If you drove to a New Year’s Party in Utah on Monday and had a few drinks, the risk of getting arrested for drug driving increased dramatically. On Saturday (December 30th) Utah lowered its legal blood-alcohol content (BAC) limit from 0.08 to 0.05. This gives Utah the strictest DUI laws…
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…
In the real world, people have damage to their cars that they would just rather not get fixed. They would rather pocket the insurance money and drive around with a big dent in their car. If there was a liability dispute, it has been hard to pull this off in…
Two weeks ago, I wrote a post explaining what car insurance special investigations units (SIU) do and their purpose. Today, I stumbled across a new opinion that went up to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The basis for the lawsuit seems that the plaintiffs were annoyed that Progressive Insurance…
In Dunbar v. State Farm, a federal judge in Oklahoma granted summary judgment to State Farm in what was really a silly bad faith case. This case involved a pedestrian accident where somebody backed out of their driveway and hit someone. USAA tendered, albeit slowly, its $100,000 limits for the…
In accident cases, our lawyers make sure we know what expert testimony defendants are will see at trial. One weapon in our discovery arsenal is a good expert interrogatory. Identify any and all experts you intend to call as witnesses, and whose reports you intend to mention and/or introduce at…
I wrote a blog post this morning on the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog about the Maryland Court of Special Appeals’ opinion in Tollenger v. State. Plaintiff’s got a reversal of a summary judgment entry to the State of Maryland in a wrongful death claim that involved the failure to erect…
Last October, a little known new law with a catchy name – the “Move Over Law” – went into effect in Maryland. The law tries to deal with a problem that won’t go away: the safety risk in emergency situations to police, fire, emergency medical services personnel, and, not insignificantly,…
Should traffic ticket guilty pleas be admissible in a civil case? Most courts, including Maryland, believe that it is unfair to defendants in civil cases to allow traffic ticket guilty pleas to hover over an accident case because tickets are – for better or worse – not a big deal…
A while back, I wrote about the issue of what the punishment should be in Maryland fatal accident cases where there are no aggravating factors (almost always alcohol) but still someone dies because someone just was not paying attention. Should this mean prison? Is the pain of killing someone enough…