Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog

When you prepare a client for deposition, you can prepare them for hours but it is hard to give them a feel for what the process is really like. Short of taking them to a deposition, it is hard to get someone all the way there mentally. But you have to get your clients as close as you can to understanding what is coming in as complete a way as is practicable.

I think one more thing you can do so they get idea of what the deposition questions will be is simply showing them a deposition or two so they can see the question defense counsel will pose. You have sample depositions in old cases, just redact the names or look at the sample depositions on our website.

I stumbled across some interesting data from Great Britain on a study attempting to correlate color of car and road accidents. The study found that the color (the article said ‘colour’, of course) of cars most involved in car accidents where there was an injury was black with 179 accidents per 10,000 vehicles. Next on the frequent flyer accident list was white at 160, followed by red with 157. Interestingly, one of the safest colors was green at 134. The average for all cars was 150.

Before you trade in your black vehicle (my family has two), keep in mind that black vehicles might be at the top of the list for a reason other than the fact that a black car is less conspicuous. I’ll bet that black vehicles are more sought out by younger, hipper drivers (yeah, that is us, sure).

There is a popular conception that lawsuits in car accident cases are filed directly against the insurance companies. It is easy to understand the source of the confusion. The insurance company that insured the driver or the vehicle is going to stand behind their insured and pay any claim up to the policy limit of the policy. The insurance company is also going to make the decision as to how much to offer as a settlement, not the actual defendant, who is usually kept in the dark on the entire process from initial settlement offer though the tactics the insurance company will take at trial.

Technically, in Maryland car accident lawsuits are generally filed against the defendant themselves. This technical distinction makes a difference at trial because the jury is not told there is insurance behind the case under Maryland’s collateral source rule. I remember trying a case against a defendant once where we got a good verdict ($298,000 award after a $25,000 offer before trial). When we met with the jurors after the trial, their big concern was whether there was insurance because they were concerned that the defendant – who was a pretty good guy – would have to pay the verdict themselves.

The exception to this is underinsured/uninsured motorist cases. In Maryland, claims are brought directly against the insurance company. To serve an insurance company defendant with a lawsuit in Maryland, you can serve the Maryland Insurance Administration. It looks like this: