Maryland Injury Law Center

September 22, 2014

Truck Accidents and Driving Records | Shekoski v. Bindig

A new appellate opinion offers some interesting insight into the parameters under which a plaintiff may inquire about a truck driver’s driving record and the extent to which plaintiffs’ truck accident attorneys can use cross-examination fodder like the commercial driver license manual and other safety manuals.

Fact of the Case

Briefly, a man on a bicycle was killed when he was hit by a truck. The bicyclist was making a right turn against a red light on a white pedestrian signal. The truck hit him, and he was dragged for several hundred feet.

September 19, 2014

Baltimore Wrongful Death Lawyers | Fatality Compensation Claims

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

In Maryland, a wrongful death lawsuit can be brought by a family member of someone who was negligently killed. The wrongful death lawyers at Miller & Zois, LLC have over 100 years of combined experience handling wrongful death claims in Baltimore where our law offices are based.

Our firm also covers all of Maryland and travels and tries cases in every county in our state. We have a history of success in these cases and a willingness to fight to the end to get you the compensation that you deserve for your loss.

Call my law firm today at 800-553-8082 or get a free, no-obligation online consultation.

Maximizing the Amount of Compensation

When you lost someone you love, there is no about of money that can get you what you really want — your loved one back. The only thing the legal system can do is give you money to compensate you for your loss. At Miller & Zois, our mission is to get you as much money as possible for your wrongful death case in a settlement or a verdict. Our goal is not to get you a lot of money, not to do the best we can. No. Our goal is to leverage the law and the facts to get you as much money as humanly possible.

September 9, 2014

Challenges in Scheduling Depositions | Pennsylvania Case

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Scheduling depositions in car accident lawsuits usually is not a complex thing. You call the other side; you agree on dates, and you have your depositions. The key is cooperation. Rather than unilaterally serving a deposition notice, you just call opposing counsel and agree to the place, date, and time. There are rare issues.

For some reason, and I’m not entirely sure why, but scheduling depositions in medical malpractice cases always seems to be an ordeal. Common courtesies that I’m sure many Maryland malpractice lawyers accord each other in the rest of our lives sometimes go out the window. Sometimes, it seems like otherwise ethical lawyers have no qualms about making up excuses for why they or the deponents cannot attend a deposition that are not based in fact. Often, you can figure this out when you depose the witness. Continue reading

September 8, 2014

Fighting and Winning Against Pit Bull Defense Lawyers

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

There are lots of insurance defense lawyers in Maryland that you just cannot figure out why someone would hire them to defend a personal injury case. They unnecessarily complicate cases, bill hours on things that are completely unrelated to anything that would benefit the defense and, often, juries cannot stand them because there is a positive correlation between someone willing to be this annoying and how annoying they are, according to independent studies that I have conducted.

Why Insurance Companies Hire These Lawyers

The lawyer that fits this profile sometimes gets a lot of work. Why? Like any job, insurance adjusters are all kinds of different people. Democrats and Republicans. Athletes and bookworms. Compassionate and mean. Attractive and not-so-much. But, disproportionately, they are tough guys. They want to wage war in the seas and the valley and talk tough and be tough. For some of them, the rest of their lives belie this mentality. But that is a whole different story. Continue reading

August 27, 2014

Jeep Liberty Recall Because of Steering Defect

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

In Troubles with Jeep Liberty

Jeep Liberty is a cool-looking vehicle that has been off the market for the last three years. You never know all the reasoning behind why these decisions are made. But these vehicles, many of which were made in Egypt and Venezuela, have had many problems that owners were still experiencing in 2017.

The big recall Chrysler announced in 2007 was for over 800,000 Jeep Liberty sport utility vehicles because of the potential loss of steering control. This recall occurred after Chrysler received 111 complaints about this problem. Chrysler admitted three reports of injuries from auto accidents because of the defect. In the complaints that have been made, the ball joint failed, dropping the vehicle’s front end onto one or both of the front tires.

August 7, 2014

Should I Take the Insurance Company’s First Offer?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Should you accept the insurance company’s first offer even if you want to settle your personal injury claim? Continue reading

August 7, 2014

“It Wasn’t Me” Defense | New Maryland Case | Hall v. WMATA

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

But she caught me on the counter (It wasn’t me)
Saw me banging on the sofa (It wasn’t me)
I even had her in the shower (It wasn’t me)
She even caught me on camera (It wasn’t me)
She saw the marks on my shoulder (It wasn’t me)
Heard the words that I told her (It wasn’t me)
Heard the scream get louder (It wasn’t me) – Shaggy (2000)

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Grimm granted summary judgment for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority last week in a slip and fall, no impact bus accident case in Hall v. WMATA. A slip and fall no collision “the door shut on me” bus accident case in federal court? I know it sounds bad, sure. But it gets worse.

July 31, 2014

Why Can’t I Find a Malpractice Lawyer for My Case?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Medical malpractice kills 400,000 people a year in this country and injures 4 million more. The media is now starting to focus on this story, as we just talked about on Monday after the Baltimore Sun’s story on negligence in Maryland hospital. Stories like this help plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases. Why? Because many of us still view doctors as infallible and that wall of invincibility is being to fall.

So, why is it so hard to find a medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland who will take your case?

Joanna Shepherd, a law professor at Emory University, conducted a national survey of medical malpractice attorneys that explored why malpractice attorneys reject cases.

Reason for Rejection Case	Percent of Respondents
Unclear causation	19.25%
Unclear evidence of malpractice	29.11%
Case is unlikely to settle	0.94%
Insufficient damages expected from trial or settlement	38.73%
Complexity and expense of bringing the claim	11.74
Hospital not involved in medical malpractice	0.23%

July 28, 2014

Maryland Hospital Errors | How Many?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Baltimore Sun published an important front-page article yesterday on hospital errors in Maryland.

The premise of the article is a simple yet different approach to medical mistakes in Maryland hospitals. It goes like this. We have about 400,000 patients who are killed every year by medical malpractice.

How are Maryland hospitals faring? We don’t know. There is a major epidemic that kills enough people in this county to fill Camden Yards 10 times a year. Malpractice that causes serious injury could fill Camden Yards over 100 times (4,000,000) a year. Yet we have no quality way of estimating how Maryland is faring. Why is this? The hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies do not provide this data to us.

Said differently, we are all particularly those of us that are young or old – vulnerable to this grave risk. We face other risks, of course. Heart disease, cancer, motor vehicle accidents, diabetes, all pose substantial risks of death. With these risks, we can sift through the data, understand the risks, and do what we can. We quit smoking, eat better, wear seat belts, and so forth.

July 21, 2014

Tort Reformers Were Right, Doctors Do Flee States Without Caps

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

One of the great selling points of caps in medical malpractice cases is that it encourages doctors to come to your state to practice. Every state, particularly in jurisdictions with rural areas where access and availability to doctors is a prominent concern, want to attract a healthy supply of doctors to their state. The thinking it is that doctors will flee to states where the litigation climate is more favorable to doctors. A new study suggests this oft cited canard support tort reform is 100% true. But not in a good way for patients.

A Notre Dame economist published a study titled “Medical Malpractice Reform, the Supply of Physicians, and Adverse Selection,” Journal of Law and Economics” that found that “when a county’s neighboring state passes a cap on noneconomic damages, the supply of physicians falls by 4 percent” in that county.” Tort reform advocates are nodding their heads vigorously.