Maryland Injury Law Center

February 12, 2015

Nerve Damage Causing Foot Drop After Total Hip Replacement

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Nearly a quarter of a million Americans undergo total hip replacement surgery. All of them do so reluctantly. This invasive orthopedic surgery is a major operation. Everyone agrees that there are unavoidable risks involved in the procedure. These risks include a foot drop (also called peroneal nerve palsy or drop foot), sciatic nerve injuries, and, many believe, RSD even when the surgery is performed properly. There is no doubt that the fact that it is a known complication of hip replacement surgery does not make for a straightforward malpractice case no matter how egregious the facts are. I’m telling you that the surgeon could do the operation with a machete while wearing a Groucho Marx mask and any Maryland insurance company would still mount a defense. But that does not answer the question posed, which is whether it can be medical malpractice when a patient has a foot drop after a total hip replacement. Continue reading

February 6, 2015

Why Do Baltimore Drivers Pay More for Insurance?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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Our main office is now in downtown Baltimore. I love it here. I really do. But driving in Baltimore can be a pain. The daily commute usually involves at least one narrowly escaped crash, jaywalkers deciding to cross right as your light turns green, and the Circulator cutting you off a few times. It’s the price of doing business downtown.

Baltimore’s drivers aren’t the best, but they’re definitely not the worst. That’s because they’re only the second-worst. Allstate rated Baltimore’s drivers 193^rd out of 194 different cities in the US. D.C. was the only city that fared worse. There is a reason Baltimore car accident lawyers keep busy and why Maryland ranks 9th in the cost of car insurance premiums. While this reality makes our drives more perilous every day, it affects city residents’ wallets in a huge way.

February 5, 2015

Is Hands Free Driving Safe?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

February 4, 2015

Getting to the Maryland Courthouse Steps in Malpractice Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

February 2, 2015

Backing Out of Settlement Agreements | New Maryland Case

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

January 21, 2015

Ford v. United States | New Maryland Malpractice Opinion

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

January 9, 2015

Medical Malpractice Settlement Formula? How to Value Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

Is There a Formula to Determine the Value of Medical Malpractice Cases?

There is a settlement formula to determine the value of a medical malpractice claim. The formula has four parts:

January 7, 2015

Fee Splitting or Referral Fees in Maryland Medical Malpractice Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

What Type of Referring Lawyer Fee Splits Do You Do?

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.

This post talks about how this works in Maryland, why this is actually a good system for victims and discusses a Maryland Court of Special Appeals case pending on this issue. If this post reminds potential referring lawyers that we handle medical malpractice cases and invites lawyers to refer cases to our law firm, all the better.

January 5, 2015

Who Is Defending Maryland Medical Malpractice Cases?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

December 17, 2014

Pre-Death Pain and Suffering | Required Proof in Maryland

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.