect AIG is looking to capitalize on the panic and induce below market settlements. I have no proof of this.

September 30, 2008

Property Damage Claims: My Dad’s Battle with Ameriprise and Thoughts on Handling Property Damage Claims Without a Lawyer

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Last year, my Dad was in an auto accident where the Defendant admittedly ran a red light. Believing in his superhuman ability to drive an automobile, he did not have collision insurance on his car.

The insurance company, which shall remain nameless (Ameriprise), denied liability claiming that my father did not react quickly enough to avoid the accident Ameriprise’s theory was that Dad is 71 years-old and therefore must have reacted too slowly to avoid the accident. What Ameriprise didn’t know is that my father was driving home from playing three grueling sets of tennis in the summer heat with me. I’ll bet money he can react better than the Ameriprise adjuster that denied the claim.

So I sent them a draft complaint and discovery in the case and they quickly changed adjusters, accepted liability, and threw in $500 for his injury claim even though he sought no medical treatment (which we never would have asked for had they paid on the property damage claim).

September 29, 2008

Ambulance Chasing Lawyers or Providing Equal Access?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The News-Democrat (St. Louis and Southwestern Illinois) has a story about accident lawyers trying to get access to car and truck accident police reports to get clients. They look through these police reports, get the names and addresses of injured people who might have a lawsuit and then write them a letter soliciting their case.

“Insurance companies can immediately contact people after an accident, and people should have the option to know what their rights are, if they want to talk to a lawyer,” said Michael Hupy, a Milwaukee accident lawyer who uses this technique to attract new clients. “Many people still think you have to pay a fee to talk to a personal injury lawyer.”

Is this ambulance chasing or, as Mr. Hupy suggests, a means of giving personal injury lawyers access equal to that of the insurance companies to accident victims?

September 8, 2008

Average Wrongful Death Verdicts for Females: Age Is More Than a Number

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Interesting data from Jury Verdict Research on the median and average values of wrongful death cases where the decedent is female. The overall average compensatory award for wrongful death of an adult female over the last eight years in the United States is $2,990,032 ($1,102,976 is the median).

Age is a big variable when looking at median and average female wrongful death values. The average wrongful death verdict for a female between 18 and 24 is 2,990,032 ($1,102,976 median). For females between 30 and 39, women who are far more likely to have left behind children, the median wrongful death verdict escalates to $5,605,127 ($2,500,000 median). For women over 80, the average wrongful death verdict plummets to $1,314,241 (322,920 median).

I always find it maddening when insurance companies discount the value of human life in wrongful death cases because of the age of the decedent. If you are eighty years old and you are killed, those last 10 years of seeing your kids as adults, your grandchildren coming of age and everything else that comes with it are valuable years. But these numbers, regrettably, show that there is some logic to their thinking for how juries value wrongful death cases.

September 2, 2008

‘We Can’t Compete with MAIF’ Complain Maryland Car Insurance Companies

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Baltimore Sun reports that car insurance companies in Maryland are resisting the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund’s (MAIF’s) car insurance rate-lowering proposal because MAIF’s plan to lower rates puts the private sector at risk. After a hearing in Baltimore, Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler delayed ruling on some insurance companies’ objections to MAIF lowering their rates.

Let me get this straight. Car insurance companies cannot compete with a non-subsidized state-run agency. Was Marx on to something? No, we all saw the Beijing Olympics; capitalism seems to work just fine.

Is this really where we are? Private car insurance companies need protection from competition by this awful company? I’m not sure what the private insurance companies’ arguments are on this issue. The only argument offered by the Baltimore Sun was provided by Hal S. Katz, president of Baltimore-based Interstate Auto Insurance (IAICO). Also specializing in writing Maryland car insurance policies for drivers that have a history of trouble, IAICO complained that MAIF does not enforce its requirement that provides car insurance only to drivers rejected by two private companies.