Maryland Injury Law Center

January 21, 2009

Garnishing Personal Injury Settlements in Maryland

The Maryland Daily Record reports that a personal injury settlement is not subject to garnishment for child support, according to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion in Rosemann vs. Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder and Adkins, LLC.

This action stems from an effort by a father to get child support from the child’s mother (which is not exactly the norm). The mother was injured in when a flight attendant dropped a suitcase on her arm during a flight. Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder & Adkins settled the accident claim for $30,000, and the father sought to garnish the settlement, which is how the law firm got involved in the case in the first place (a case I’m sure they regret taking in hindsight).

Trial Court Ruling

The Circuit Court for Howard County ruled that the settlement money was exempt from garnishment as it was compensation for a personal injury, and therefore protected by § 11-504(b)(2) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article of Maryland law. This statute outlines that certain property is exempt from execution on a judgment. The Court of Special Appeals subsequently affirmed this decision.

January 16, 2009

Car Accident Lawsuits: Time Magazine Article

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Time Magazine has an interesting article on auto tort cases. The article has the usual stuff: insurance company complaints about high verdicts, people faking injuries, jackpot justice, the backlog in the courts, and that most personal injury victims only receive small settlements. Here are a few quotes:

The automobile accounts for half to three-quarters of personal-injury suits, fully 25% of all civil cases brought to state law courts. In Chicago, more than 50,000 auto cases are awaiting trial. In Los Angeles, auto liability cases have nearly tripled in the past decade. In New York City, more than 90,000 new cases come up each year. Across the country, Americans pay out $6.5 billion a year in automobile insurance premiums—yet in the past decade the insurance companies have suffered a net loss of more than $850,000 on this business.

Getting his case to the jury so that [the auto accident victim can recover] may take four years in New York City, three years in Boston, over 2½ years in Honolulu or Detroit. Courts in Los Angeles have held the delay to less than two years. In Miami the wait is less than six months—an interval many lawyers consider too short to allow the medical evidence to “ripen.” But in Chicago, at the other extreme, the traffic jam is backed up for a staggering 5½ years.

The article underscores the frustration the public has with the complete thing: car insurance companies, the courts, the lawyers, and the occasional fakers that try to sue.

Oh, one more thing worth mentioning. The article was published in Time over 45 years ago. Continue reading

January 12, 2009

Litigation Society?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I enjoy picking up the Outlook section of The Washington Post on Sunday’s to read George Will. I rarely agree with him. But I’m always impressed with his writing and analysis.

Sunday’s article offers thoughts on a topic that is obviously near and dear to my heart: litigation. George Will is less impressive when you know something about the topic he is writing about in his column. Continue reading

January 5, 2009

A Tale of Two Lawyers

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Internet tells two stories this morning. First, the Maryland Daily Record tells the story of an applicant to the Maryland bar who has been practicing law, apparently without incident, in New York for 25 years. This New York lawyer apparently wanted to move to Maryland and took and passed the Maryland bar.

Six months before he passed the Maryland bar, this lawyer had received a DWI in Virginia. He did not disclose this during his character committee interview, which was less than two weeks after he had been released from a four-day stint in jail for the DWI. After he passed the bar, he fessed up. From the context of the story, I’m assuming that he came clean with no concern that they would uncover the arrest; he just belatedly did the right thing.

The second is a blog post from the New York Personal Injury Law Blog about a New York lawyer caught in a sting operation when “he engaged in sexually explicit conversations over an internet chat room with an undercover police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, followed by his attempted meeting with the presumed minor for sexual contact.” But a divided New York court decided the sentence for this man would only be three years.

In the Maryland case, I would have admitted the lawyer if I were on the Maryland Court of Appeals. It seems to me, this was not a Marion Jones or even an Andy Pettitte situation where someone gets caught and suddenly claims remorse. Instead, it seems like this guy just plain did the wrong thing and then did the right thing.

Sure, he did not show, as Judge Lynne A. Battaglia pointed out writing for the majority, absolute candor. But while wrong can be black and white, it is still a matter of degree. How about admitting the guy—who apparently has been practicing law for a long time – and then suspending him for a year? For me personally, I’d be more inclined to deny his application for the DWI. He did not put my wife and kids at risk by omitting something and then correcting his error. But he did by getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car.

The New York sex offender case is baffling to me. How in the name of Chris Hansen is this guy permitted to continue to practice law? The dissent sums up my view:

December 30, 2008

Medical Malpractice Caps, David Petraeus, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King: Watch Me Strain to Relate Them All Together to Close Out 2008

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Daily Herald in Chicago published an editorial yesterday that urges the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the Illinois cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The article, written by the President on the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (I guess they have not gotten the Association for Justice memo), does not cover any fresh ground opposing tort reform.

In fact, it highlights the one argument in opposing tort reform that I reject: that the cap does not lower malpractice premiums. While I hate caps on non-economic damages, I’m sorry, I majored in economics. (Okay, finance, but you get the point.) You cannot assert medical malpractice rates are not impacted by less exposure. Insurance rates are a function of exposure. It’s the first thing an actuary will punch into that computer. That rates do not immediately rise or fall after malpractice caps rise or fall does not negate this causal relationship.

December 29, 2008

The Failures of For-Profit Nursing Homes

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently published a report analyzing approximately 16,000 nursing homes in this country and assigned each a rating—from one star to five stars—based on such criteria as health inspections and staffing.

