When it comes to bringing in revenue and making headlines, law firms do a hell of job. The biggest ones bring in millions, even billions of dollars. They argue before the Supreme Court. They help shape global economies.
When it comes to designing websites, though, these firms are clueless. These are the folks who often charge upwards of $1000 per hour for their services, and yet their websites look like the work of some cut-rate freelance designers.
Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving although the recommendation is not, as it probably should be, for hands-free phones (or passengers). Maryland already had passed a similar law.
This recommendation underscores that the federal government is growing increasingly concerned by statistics that show cell phones are killing people in massive numbers. What would have been more impressive is asking for a ban on cell phones for drivers. Period. But regardless of the death toll, that is not in the political cards, at least not now.
In Carr v. Cinnamon, a California appellate court applied the same rule we have here in Maryland: the finder of fact can award whatever they want for noneconomic damages, including zero even when it seems preposterous that a person could suffer medical bills and have no pain and suffering.
Plaintiff's premises liability lawsuit alleged that her leg fell through the floor of a patio on defendant's property. The jury found the defendant partially responsible and awarded a whopping $6,207.08 with no damages for pain and suffering. Improbably, Plaintiff's attorney appealed, arguing that the damages award was inadequate as a matter of law and the trial court should have awarded damages (additur) or awarded a new trial.
The appellate court disagreed, finding juries can essentially do whatever they want. One thing is for sure: this jury was not a big fan of this plaintiff.
You can find the opinion here.
The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a $10 million verdict awarded to a truck driver who slipped and fell on grease while making a delivery to Walmart, resulting in a back injury requiring multiple spinal surgeries.
The Colorado Supreme Court reversed a lower court's determination that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was entitled to a new trial. The female truck driver incurred approximately
$500,000 in medical bills, and was unable to return to work after the fall. As such, her truck, in which she also lived, was repossessed.
The award, originally $15 million, was reduced by $5 million due to the state's cap on noneconomic damages, making this one of the highest judgments ever in a slip-and-fall case.
A wrongful death suit has been filed in Utah, stemming from a horrific boating accident.
The facts here are rather unbelievable. The suit contends that the driver of a boat negligently struck the decedent while she was swimming, causing critical injuries, as the propeller "tore" into her torso and lower abdomen. It gets worse from here. According to witnesses, after striking the swimmer, the boat turned around and the boat's occupants were overheard calling to the woman. They were heard yelling, "Hey lady, are you all right?" The witnesses said that the defendants talked to the decedent, but did not offer aide and left the scene, leaving her in the water bleeding and severely injured.
In addition to five John Does, three men were named in the suit, claiming that the men failed their "duty" to use "reasonable care" to avoid an accident. The suit further claims that the power boat was operated in a negligent and reckless manner. The driver and at least one other occupant had smoked marijuana prior to the accident, and at least three of the occupants had been drinking alcohol.
The lawsuit goes on to state that the Defendants' acts and omissions "were the result of willful and malicious conduct or conduct that manifests a knowing and reckless indifference toward, and a disregard of the rights of others." I’m not quite sure if being “under the influence” had anything to do with their choice to leave the scene without rendering assistance, but one could only hope that was not the case. I can’t imagine that an individual, let alone eight, could leave a woman struggling for her life, while they tore off hoping not to have been noticed – something rather difficult to do in a speed boat.
No criminal charges have been filed against the three men yet, as investigators were waiting for the results of forensic testing.
According to the National Safety Council, a person's risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident is 1 in 88. The risk of being killed by lightning is roughly 1 in 84,000. The risk of being killed in a fireworks discharge is about 1 in 386,000.
A tow truck driver was struck and killed this morning by a hit-and-run driver on Route 100 in Glen Burnie during rush hour. He got killed near where I work. He lives in the same town I do.
Certainly, there is a desire for all of us to sigh a bit of relief and say, "Okay, I would not be helping a sewage truck on the side of the road. That couldn't have been me." But have you ever been pulled over on the side of the road. Of course you have. This could have happened to you, me or any one of us.
