Articles Posted in Legal News

Last week, I wrote about the new Baltimore judges selected by Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Parenthetically, I noted that this is a big story in Baltimore because Judge Christopher Panos is openly gay. I added that I look forward to the day when this is not a story.  (Update: See below!!!)   I hesitated to write those words not because I do not believe them but because I want this personal injury lawyer blog to be apolitical. But I felt pretty strongly about discrimination against anyone for any reason other than the content of their character. So, I added my thoughts.

Since my comments, the uproar has continued. I was interviewed earlier in the week by a reporter from the Washington Blade.  (Update: The article has since been removed online.) The reporter asked a lot of detailed questions and wrote a good article. My only two mild criticisms:

1. The article identifies me as “straight” which I am. But the whole point of what I was trying to articulate is that labels – even labels that put you in the majority – divide rather than unite. It is trite, but it really is true.

The Maryland Court of Appeals issued its opinion this week in Harleysville Mutual Ins. Co. v. Zelinski. This question addressed was whether a named driver exclusion endorsement was valid for a commercial truck insurance policy. The case stems from a head-on truck accident in Cecil County in 2000. A jury awarded the victims, a woman and her son, $1.7 million. Big verdict, particularly for that county.

The truck driver was the son of the owners of a septic service company. Apparently a young man, he collected 18 points on his Maryland driving record, most of which arose from a conviction for driving under the influence and a conviction for exceeding the speed limit by over 30 MPH. His parents knew of his driving record and soon, so did Harleysville Insurance.

Acting under the endorsement in the policy, Harleysville offered the company’s owners a chance to either cancel their policy or kick their son off the policy. They accepted the endorsement. The son got insurance to drive the truck in question through the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund.

Newsday reported on Sunday that a young victim killed in a drunk driving accident, seventeen-year-old Donny Ray Harris Jr., will be the first drunken driving victim in the state of Georgia remembered with an official highway marker, erected under recent state law governor Sonny Perdue signed just 13 days before the fatal car crash. Georgia is among a growing number of states that give official status to landmarks of fatal drunk driving accidents. The markers will be put up for five years and will read “In Memory Of,” followed by the accident victim’s name and “DUI Victim.”

This is something I wish Maryland would adopt. All drunk-driving-related injuries and deaths are preventable. Sure, as long as there are alcohol and cars, trucks, and motorcycles, there will be drunk driving deaths. Some people could watch videos all day long of the horrors of drunk driving accidents, still drink a six-pack, and blithely jump behind the wheel. But there are many drunk driving fatalities caused by otherwise decent people doing an awful thing. These are the people that education – reminders of the tragedy a single drunk driving mistake can mean to them, their families, and their innocent victims – can change behaviors and save lives and human suffering.  When they see video footage of cars were in fatal accidents like we talk about below and roadside memorials, they will consider how awful the consequences can be.

Updating this blog post in 2017, not every agrees.  There has been a push in some communities to ban any roadside memorials. Some states, including  Colorado, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wisconsin have an outright ban on these memorials. Some people believe they distract drivers and some are offended by religious symbols on public highways (highlighted by the new 4th Circuit opinion on the Peace Cross). I just think the more we think about the effects of distracted, drugged, and dangerous driving, the more lives we can safe. We lose a stadium full of Americans every year in car accidents. Anything we can reasonably do to lower that number, I’m in favor of exploring.

The Baltimore Sun reported the implementation of an ordered procedural change for a nonfunctioning traffic light after two teenagers were killed in an auto accident in Columbia, Maryland. Howard County police are now requiring officers to stay at nonfunctioning signals until they are fixed or until a stop sign or another temporary device is taken to the scene. Howard County is also testing a battery backup system for traffic lights to control the danger of faulty traffic lights.

This was an awful tragedy. If the county made a mistake in either failing to maintain the light or in taking the proper precautions after the light malfunctions in this case or a similar case, they may be amenable to suit. The courts addressed this issue in Montgomery County v. Voorhees, 86 Md. App. 294 (1991). Here, Montgomery County’s attorneys argued that it was immune from suit stemming from an auto accident at Route 29 and Fairland Road under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and even if it was not immune from suit, the planning, designing, and timing of the traffic light was not the proximate cause of the accident. The Court of Special Appeals found that operating traffic lights was a governmental act not covered by sovereign immunity and that a reasonable jury could have concluded, as it did, Montgomery County was the sole proximate cause of the accident. Unfortunately, a bit of quick research that I did on this issue shows that Florida courts appear to disagree, finding that even when a municipality is negligent in disabling or failing to repair a traffic light, there was no liability even in the absence of negligence by the driver.

Is there a potential wrongful death lawsuit against Howard County based on these facts?  I think we have to know more about the facts of the case and what the officers at the scene knew.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that plaintiff’s attorney Marc Bern sued Random House in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleging that his clients purchased James Frey’s now-famous “A Million Little Pieces.” Plaintiff’s attorney stated that they based the claim for failure “to conduct a reasonable investigation or inquiry regarding the truthfulness or accuracy” of the material. Bern said he will seek a mere $50 million in damages, presumably for the “pain and suffering” of reading a book they thought was non fiction. (This case eventually settled, and some people got their money back on the books.  There were no pain and suffering damages.  And the lawyers probably made a lot of money off a weak case.)

Why Am I Writing About This on a Personal Injury Blog?

My feeling is that this claim is worth about fifty cents on its best day and lawsuits like these do personal injury victims and their attorneys a disservice. They feed into a wave of popular anger over lawsuits, leading people to believe that recoveries for this type of “tort” are commonplace when they are not.

The Baltimore Sun reported this week that Baltimore County judge sentenced a man to three years in prison for crashing through a concrete barrier last January on the Baltimore Beltway and killing a construction worker described as a hardworking man who had taken overtime shifts on the Beltway project to earn extra money.

The drunk driver, a 29-year-old Towson resident who drove off after the crash, received a sentence of six years in prison but the courts would suspend three years of the term. They also required him to serve 18 months of probation and pay $670 in fines and fees.

We are not criminal lawyers, but I have had several cases representing victims who died in car accidents at the hands of drunk drivers. What I found surprising is that the prosecutor who handled the case, a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving available for comment after the verdict, and the victim’s coworkers were all pleased with what they considered a tough sentence for first-time offenders convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Nancy Kelly, a Maryland public policy liaison with MADD, was quoted as saying that “What you usually see in Baltimore County is everything suspended but 18 months, so they usually serve less than a year.” This is a tough issue for everyone involved.