In a less prolific blow than the other shots to the head delivered to the theory that an unfettered free market is always the best answer, approximately 27 percent of for-profit homes surveyed received one star, versus 13 percent of non-profit homes. At the top of the nursing home food chain, 19% of non-profit homes received five stars, compared with 9 percent of for-profit homes. From this overwhelming data, it is hard to argue that for-profit nursing homes provide an equal level of nursing home care to that of non-profit homes. While I am not sure what the profit to non-profit nursing home ratio is in Maryland, I don’t think this conclusion shocks a single Maryland nursing home lawyer. The vast majority of nursing home cases are against private, for-profit nursing homes. Continue reading

December 18, 2008

Is Baltimore a Judicial Hellhole?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Baltimore is “teetering along the edge of a hellhole” because of its hospitable climate for personal injury lawsuits, according to a recent study from the American Tort Reform Foundation.

If you are a lawyer handling medical malpractice, accident, or products liability cases in the city, this comes a little out of left-field because while we consider Baltimore a more reasonable jurisdiction than most in Maryland to try personal injury cases. It is not tort attorney utopia. I wish it was.

The city makes up a sizeable portion of personal injury cases in Maryland, which has a median jury verdict in personal injury cases is $12,813. In contrast, the median jury verdict in New York in personal injury cases is $287,628. So let’s get serious.

It is a good town for asbestos and lead paint claims. But this is not because of judges or juries in Baltimore. It is because it is—and even more so, was—a blue-collar town with a lot of workers who had exposure to asbestos. I realize some people find it frustrating that personal injury lawyers handling these cases ended up with “buy a baseball team” money. This American Tort Reform report plays to this sentiment, calling Baltimore “a welcoming host to a disproportionate share” of asbestos lawsuits and singled out Orioles owner, Peter Angelos, calling him an “all-star plaintiffs’ attorney with a specialty in asbestos cases.” (Somehow, I doubt Angelos takes offense to this.)

I don’t think anyone other than a personal injury attorney gets excited about anyone making billions of dollars in legal fees. But the asbestos litigation was a once in a generation disaster. And this town became a hotbed because of the industries we have here. The abject suffering caused by mesothelioma from asbestos has been lost in all the attention being paid to the litigation.

We are also in a unique position on lead paint cases because public officials got us out in front of the lead paint problem by testing kids much earlier than other cities which provided the data to secure and support expert opinions.

This means they could file many cases before the insurance companies got wise and started putting lead paint exclusions in their insurance policies with landlords. Sure, there have been several good lead paint verdicts—including the $5.7 million verdict mentioned in the American Tort Reform report. But, look, trying a case on behalf of a brain-injured child against a slum landlord is like shooting fish in a barrel. The report neglects to mention that the court cut the jury’s award to less than $1.3 million because of the caps on non-economic damages in Maryland.

December 16, 2008

Closing Arguments: Something to Remind the Jury in Serious Personal Injury Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I recently read a closing argument in another lawyers’ medical malpractice case. In his final thoughts to the jury, he reminded the jurors of what I always remind jurors of when I’m delivering a closing: the memories of the victim will fade for you and for me, but this person will live with these injuries for the rest of his/her life.

The jury got the message and awarded $5.8 million for the wrongful death of a 47-year-old lawyer whose untreated mole turned into a skin cancer that spread to his brain. The jury awarded $3 million in non-economic damages, including $1 million each to Plaintiff’s widow and to his estate and $500,000 each to Plaintiff’s two children.

That portion of the award will be reduced to $812,500 due to Maryland’s cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases with at least two claimants. We expect the plaintiff to appeal [update; they did and lost] arguing the unconstitutionality of Maryland’s cap on damages and the specific portion of the cap that applies to medical malpractice cases.

December 15, 2008

Republicans and Democrats and Jury Awards: Does Party Affiliation Matter?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Wisconsin Lawyer (link since removed) has an interesting article on the impact a juror’s political bent has on the amount of damages awarded in personal injury cases.

The study contained 476 mock jurors who identified themselves as either Democrats or Republicans. The jurors took part in mock trials for cases involving a personal injury, product liability, or medical malpractice and were divided into four basic categories of damages, which were determined based on how much they awarded during a mock trial: no damages, low damages, medium damages, and high damages.

No Difference in Party Affiliation

The results showed that being a self-described Republican or Democrat was not predictive of the damage award. In fact, 22.3 percent of self-described Democrats awarded no money for damages, while 20.8 percent of self-described Republicans awarded no money.

Reading over this post again in 2019, I can report that I am repeatedly amazed at how some of the strongest jurors for the plaintiff in our focus groups are often the same people that list Donald Trump as the person they admire the most on their questionnaire. But it is not surprising. People who support Trump are often not fans of the system and liked him because he is a disrupter. They are not purely economic Republicans. So on some level, this makes sense. I don’t think I would want on the jury someone who says the person they admire most in history is Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek (or Paul Ryan, for example).

Does this mean Plaintiff personal injury lawyers should ignore information, assuming the lawyers have access, about a juror’s party affiliation? No. Despite this broad finding showing that there are no differences between Democrats and Republicans, even the study does not suggest that party affiliation is not a variable to consider. The study found that many stereotypical Republican attitudes from jurors lead to lower verdicts. But the study highlights that nuanced personal views are more helpful in projecting damage awards than mere party affiliation. Continue reading

December 11, 2008

Federal Judges Get a Bailout

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The federal judges got their own financial bailout package. Congress has tucked a judicial pay raise into the proposed $14 billion bailout for U.S. automakers. This pay raise puts judicial salaries on a par with members of Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the automaker bailout package.

I’m fine with the raise. These judges are still underpaid even with this raise. But sticking these riders on major pieces of legislation? We are just going about making laws the wrong way, right? Isn’t this the stuff the Democrats said they would stop?