Articles Posted in General

The Supreme Court today Walker v. NCAA (formerly Christie v. NCAA) in a 7-2 decision found unconstitutional a federal law that prohibits sports betting on football, basketball, baseball, and other sports. This gives states the green light to legalize betting on sports.

Legalized sports gambling in Maryland may not be far away.  We came close to passing a law in the last session in anticipation of this ruling. Delaware and New Jersey may have sports gambling within the next few weeks.

You can read about this on ESPN or Sports Illustrated, too.  But I’m unimpressed with how they have explained the law.  I’m writing here for lawyers who want to understand the details of the ruling without reading the case or the briefs.

Donald Trump has the support of a broad swath of people.   Many of his supporters have the viewpoint that the problem in this country is too many lawsuits.

Trump would not take this position.  He is, by any definition, a celebrity.  Many celebrities have a history of using lawsuit first recourse in settling disputes.

Yesterday, Trump threatened a lawsuit if Ted Cruz does not take a campaign ad down that is predominantly made up of Trump’s own words footage in a 1999 interview saying he’s “very pro-choice.” Cruz has, with good reason, mocked the viability of such a claim, giving the sound bite that Trump has been bringing frivolous lawsuits his entire adult life.

Trump certainly has filed several unbelievable lawsuits.  Here are a few highlights:

• He sued two brothers for using the Trump name, even though their last name was Trump.  Reportedly, these guys were worth over ten times what Trump is worth, but somehow they were using the name to piggyback off of his success.  The suit went nowhere.
• He sued his ex-wife for $25 million for talking about their relationship despite a confidentiality agreement. He might have technically been on the right side of this.  But you get the point.
• Bill Maher joked that he would pay Trump $5 million if he could prove that his father was not an orangutan. Trump produced his birth certificate and sued for $5 million when Maher did not pay.  This one has a real elementary school vibe to it, doesn’t it?  Trump eventually dropped the case.
• He sued the Chicago Tribune for $500 million after the paper’s architecture critic wrote he thought the Chicago’s Sears Tower would remain its world’s tallest building title even though Trump has made a plan to build a taller building on the East River in Manhattan. Reportedly, Trump did not even hire an architect for the building.  A federal court judge dismissed the case, ruling that you cannot sue someone for their subjective opinions.

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Ted Cruz has made a lot of enemies.  I cannot remember a legitimate candidate for president who seemed to be as personally disliked as Ted Cruz. This quote in the Washington Post describes how he was viewed when he attended Princeton:  “You either didn’t know Ted Cruz, you hated him, or you were David Panton.”  That’s harsh.

What does this have to do with this post?  Nothing, really.  I just thought it was worth pointing out.

Cruz is very proud that he was on the front line in the tort reform battles, a point he will probably make in South Carolina – while I write this post.  He defended appellate challenges to the 2003 Texas law that allows Texas doctors to commit malpractice as often as they please with no limitations. He was an author of George W. Bush’s “Let’s turn a blind eye to our federalism platitudes and install nationwide tort reform.”

After these accomplishments, Cruz gave being a private lawyer a spin.  Even Cruz’ enemies who will now agree he is a fantastic appellate lawyer.   He did what you would expect him to do in private practice: help big companies fight each other and squash the little guy.  As a personal injury lawyer, Ted Cruz defended, on appeal, two mammoth plaintiffs’ verdicts in New Mexico that involved $110 million in damages between two plaintiffs.   Keep in mind this was after he passionately fought against personal injury victims in Texas and throughout the country.

Why would such a committed tort reformer agree to represent victims?  Cruz clarified that if he would get involved when “money had to be right.”

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Clearly, the new Republican tradition is to pay homage to Ronald Reagan whenever you have a segue to do so – and even when there’s not. Everyone has forgotten Iran-Contra and those Marines in Lebanon. Instead, we have focused on the fact that he presided over 8 years of relative peace and prosperity. Most people also agree he made a real contribution to our victory in the Cold War.

At a debate back for the RNC Chairmanship, Grover Norquist asked the candidates, “Who is your favorite Republican president?” Every one of the six candidates picked Reagan.

Poor Lincoln. Even Democrats look back on Reagan and point out – maybe correctly, I don’t know – that Reagan is not conservative enough to win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Of course, in 2018, the cult of Donald Trump has led to a devaluation of Reagan and his legacy.  But this is likely a very temporary revision.)

The Evidence

You have heard of Stella Liebeck and the McDonald’s coffee case. Yep, over 30 years later, that is still a thing. But before Stella, there was “the phone booth case” that Reagan raised in a 1986 speech:

A man was using a public telephone booth to place a call. An alleged drunk driver careened down the street, lost control of her car, and crashed into the phone booth. Now, it’s no surprise that the injured man sued. But you might be startled to hear whom he sued: the telephone company and associated firms.

All of this is true. People love to make a big deal about someone suing someone as a harbinger for chaos because the lawsuit is so unjust.  But all you need to file a lawsuit is 115 bucks (at least in Maryland).  People file utterly ridiculous lawsuits all the time.  In this case, the guy was paralyzed, and he brought suit and the phone company settled (for like $25,000 in a catastrophic injury case.)

