Maryland has banned the use of handheld cell phones while driving. Obviously, this includes texting, but it also applies to holding a cell phone up to your ear while you talk.
I’m glad we have this law. It makes sense that you have both hands to drive and react to emergencies. Right? It does not take a Rhodes Scholar to figure this out.
Bringing a medical malpractice case in Maryland is not something that most lawyers are competent to do. Maryland law makes you jump through a lot of administrative hoops when filing malpractice cases. Experienced malpractice lawyers have screwed up the procedural requirements for bringing a claim. Maryland law and its courts are more than willing to hold a victim’s feet to the fire on technical details that really would not be of consequence if the system was truly interested in allowing victims access to justice.
Last week, the Maryland Court of Appeals decided Falls Garden Condominium Association v. Falls Homeowner’s Association. It is not a personal injury case. In fact, it’s a case about parking spots. But Falls Garden is actually a
case about settlement contracts and their enforceability. If you are a Maryland personal injury lawyer, you need to know when a deal is actually a binding deal.
Typically, counsel on both sides of the aisle assume that you have a binding deal when you agree to the numbers on the claim. Most settlements really do go smooth, particularly in car accident cases. State Farm, GEICO, and their brethren do not really care about confidentially, admissions, or anything else outside of its standard form settlement agreement. But malpractice insurers and their doctors and hospitals and product liability defendants often treat settlement agreements like they are reinventing the wheel.
Keep in mind that, as plaintiffs’ attorneys, we never really have those types of things we are trying to slip in under the wire for a settlement. Our essential term is money and we are not trying to get the defendants to agree to other terms in personal injury cases.
A U.S. federal court judge made a ruling on some motions that would interest Maryland medical malpractice attorneys. They deal with a motion for summary judgment and a pet interest of mine, holding the defendant’s feet to the fire when they give garbage answers to requests for admission.
This is a birth injury claim against Defendants Calvert Memorial Hospital of Calvert County, that hospital’s emergency room and emergency room doctor, and the United States. The government is a defendant for the care given at Andrews Air Force Base.
Plaintiff got prenatal care on Andrews Air Force Base. A month before delivering, the mom-to-be presented with high blood pressure and had laboratory studies with elevated proteins, symptoms that show some risk of preeclampsia. Three weeks later, the woman gives birth to her daughter at Calvert Memorial Hospital.
Most malpractice lawsuits in Maryland are resolved after negotiating through adversarial bargaining. At the end of the day, our clients only have two options: settle or go to trial. Sometimes, they do not even have two options. We have tried medical malpractice cases where there was no settlement offer.
There is a settlement formula to determine the value of a medical malpractice claim. The formula has four parts:
Most of the medical malpractice cases Miller & Zois handles come from cases that are referred from other Maryland attorneys. These cases come from other lawyers who do not focus their practice on medical malpractice cases, or the size and the expenses in the case or the specific issues presented are such that getting other counsel involved makes the most sense.
In these cases, we do a 70%-30% fee split with the referring law consistent with Maryland Rule 1.5 in medical negligence cases. Our firm fronts and bears the risk of all costs and expenses. I put that 70%-30% number right out there because fee splits always seem cloaked in mystery. The only information online that involves fee splits comes from appellate opinions. So we want to get it out there.
The medical malpractice arm of our law firm has continued to grow over the last 10 years. I think it is interesting to see who the defense lawyers are in these cases. It matters who you draw as defense counsel. You would think, as a plaintiff’s lawyer, you would like to draw the least competent counsel as possible.
There is some truth to this. Lazy and incompetent counsel sometimes miss key defenses and critical arguments that the health care providers should make. But this rule has a lot of exceptions. Defense lawyers who get behind the eight ball sometimes make it even harder on us. Because it is impossible to schedule depositions, get discovery responses, and otherwise push the case forward. You usually get to the same place in the end, but sometimes the workload doubles just because the other side is so unresponsive. Sometimes, particularly if you have a quality liability case, you are best served by having quality defense lawyers who do what it takes to properly defend the case.
Pre-impact fright and conscious pain and suffering in Maryland death cases
Many years ago, a jury awarded my partner Laura Zois’ client $4 million in a survival action claim. The sole evidence — the SOLE evidence — presented to the jury was that the decedent said “Oh s—!” before impact which caused his immediate death. Since that case, I have had a very aggressive view when it comes to pushing these claims. Because that case and other cases I have seen and tried show that juries take the most remote fear of grave harm or death as serious as they do any conscious pain and suffering. I think too many plaintiffs’ attorneys in Maryland are too quick to accept the premise that the victim’s estate cannot make a pre-impact fright or conscious pain and suffering claim. This post is about Maryland law in both pre-impact freight and conscious pain and suffering cases and why I think this helps the family’s victim recover substantial damages in wrongful death and survival action claims in Maryland.
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals handed down an interesting opinion in Asphalt and Concrete Services v. Perry, reversing a half-million dollar verdict. This case is a cautionary tale for lawyers who want to get every possible thing they can, in order to make the defendant look bad. I understand the urge, believe me. But sometimes you are just asking for an appeal that will get your case reversed. This is an opinion every Maryland personal injury lawyer — on both sides of the aisle — should read and keep in the back of their minds. This case also has some good law and bad law for plaintiffs’ lawyers that is worth knowing.
Last month in a medical malpractice case in Milwaukee, a judge did something pretty amazing. Here is the setup. A woman has both her arms and legs amputated because of a Strep A infection and the treatment she received for septic shock, resulting in compromised blood flow. This is, no question, a stunningly awful tragedy. A jury believed that medical malpractice caused these injuries and awarded $15.75 million in pain and suffering damages and $9 million in economic damages. But Wisconsin has a $750,000 cap on non-economic damages that the trial judge, in this case, believed was constitutionally sound. So that’s that, right?Although the cap may be constitutional as applied to medical malpractice victims as a whole, there is no rational justification for depriving Mrs. Mayo, who is in her mid-fifties, limbless, and largely immobile, and Mr. Mayo of the award the jury decided was appropriate to compensate them for their injuries…”
It is unreasonable to require Mrs. Mayo and her husband, whose lives have been so drastically altered, to bear the brunt of the legislature’s intended tort reform…. there is no rational basis [for slashing the award] in the hopes of marginally improving health care in Wisconsin.
