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…
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…
How can you make your way to jail if you kill (or nearly kill) someone on a Maryland road? A Fort Washington man who nearly killed two people was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail and a year of house arrest. The key is being drunk. Otherwise, Maryland law…
The obvious safety benefits of black boxes in cars should culminate in a decision by the feds by the end of the year to make black box data recorders mandatory in new cars. Long term, this will decrease business for car accident lawyers because universal black boxes will give manufacturers…
The hardest car accident cases to try are he said/she said accidents where there are not natural facts that make one version more likely than another. The classic example of this scenario is lane change/merger accidents. Which car came over into which lane? Even a good accident reconstructionist struggles to…
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…
Accident Analysis and Prevention published a study of 800 car accidents involving teen drivers and tried to find the common treads: 21%:failure to see what is there to be seen 21% driving too fast 20% distracted driving (text messaging is no small culprit)
Paramount Insurance is a MAIF type insurance company in every way that matters to a Maryland accident lawyer. Honestly, it might be worse.
Jury Verdict Research did a study that found that the average money damages verdict in a car/truck accident case brought by the passenger is $486,098. It sounds like a lot, but high (and maybe uncollectable) verdicts distort the average. The median passenger verdict is $30,000. Here is where it gets…
Defendants in car accident cases frequently look to pass the buck of responsibility, usually claiming the injury victim caused or contributed to the car accident. In some cases, the facts are such that the idea of such an allegation would fall flat before it even began. In these cases, when…