Maryland Injury Law Center

June 16, 2007

Roy Pearson’s Lawsuit Against His Dry Cleaner Has the Attention of the Country

This week has been an all-time record for traffic on the Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog. Is this because of lawyers needing to know my thoughts on the nuances of handling personal injury cases? No. [EDITOR’S UPDATE: There is a verdict: click here for a blog post on this case’s VERDICT.]

For those of you just tuning in to this nonsense, Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson is suing his dry cleaner for millions of dollars after they lost his pants. On the stand this week, Judge Pearson — I tried, I can’t do it — Mr. Pearson cried on the stand as he recalled the horror of losing the pants from his precious blue and maroon suit.

Mr. Pearson claims to have owned exactly five suits, all Hickey Freemans which do not come cheap, one for each day of the work week. But after putting on a few pounds, his suit rotation system crashed when he picked up his newly altered suits from the dry cleaner and could not find one pair of pants.

June 11, 2007

Medical Errors in Pediatric Chemotherapy

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

This is one of the more depressing reports on medical malpractice that you will read. A recent study from Johns Hopkins has found that hospital staff members do not spot the vast majority of errors in pediatric chemotherapy until they have affected the child. According to the study, doctors and other health care providers failed to identify errors in dosage or administration of drugs 85 percent of the time. The figures drastically underestimate the number of errors in treating these sick children. But this does not mean that the child is not impacted by these medical mistakes. Many complications are never attributed back to chemotherapy because the child is so sick and at risk for so many complications.

Chemotherapy patients are vulnerable to these medical mistakes because there is no usual dose. The amount of chemotherapy received usually depends on body weight. Body sizes affect pediatric dosages. Chemotherapy exacerbates the problem because it is practically poison. Coming from someone who has taken chemotherapy, it is poison. For example, if you take three times the amount of OxyContin, you will sleep a little longer than you like, but no actual harm occurs. With chemo, this margin of error does not exist.

The Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer blog specifically avoids being trite or preachy. But let’s put that aside, just for today. Doctors and other health care providers have to be more careful in treating some of the sickest and our most innocent patients.

May 23, 2007

The Value of Personal Injury Cases: A Jurisdictional Comparison

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

In the last couple of weeks, I have has put out a lot of data on compensation awards in medical malpractice cases and in auto and truck accident cases. In my research on these posts, I found some other data comparing different states’ verdicts. I thought it was interesting for lawyers in different jurisdictions to compare verdicts:

New York ……….. $275,000

South Dakota ….. $120,913

May 22, 2007

Medical Malpractice Study on Medical Errors

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

A recent study by the “Journal of General Internal Medicine” found that doctors are loath to admit medical mistakes. Virtually every doctor in the study of 538 doctors surveyed – 97 percent – agreed that they would report a theoretical medical error. But only 41 percent said they had disclosed a minor medical error they made.

Half the doctors surveyed believe they have never made even a minor medical mistake. “It seems fair to assume that all of us have made at least a minor error, if not a major error, sometime in our careers,” Dr. Lauris Kaldjian, a University of Iowa professor of internal medicine said, stating the obvious to the Kansas City Star.

This study conjures up memories of the doctor Alec Baldwin’s character Jed Hill pretended to be in the movie “Malice”. Do this many doctors really believe they have never made even a minor mistake in their entire careers?

May 21, 2007

Personal Injury Protection (PIP) Battle in Florida

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Daily Business Review last week wrote an unbelievable article about a battle between an insurance company and its policyholders. This has been the landscape since Chinese and Babylonian traders started issuing insurance about two thousand years ago. But, in this story, the insurance company has expanded its war to include Florida judges.

United Automobile Insurance Company’s lawyers are seeking to remove a Florida judge from all Personal Injury Protection (PIP) accident cases involving the insurance company, citing the judge’s alleged bias.

The Florida-based carrier’s attorneys have moved to disqualify Broward County Court Judge Jay from “any and all cases involving United Automobile Insurance Company as a litigant.” United alleges that Judge Spechler routinely displays “pre-disposition, prejudice and bias” against its attorneys. In an interview, Judge Spechler, who has served on the bench for 19 years, estimated that, incredibly, two-thirds of his cases are PIP disputes with this insurance company.

May 18, 2007

Baltimore City Shoulder Dystocia Verdict

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

[I updated this post in 2020 with Baltimore-area shoulder dystocia verdicts and settlements at the bottom of this post.]

