Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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Today the Maryland Daily Record reports that the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen has rated Maryland’s physician discipline system as one of the worst in the country.

Public Citizen’s spokesman (who is also an M.D.) states that this “is troubling because it indicates many states are not living up to their obligations to protect patients from bad doctors.” Maryland is ranked 45th and has been one of the ten worst states for the past six rankings.

In rebuttal, Irving Pinder (Executive Director of the Maryland Board of Physicians) called Public Citizen’s findings flawed.

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Today the Court of Appeals of Maryland issued its opinion in Grady v. Brown. This is a case involving the application of the Boulevard Rule. The Boulevard Rule is the traffic rule that states that traffic traveling on the favored roadway (or boulevard) has the right-of-way over traffic entering the boulevard from a side street.

I have written about this before. This case happened in Baltimore City. The plaintiff was driving his motorcycle down Falkirk Road, when the defendant emerged from an intersecting alleyway. There were cars parked along both sides of Falkirk Road, and the defendant testified at trial that he exited the alleyway only to the edge of the parked cars, so he could see if there was oncoming traffic. The jury found the defendant not to be negligent.

The Plaintiff moved for a directed verdict that the defendant was negligent as a matter of law due to the application of the boulevard rule. This motion was denied, and that denial was the basis of the appeal.

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Here in Maryland, we have a procedure that allows a Plaintiff’s medical records and bills to be admitted into evidence without the testimony of a medical provider. This requires service of a list of the records to be offered at least sixty days before trial. This procedure is available in any case filed in the District Court of Maryland, or any case in a Maryland Circuit Court that is filed within the jurisdictional limit of the District Court, presently $30,000.00.

The defense also has the ability to admit a medical report using the same procedure. Often, insurance company lawyers will hire a doctor to review the medical records of the Plaintiff and other documents and then create a “peer review” report. Usually, this report says something like the plaintiff treated for an unreasonable period of time, the plaintiff’s injuries are less severe than claimed, or the medical bills are unnecessary, unreasonable, or not related to the accident.

In cases in the District Court, these reports are easy to address because judges are used to seeing them and are usually familiar with how they are created. It gets trickier when the case is to be tried before a jury (usually when the defense requests a jury trial). Here are some tips for attacking these kinds of reports in jury trials.

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The Baltimore City Circuit Court has recently announced that it has changed its scheduling and procedural requirements for motor tort cases, to require mediation in all such cases with claimed damages exceeding $20,000. Mediation will be required to be completed no later than 30 days after the discovery deadline, the court said in a release, subject to the right to request exemption from mediation within 60 days from the date of the order. If the parties engage in mediation, either party may choose to opt out of the scheduled pre-trial conference upon demonstrating that mediation was completed in accordance with the order. Motor tort cases scheduled on a Short Track Schedule – cases where damages claimed are $20,000 or less and cases forwarded from the District Court due to a jury trial prayer – will not be referred to mediation.

I’m not sure how much this will help, though. I think the success of the program depends largely on the skill and experience of the mediators. If they use experienced personal injury lawyers or defense counsel, the mediation may be valuable. If not, I expect it will be a waste of time.

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I was thinking about this topic because Monday morning I found myself in a very unusual place for a personal injury lawyer- United States Bankruptcy Court. How did I end up there?

I have an auto accident injury case pending in the Circuit Court for Charles County. I represent a plaintiff who was injured when another driver rear-ended her. During the course of litigation, it came out that the defendant had a pending bankruptcy claim.

Defense counsel filed a Suggestion of Bankruptcy in the state court case. Pursuant to federal law, that case was stayed until resolution of the bankruptcy. This would be a bad thing because it would mean that my injured plaintiff would wait more or less indefinitely to get her case moving.

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Today I had a trial in an auto accident injury case. My case was in Montgomery County District Court. It was what I call a “left turn” case. The defendant driver made a left turn across my client’s path, causing a pretty forceful collision.

The crash was bad enough that my guy wasn’t able to tell the responding paramedics where he was or what time it was. He did not know what day it was. He later suffered from nausea, believed to be from a concussion. While he was in the hospital for two days, he needed help from an occupational therapist to use the bathroom and to brush his teeth. Ultimately, he needed about a month of medical treatment. He was treated by the hospital’s attending orthopedist and got physical therapy from a therapist that the orthopedist referred him to.

The insurance carrier contested liability at trial. The defendant driver said in his interrogatory answers that my guy was contributorily negligent because he was speeding.

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I just returned to the office from the District Court for Baltimore County. I had a car accident injury case set for trial today.

I love appearing in Baltimore County because I went to high school in the area; I know pretty much everyone in the legal community there, and mostly because I get to stick my head in and say hi to my Mom, whose office is across the street. I had time to say hi to Mom today because my case settled a few minutes before the trial was to begin.

The way this went down got me thinking about the way defense counsel and insurance carriers evaluate cases for settlement. This was a 2006 accident. The suit was filed in March 2008. The carrier was Liberty Mutual.

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Recently, we have been seeing more and more problems in trying injury cases involving Maryland uninsured or underinsured motorists.

Md. Insurance Code Ann. § 19-511 states the procedures that must be followed in settling UM/UIM claims. We call it the “pay to play” statute. Basically, it says that once the liability carrier tenders a policy limits offer, the UM carrier has 60 days to decide whether to consent to acceptance of the offer. If the UM carrier says no, they have to pay the inured person the amount of the settlement offer.

Essentially, this gives the liability carrier 60 days to decide whether to waive subrogation. If they don’t waive, they have to pay the amount of the liability offer to the claimant, but the UM carrier retains its subrogation rights.

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