The next step is to find creative ways to blame the victim. Why was he so close to the road? Shouldn't he have seen it coming? We all have this attribution bias, to varying extents. When you peel that away, what you have is a poor guy who was probably trying to feed his family and while doing so died for no good reason.
Just awful.
The Baltimore Sun reports today on the tragic death of a Glen Burnie man who died after a car accident with an SUV being driven by an unsupervised teenager on a learner's permit. Apparently the at-fault driver, a nineteen year old who lived in Millersville, was driving on her learner's permit with another 19 year-old.
This is the 19th fatal car accident in Anne Arundel County this year. Not every story gets a lot of attention. The angle the media is taking on this one is that the supervising driver was not old enough.
Easy narrative but I doubt it would have made a difference here. Police said they had no evidence that drugs, alcohol or speeding contributed to the crash. Some people just don't pay attention to where they are going. When this happens, people can die. If my mother and her spotless 50 year driving record had been in the car seat next to this young girl, I doubt it would have made much of a difference. The scary reality is what happened to this man could have happened to your kids or mine if they were in the same place at the same time in Crofton as this man tragically was on Sunday.
Ultimately, the best protection from this type of stupidity is the safest car possible. Which leads to a very inconvenient truth: as awful as big cars are on our environment, they probably do save lives.
The game show "Cash Cab" is a cute game show. I used to watch it back when I watched "Blind Date." The show's premise revolves around the driver playing a quiz show host to his passengers. By definition, that guy is a distracted driver.
CNN now reports that the "Cash Cab" struck and killed an elderly pedestrian in Vancouver. (Apparently, the show has a Canadian version.) The driver, a producer of the show, was returning the car to a storage facility after filming finished for the day when he hit the 61-year-old who died at a local hospital from the injuries suffered in the car/pedestrian accident.
I guess more details about this accidental death will come out. It sounds like my narrative may be false: it might not have been during filming when you would think the driver would be most distracted. But, ultimately, doesn't "Cash Cab" have an "oh, when we were so young and naive" vibe to it? Now we know with greater lucidity in the cell phone/text messaging era that distracted driving kills. "Cash Cab" really should change to a safer premise - the driver of the cash cab is just the driver - or they should kill the show.
Last week, I opined that you pretty much have to be drunk to face jail time after killing someone on the road. I saw a story today that reminded me that I left something out. An Indianapolis woman whose car struck and killed a police officer will certainly spend time in prison?
Right? Sort of. This woman in Indiana pled guilty to failure to stop after an accident resulting in death. She bolted to save herself. In a pathetic attempt to defend her, it is fair to point out that she did see that the victim was receiving assistance. Still, she ran.
So what is the sentence for this wrongful death? Four years on electronic home detention (assuming the judge accepts the terms of a plea agreement).
The woman is 62. I get that. Still. I'm no "lock them behind bars" preacher but it still seems like there is a disconnect between killing someone and fleeing and being forced to watch Judge Judy all day.
The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog has listed Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog in the #2 spot for Maryland attorney blogs.
The fact that (1) my partner made the list, and (2) the list is not intended to be in order, does not diminish my accomplishment.
On the arguably more objective Avvo Blog Rankings (which use Alexa rankings), the Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog is 94th nationally.
A plaintiffs' lawyer in Chicago has filed a ridiculous misguided wrongful death lawsuit blaming Facebook for a driver's failure to pay proper attention to the road, causing her to hit a 70 year-old pedestrian who was on the side of the road after being involved in a minor traffic accident.
On liability, the Plaintiffs have a good smoking gun. Assuming the facts in the lawsuit are true, the Defendant driver updated her Facebook page at 7:54 a.m., the same time that the decedent made a 9-1-1 call for help
This is great evidence against the Defendant driver. But, clearly, Facebook is no more to blame than a radio station playing bad music, causing a driver to divert their attention to turning the station.