I don’t know why insanity is imputed because some company does not have the guts to take a case to trial.  But everyone jumped on to the idea that there is great meaning to the court’s failure to rule for the defendant on its motion for summary judgment (edit: the trial judge granted the MSJ but the California Supreme Court flipped the order).   But I guess Reagan was pretty fired up about it in his speech, so that is why the legend lives on to this day that Reagan was pro-tort reform.

A Closer Look at Reagan and Tort Reform

I found on my Google +1 a post (update — Google +1 is dead) from someone who worked for Reagan, which looks at what he actually said about tort reform. Apparently, all of his years of public life, Reagan gave only one tort reform speech in his political career in which he specifically said the issue is one for individual states. He never followed up on this speech.

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Tiger Woods “easy” back surgery hurts some tort victims

Tiger Woods announced today that he has undergone successful back surgery and expects to be back playing golf this summer.  Good for him. This is bad news for golf fans who passionately root for or against Tiger.  But it is also bad for personal injury victims who are bringing a back injury claim in front of a jury.  Why?  Because juries get constant evidence from athletes that back injuries and back surgery is not a big deal.  Some will equate Tiger Woods to 58-year-old Mary Smith when she has a discectomy and fusion for a herniated disc after a car accident.

Why Tiger’s Surgery and Expected Recovery Misleads Juries

There are several reasons the comparison is unfair.  First, not all back injuries are created the same.  Tiger had a microdiscectomy for a pinched nerve.  That is light-years from, say, a herniated disc suffered by great trauma.  But some jurors view back surgery as back surgery, regardless of the severity of the injury. Second, Tiger is a professional athlete who dedicates his life to keeping his body in the best shape.  Tiger won’t even share his workout secrets.   He will also get stunning medical care.  The best doctors, and ridiculous amounts of medical attention you and I would never see. Finally, Tiger’s getting surgery in the first place is probably something you and I never would have gotten in the first place.  Why?  First, we are not violently swinging a golf club at the speed of light.   So I can probably still work out and work around the same injury that Tiger needs to get taken care of so he can perform on a world-class level. Continue reading

A Nate Silver wannabe breaks down the question of whether jury size matters in these jurisdictions, where a jury’s verdict does not have to be unanimous. The greater concern is in criminal cases where it seems odd to convict someone to life in prison, as you can in Louisiana, on a 9-3 vote. Continue reading

Personal injury lawyers hate talking about their contingency fee agreements with their clients. Me too. But it is an interesting and important topic and one of great importance to people who are seriously injured and will hire an attorney. This post explains how our law firm operates and gives a few thoughts on contingency fee agreements in personal injury cases.

Our contingency fee agreement with our clients in every personal injury case is exactly the same. Our firm gets one-third of the recovery if the case settles before a lawsuit is filed. If a lawsuit is filed, or there is an agreement to arbitrate the case, our fee increases to 40%. We have fronted all client expenses in every case we have handled in the last 10 years. If we are not willing to put up our own money, we would not be willing to take the case.

This is our agreement for every single personal injury case in our office. We have turned down at least two cases (that I know of: I’m sure there have been more) that have culminated in a seven-figure recovery because we did not agree to reduce our contingency fee.

Before I explain why we do it this way, let me go the other way and set forth the argument about why we shouldn’t have a set fee for all of our clients. Contingency fees in personal injury cases are designed to a large measure to compensate attorneys for the risk in time and money they must incur. So, theoretically, in a world of perfect information, calibrate the contingency fee with the risk/reward and set the attorneys’ fees accordingly. Continue reading

Tanning beds cause cancer. Cancer kills. Tanning beds also make you look old before your time.

This matters little to the Maryland Senate who crushed the bill in committee. Which committee? The Finance Committee. Because, you know, that makes sense.

The bill, sponsored by Montgomery County Democrat Jamie Raskin, would have prohibited anyone under 18 from using an electric tanning bed, eliminating a provision in Maryland law that allows minors to tan if they have parental permission. So the rule, and it is still the rule in 2018, is that minors can tan in Maryland if their parent or legal guardian provides written consent on the premises of the tanning facility.

We do not ask parents if their kids can drink or smoke or skip school.  Why do we exempt tanning?  Call it Big Brother if you want, but I have no problem with stopping bad parents from letting their kids make awful choices.

The World Health Organization’s cancer division last summer listed tanning beds as definitive cancer-causers. I’m willing to take their word for it, along with many studies that concluded the risk of melanoma jumps by 75 percent in people who used tanning beds in their teens and 20s. Melanoma is lethal; 69,000 U.S. cases were diagnosed last year, and about 8,650 people died.

Listen, Katy Perry notwithstanding, it’s dumb to let your child go into a tanning bed. This we know. So what is the problem? According to the Indoor Tanning Association, 8% of the customers are 18 years old or younger. On an average day, over 1 million Americans engage in indoor tanning. Do the math. See where the lobbyists are coming from on this?

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USAA offers a release form for minors in certain situations. If a minor is a beneficiary of a life insurance policy or has a custodial account, USAA may require a release form in order to distribute funds to the minor.

The USAA release form for minors typically requires the signature of the minor’s legal guardian or custodian, as well as the minor if they are of a certain age. The form may require information about the account, the minor’s information, and the purpose of the release.

USAA Minor Release Language