Maryland Injury Law Center

October 28, 2008

Larger Verdict Because of Christmas?

October’s Chicago Lawyer contains excerpts from an interview with John L. Kirkton, the editor of the Jury Verdict Reporter for the last 17 years.

One great myth debunked by Mr. Kirkton is the theory that jurors give more around Christmas. Lawyers are always looking to schedule trials around Christmas and defense lawyers always try to avoid civil jury trials in December because they think the spirit of giving leads to more sympathetic jurors. The theory makes some anecdotal sense. Everyone seems to have just a little extra love in their hearts during the holidays.

Jury Verdict Reporter looked at reported December trials over the last four years in Cook County, Illinois, and found that the plaintiff won between 47 and 50 percent of the time. For December trials, the plaintiffs’ success rate dropped to 44%.

October 22, 2008

Exact Numbers in Personal Injury Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

David Davis, a Massachusetts based jury consultant, offers five thoughts in The Jury Expert (link since removed) on the psychology of how jurors process requests for damage awards I think interests accident and malpractice lawyers.

I found of particular interest his theory that consumers—and by implication, jurors—have a propensity to judge precise amounts of money to be lower in magnitude than similar round prices. The reason is that we use precise numbers for small amounts and round numbers for larger amounts. The example Dr. Davis provides is that a precise number like $325,425 is seen as lower than $325,000 even though obviously the former number is a higher amount.

The implication for personal injury lawyers is obvious: make a request for damages that is a specific amount and back up that amount with some logical foundation. David Ball, another jury consultant that I have relied upon an impressive deal in my damage theories, disagrees with the utility of per diem arguments. But our lawyers often use per diem arguments to come to a specific number and have had a lot of success. This does not prove the efficacy of per diem arguments, but it is hard for trial lawyers to ignore their own experiences of what is successful for them. If I noticed a correlation between wearing a red tie and successful jury verdicts, I’d faithfully keep wearing red ties.

October 14, 2008

Dog Food Case Settles: Who Won?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Los Angeles Times reports that dog and cat food companies will pay $32 million to settle lawsuits filed by pet owners whose dogs and cats died last year after eating contaminated pet food.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who loves animals more than I do. Very hard pressed. My views on this stuff are outside of mainstream opinions on the subject. So I am thrilled these pet food companies are being held accountable. Still, does anyone other than me think the only winners in this lawsuit are the plaintiffs’ lawyers who filed these lawsuits and the defense lawyers who were billed the file?

I think nothing is wrong with this. I’m just like a poet pointing this out, using a blog instead of iambic pentameter. (No? Not even close. Okay.)

October 10, 2008

The “Framing” of Personal Injury Lawyers and Tort Reform

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I just finished George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Channeling my inner Joe Biden, I loved the book; I hated the book. (2019 Update: By golly, Joe Biden is still relevant today!)

I hated the book because as much as Lakoff tried to fight it, he does too much of the “no reasonable person could think this way unless they were being manipulated” spiel. It is just too condescending and partisan for my tastes, which I think takes away from some luster of the book for me.

Tort Reform

October 7, 2008

Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund’s Finance Companies Take a Hit

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Baltimore Sun reports today that Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler ordered nine premium finance companies – companies that finance the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund premiums, which consumers are still required to pay in full – to stop charging ridiculously high finance charges. Two of these finance companies also must refund money to consumers because, incredibly, they charged interest in policies never issued. The Baltimore Sun article suggests this will save MAIF’s customers about $100 a year.

These finance companies exist because of a quirk in the law that requires MAIF to make customers pay in full for their premiums. Since most consumers cannot afford this, these drivers turn to predatory lending companies. Everyone from MAIF itself to Ralph Tyler has argued that MAIF should allow its insured drivers to pay premiums over time, like virtually all the rest of us.

Unfortunately, MAIF drivers, who typically have poor driving records and/or terrible credit histories, have no lobbyists in Annapolis. MAIF’s competitors (particularly, as this blog discusses, State Auto) and these finance companies have lobbyists, which is why this nonsense was allowed to continue. Hopefully, 2009 is the year that the Maryland legislature finally gets its act together and gets rid of this nonsense.

October 3, 2008

Personal Injury Claims Against AIG: Will They Get Paid?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I have received several calls from clients with personal injury claims against AIG fearing their claims are unprotected.

Yesterday, we got a call in one of our AIG cases. Someone from Resolute Systems called and said that AIG had given them the assignment of settling large cases. They are setting up settlement conference days in Philadelphia for some pending AIG cases. We were given November 5-6 as dates for these mediations.

I suspect AIG is looking to capitalize on the panic and induce below market settlements. I have no proof of this.

September 30, 2008

Property Damage Claims: My Dad’s Battle with Ameriprise and Thoughts on Handling Property Damage Claims Without a Lawyer

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Last year, my Dad was in an auto accident where the Defendant admittedly ran a red light. Believing in his superhuman ability to drive an automobile, he did not have collision insurance on his car.

The insurance company, which shall remain nameless (Ameriprise), denied liability claiming that my father did not react quickly enough to avoid the accident Ameriprise’s theory was that Dad is 71 years-old and therefore must have reacted too slowly to avoid the accident. What Ameriprise didn’t know is that my father was driving home from playing three grueling sets of tennis in the summer heat with me. I’ll bet money he can react better than the Ameriprise adjuster that denied the claim.

So I sent them a draft complaint and discovery in the case and they quickly changed adjusters, accepted liability, and threw in $500 for his injury claim even though he sought no medical treatment (which we never would have asked for had they paid on the property damage claim).

September 29, 2008

Ambulance Chasing Lawyers or Providing Equal Access?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The News-Democrat (St. Louis and Southwestern Illinois) has a story about accident lawyers trying to get access to car and truck accident police reports to get clients. They look through these police reports, get the names and addresses of injured people who might have a lawsuit and then write them a letter soliciting their case.

“Insurance companies can immediately contact people after an accident, and people should have the option to know what their rights are, if they want to talk to a lawyer,” said Michael Hupy, a Milwaukee accident lawyer who uses this technique to attract new clients. “Many people still think you have to pay a fee to talk to a personal injury lawyer.”

Is this ambulance chasing or, as Mr. Hupy suggests, a means of giving personal injury lawyers access equal to that of the insurance companies to accident victims?

September 27, 2008

Doctors and Lawyers and Medical Malpractice

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Overlawyered links to a post called Munchausens by Attorney. The blog, Throckmorton, is written by a doctor who says he is a “mere foot soldier stuck in the medical-legal battlefield.” I don’t know what this means, either. But it is a decent blog.

The post deserves a link because the title is so funny. (Warning: do not read the comments to the post unless you are looking to lose a few IQ points.)

But this post is about MY reaction to the blog. When I hear about a lawyer doing something awful, I think to myself, “Oh my, I hope someone catches and stops the person who does it.” I think that is the response most lawyers have. But when doctors hear about a doctor habitually committing medical malpractice, their instinct is to defend the doctor and attack the accusers (not the victims, but their medical malpractice lawyers).

September 26, 2008

Colossus and Allstate

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I received this email from a personal injury lawyer in Maryland this morning:

I have an MIA complaint involving Allstate offered the number provided by Colossus and now, of course, refuses to produce any Colossus manuals, etc. Do you have some useful Colossus materials?

I don’t. Maryland’s bad faith law is recent and it makes relevant lines of inquiry from Maryland accident lawyers that before would have been irrelevant including, as this email suggests, how Allstate values first-party uninsured or underinsured accident cases. If any lawyer out there has anything that might be of use that I could pass along, will you drop me an email?