Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog

The Auto Negligence Section of the Maryland Assocation for Justice is putting on a seminar for Maryland accident lawyers on January 7, 2009. The speaker will be Miller & Zois' Rod Gaston on the topic of defense medical examinations.

The dinner meeting is at:

That’s Amore Restaurant
10400 Little Patuxent Pkwy.
Columbia, Maryland 21044

Rod has spend a ton of time dealing with the numerous issues concerning Defense Medical Examinations. He will discuss what to do when defense counsel proposes or unilaterally schedules an examination of your client or files a motion for a physical examination. You will receive sample correspondence and motions designed to address the terms and conditions of the physical examination. He will show you how to limit the scope of the medical examination, how to obtain discovery from the doctor including the doctor's financial records for impeachment purposes. Course attendees will receive an overview of Maryland Rule 2-423 and all relevant case law dealing with requests for physical examinations including the citations to the rules and list of cases. Sample correspondence, subpoenas, motions, responses to defense motions, other pleadings and court orders relating to these examinations along with selected financial records from defense "hired-guns" will be provided. Learn which judges in the various venues are our friends in this arena - and which are not. Also learn what to do when the defendant's "hired-gun" takes an immediate appeal from the order requiring disclosure of his/her financial records. This program will not be recorded nor videotaped and only those attending will receive the written hand-out materials.

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The Baltimore Examiner reports that Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell will suggest that judges give up five days of leave as a way of helping address Maryland's budget crisis. Bell has scheduled a hearing on tomorrow to propose taking away five of the 27 days of leave state judges will receive in 2009.

The full Maryland Court of Appeals is expected to vote on this issue. Judge Bell's flip flop on this issue - he originally opposed the plan - underscores the increasing apprecation for the severe budgetary constaints facing Governor Martin O’Malley.

Twenty-seven days is a stunning about of leave for those of us in the private sector. There are not too many Maryland accident lawyers taking more than 5 weeks of vacation. But you have to remember that judges are being paid a lot less than they would be in the private sector so allowing them perks like this is probably more than a fair trade off for Maryland taxpayers.

Click on the link for Maryland's monthly and weekly Maryland Workers’ Compensation schedules.

Our lawyers handle Maryland workers compensation cases where there is a significant injury or death with a potentially culpable third party.

The New York Times reports on a new World Health Organization and UNICEF report that found that childhood accidents account for approximately 830,000 deaths annually around the world. Just an incredible statistic. Injury accidents are to blame for 40% of childhood deaths in developing countries. Car crashes were the leading cause of death for children under 5. A lens to how needless these deaths are: 5,000 children die from drinking the kerosene their parents use for cooking, a problem easily remedied with childproof caps.

Obviously, the United States is not immune, either. A CDC study released in conjunction with this report determined that accidents kill more than 12,000 children in the United States each year.

The problem internationally is obviously harder for us to solve. Domestically, the CDC suggests three things: (1) graduated driver’s license laws, forbidding teenagers to drive at night or with teenage passengers (which may be a bit of a mixed bag), (2) to enforce seat-belt laws on teenagers, and (3) laws requiring children younger than 8 years-old to ride in booster seats.

Sometimes, statistics are so overwhelming we chose to ignore them.

A U.S. District Court in Akron, Ohio upheld the a traffic camera law in Cinncinnati, ruling that the law's ability to impose a $100 fine was a civil penalty permitted under the U.S. Constitution.
The Plaintiff, a lawyer and former city councilman, is not done. He intends to challenge the case in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

In Maryland, red light and radar cameras and growing Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Howard County, Baltimore City, Montgomery County, and Bel Air (Hartford County).

Personally, as a Maryland accident lawyer who has seen up close the harm that can come from speeding and running red lights, I hope the Plaintiff's appeal fails. I think red light cameras, unmanned radar and all of these other "Big Brother" devices save lives. Is there some privacy intrusion? Yes, I guess. But it is relatively insignificant and, to me at least, well worth it if it saves a single life.

For more on this story, click here.

A Washington County woman died at University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore from injuries in an accident on Friday she sustained in a two-vehicle accident in Cascade. Apparently, the woman left a bar in Cascade and drove off after a pickup truck driven by a man she had a argument with in the bar. I am assuming they were or had been in a relationship, I don't know.

Anger and cars do not mix and alcohol and cars also do not mix. When you throw them all in together, the likelihood of a tragic outcome rises exponentially.

You can read an article on this tragedy from a Hagerstown local newspaper here. Note I'm assuming there was alcohol involved to some degree because they were at a bar but that is an assumption.