One thing I have noticed lately is how many injury victims are looking for a female malpractice or accident lawyer. I think some people - almost invariably women - are more comfortable with a female personal injury lawyer. There are times, particularly on sensitive issues such as pain and suffering from an accident, when women prefer to share, confide and trust in another woman.
Women are graduating from law school in massive numbers. But, for whatever reason, few women are becoming malpractice or accident lawyers.
If you are looking for a female personal injury lawyer or just want to discuss your case, call me at 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line consultation and ask specifically to deal with me.
After a deposition in a Maryland accident case, parties have the right to review and make changes to their deposition testimony. The court reporter sometimes makes mistakes, the witness sometimes talks too fast to be clearly understood, or the witness just got it wrong. It most accident cases, when a witness says the car was going north, there is a 50% probability the witness meant south.
But here is one for the ages. In a Florida case, the witness' errata sheet was 63 pages long and included 868 changes to her deposition.
The South Florida Lawyers have a good blog post on the case and the sanctions imposed against the Plaintiff's lawyers that total nearly $400,000.
The CDC reports that Maryland is 9th in the nation in the percentage of people who report they always wear a seat belt. Oregon is first which is surprising because the study also found that seat belt use among rural drivers is much lower than usage in urban and suburban areas. So whatever Oregon is doing, we should be copying them. Ninth is not bad but why can't Maryland be first? Couldn't someone start some sort of campaign? Nothing like competition to bring about the best results. The fact that seat belts reduce car accident deaths is underscored by this study: seat belts reduce the risk of death in car accidents by 45-50%.
Wearing a seat belt may become more and more important if oil prices continue to rise. Oil prices so far have not led Americans to buy more fuel efficient but less safe vehicles. Oil is now at $93 a barrel. If it goes to $150, as some have predicted, we are going to see $5 to $6 per gallon at the pump and it is going to cause people to buy smaller cars. If cars are going to get smaller, they need to build safer small cars and we need to improve our driving habits or the recent improvements in the number of car crash fatalities are going to diminish.
Another interesting finding from the study is that seat belt compliance is significantly higher among women, older drivers and Hispanics.
You can now follow the Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog on Twitter. Many if not most of you would follow this blog to the end of the earth. The least you can do is follow us on Twitter!
Our hope is to make this a useful and intresting Twitter page for personal injury accident lawyer in Maryland to supplement the blog. Sometimes, I have thoughts that are just not enough for a blog post.
The New Mexico Supreme Court came out with an interesting opinion in a very complicated case involving an Allstate lawyer's attempt to get a recovery against Allstate for the future money Allstate would have paid her as its attorney. Huh? It gets crazier than that, this is actually the fifth written opinion on this case. Incredibly, the lawyer got a $1.8 million recovery against Allstate from a jury. But, alas, the New Mexico high court says not so fast (fast being relative, these events started 13 years ago).
It is too much to summarize but you can find the opinion here.
Allstate does not like plaintiffs seeking compensation for their injuries. Unless, of course, Allstate is the plaintiff seeking compensation for its injuries. Accordingly, Allstate has filed suit against Toyota for compensation for payments it has made for accident and injury claims caused by the now infamous unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.
Do I blame Allstate for filing a lawsuit when it thinks it has a claim? Of course not. In fact, the claim is ironically very creative. But I think Allstate has a world view that we need less creative lawsuits... unless it has one to bring.
Can you get a ticket for keeping on the tail lights Pontiac puts on in the factory? According to this blogger, a Maryland judge says yes.
The story sounds incredibly bizarre, including a report that the judge suggested the car be sold because this Pontiac does not comply with Maryland law.
There is no way to verify these types of Internet stories. Maybe it is more fun that way.
There are so many perils in dealing with claims against local governments. The law is against you from the start by cutting the statute of limitations and in the end by often limiting the amount of your recovery. Then there is the pain that comes from dealing with claims adjusters for the state who often seem to have no interest in what the trial value of a case may be.
This case highlights a final concern: getting approval from the local municipality, or whoever else, for settlement authority. It is like dealing with an insurance company times 1,000. Here, everyone agrees the case should settle... except the municipality.