A Baltimore jury yesterday found a doctor responsible for the brain injury and death in 2003 in a shoulder dystocia case and awarded the child’s parents $8.1 million. The damages are limited to just over $2.1 million under Maryland law putting a cap on awards for pain and suffering.

During the delivery of the child at Mercy Hospital, the child’s shoulders became stuck in the birth canal. This condition, known as shoulder dystocia, occurs when the child’s head can clear but the shoulders require additional medical maneuvers for the child to be delivered. In shoulder dystocia cases, one shoulder of the baby usually is trapped behind the mother’s pelvis, obstructing the baby’s breathing. It is hard to conjure up a more horrific case. This Baltimore jury that heard all the evidence in this medical malpractice case determined the damages at $8.1 million. Why do we have a law in Maryland that only awards these Plaintiffs about one-fourth of what the jury believed was appropriate?

May 14, 2007

Wrongful Death Auto and Truck Accident Verdicts and Settlements in Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC: How Much Are the Recoveries?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

According to Metro Verdicts Monthly, the median motor vehicle accident wrongful death case in Maryland is worth $505,000.

This is interesting information. What does this data tell us? Not much. Why? The motor vehicle accident data has little probative value because it does not include the amount of the insurance policy at issue. We have settled fatal accident claims for $20,000 where that is all the insurance, and the defendant had no meaningful assets.

Uninsured motorist cases also bring down the median and average values because plaintiffs’ attorneys are overly reasonable in requesting damages because the plaintiff is often limited in the damages they can recover.

May 7, 2007

$1 Million Brachial Plexus Settlement – Is This a Lot of Money?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Virginia Lawyers Weekly reports today on a $1,000,000 settlement in a medical malpractice Erb’s palsy case. The interesting thing about this case is that the injuries occurred during a cesarean section. The father of the child claimed he witnessed the obstetrician applying excessive force to the fetal head after the baby’s shoulder did not clear. Plaintiff’s expert testified the doctor failed to make the incision large enough to extract the baby’s head and then inappropriately applied traction to the baby’s still entrapped head. Fortunately, the doctor promptly diagnosed the child with a brachial plexus injury confined to the child’s neck (at C5/C6). After surgery, the child has a good prognosis for a functional arm and hand.

Shoulder dystocia cases are not rare but this is the first case I have seen or read about where the OB/GYN’s malpractice was failing to make a large enough C-section incision. There are many claims that involve failing to provide a c-section.

These injuries occur with babies that are much larger than typical or, as is frequently the case when the mother has diagnosed or undiagnosed gestational diabetes (or is just a diabetic). The big thing with this problem is seeing the problem before it manifests itself.

May 3, 2007

Protecting the Injury Victim During Deposition

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Goal number one when your client is giving a deposition is to do no harm.

The greatest harm your client can do in almost any personal injury case in his/her deposition is to get caught in a lie. Clients are most prone to “lie” about prior car accidents because they genuinely do not remember them. But a smart insurance company lawyer may turn an innocent failure to recall into a litmus test on the client’s credibility. As much as we as personal injury lawyers like to make the cases about ourselves – particularly when we get a great verdict, we all do it – the importance of our credibility/likability is a distant second to the importance to that of our client.

How can you solve the problem? Obviously, a good attorney spends time before the deposition discussing the issue with the client, explaining in very direct terms that prior medical history or claims history will be uncovered by any competent defense attorney or adjuster with access to a computer and/or the medical records. But, again, in some circumstances, the client may not remember whether they were injured on the job or made a claim for a car accident in which it involved them.

April 27, 2007

Medical Malpractice Study

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

A recent study found that juries are more likely to side with doctors in medical malpractice cases. The study showed that juries are skeptical of people and their lawyers who sue their doctors and that most medical malpractice trials result in a verdict for the medical doctors. (See yesterday’s Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog post for one more reason they may be skeptical.)

The author of the study, Philip Peters Jr., of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, concluded that juries treat doctors favorably, “perhaps unfairly so,” and are more likely than even fellow physicians to defer to a doctor’s opinion.

Peters found that most medical malpractice rulings are in favor of the health care provider and that the cases that go to trial are the weakest ones since those with sound evidence usually settle before trial. In an examination of win rates in New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan, Peters found that 27% to 30% of medical malpractice suits end in a plaintiff’s verdict, the lowest success rate of any tort litigation. In Maryland, the number is reportedly 8%.