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In Darby v. Marley Cooling, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals considered the question of whether an employee that prevailed before the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission may file an “intent to participate” in a Circuit Court appeal and raise objection to the rest of the Commission’s decision or whether the employee is required to file a cross appeal.

This does not sound like a particularly serious workplace accident case although the Plaintiff was struck on the head by a 24′ by 12″ by 6″ aluminum board used as a temporary work surface, which was dropped by a co-worker. He did not have significant head injuries and returned to work on the day of the accident. Plaintiff had tenderness at the C2 through C7 vertebra. Plaintiff took a trapezius bilateral test that was positive for pain, and x-rays showed a straightening and loss of the anterior cervical lordosis (a finding that is often insignificant).

Plaintiff prevailed before the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission and the employer appealed to the Baltimore County Circuit Court.

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We received a letter from the Baltimore City police department indicating that they are now EMAILING police reports. Baltimore accident lawyers must still send a written letter and a check requesting the report but in the letter you may request the report to be emailed back instead of mailed.

This is one huge step forward in bringing the logics of collecting records in Baltimore accident cases in 2010.

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What can a client say to make a Maryland accident lawyer’s shoulders’ droop? Lots of things, of course. One of those things is certainly “I have Medicare.”

A Medicare lien is more than a lien, actually. It is a superlien. That word sounds made up, but that is exactly what a Medicare lien is. More than just a right of subrogation, the superlien allows Medicare to seek reimbursement directly from the provider. (Medicare rarely choses that route.)

A superlien is also paramount in another way that is important to accident lawyers: Medicare can get the money if it is stiffed from the accident lawyer personally. So lawyers who ignore Medicare liens literally do so at their own peril. Moreover, there is a clear obligation to notify Medicare if they don’t know of the potential recovery from a third party.

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There is a popular conception that lawsuits in car accident cases are filed directly against the insurance companies. It is easy to understand the source of the confusion. The insurance company that insured the driver of the vehicle will stand behind their insured and pay any claim up to the policy limit of the policy. The insurance company will also decide how much to offer as a settlement, not the actual defendant, who is usually kept in the dark on the entire process from initial settlement offer through the tactics the insurance company will take at trial.

Technically, in Maryland car accident lawsuits are generally filed against the defendant themselves. This technical distinction makes a difference at trial because the jury is not told there is insurance behind the case under Maryland’s collateral source rule. I remember trying a case against a defendant once where we got a good verdict ($298,000 award after a $25,000 offer before trial). When we met with the jurors after the trial, their big concern was whether there was insurance because they were concerned that the defendant—who was a pretty good guy—would have to pay the verdict themselves.

The exception to this is underinsured/uninsured motorist cases. In Maryland, claims are brought directly against the insurance company. To serve an insurance company defendant with a lawsuit in Maryland, you can serve the Maryland Insurance Administration. It looks like this:

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“Jury awards $89 million against drunk driver for fatal crash,” was the headline of a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article. What do 99% of the people exposed to this article now believe? Someone just got a huge verdict. But his was a one day trial and the likelihood of the Plaintiffs collecting a penny approaches zero. The article does not say the case was even defended by a lawyer.

I think it is great that the victim’s family gets some measure of pleasure from the verdict. The man killed in the accident was returning from a shopping mall where they had registered for gifts for their upcoming wedding. His fiancee was pregnant. The defendant was drunk out of his mind. Awful facts.

Selfishly and for my clients, I think there is a benefit when future jurors here big numbers. It makes the numbers our lawyers usually ask juries for to be far more reasonable. Still, I worry about the impact on jurors who see an article like this and assume that jackpot justice is what we have in personal injury cases. Because far more people are getting big verdicts like this than are collecting big verdicts like this very large verdict in Missouri.

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A head-on truck accident is a type of motor vehicle accident that occurs when a truck hits a vehicle traveling in opposite directions, and they collide directly into each other. When a head-on truck accident happens, the consequences can be devastating, as the impact is usually severe due to the size and weight of the trucks involved.

The most severe car or truck accident is a head-on collision. You would expect settlement amounts and jury payouts to reflect this.

A recent Jury Verdict Research study found that 79% of plaintiffs involved in a head-on truck accident—defined as a truck accident where at least one of the vehicles traveled across the centerline, with a truck causing the damages—received a damage award.

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The magazine Money last month reported that $1.2 million is the average verdict in personal injury suits.

I think the average personal injury verdict is less than $1 million. Even so, this is an incredibly misleading number because this includes very large verdicts, many of which are not collectible because of financial limitation of the defendant or because of caps on damages.

Still, the advice offered in the article is good advice:

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If this blog is named Maryland Accident Lawyer, why are our lawyers talking about car accident cases in Atlanta? We are based in Maryland, not Atlanta. Our car accident cases will always be predominantly from Maryland. But we have a lawyer who is a member of the bar in Georgia and we are looking to expand our practice to be competitive nationally.

To be honest, our lawyers are not looking for soft tissue injury car accident cases in Atlanta. If you call with one of those, we are most likely going to refer you to a local Atlanta car accident lawyer who is qualified to handle your claim.

We are looking to get involved with clients who have extremely serious injuries from a car accident in the Atlanta area. Actually, we are looking at the entire state of Georgia, but certainly, the bulk of the serious injury cases will come from the greater Atlanta area, which also has jury pools more conducive to large jury verdicts. We handled birth injury cases not just in Georgia but in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

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When a car accident lawyer hears from a client that “the accident caused my bulging disc,” it is unlikely that is medically accurate. But that does not mean that there cannot be a meaningful settlement or verdict at trial. Let me explain.

Many of us have bulging discs. Unlike a herniated disc, most bulging discs are not as the result of trauma. But, clearly, trauma can exacerbate a bulging disc that is otherwise dormant and has not caused any symptoms. Under Maryland accident law, the defendant is obligated to pay for the net harm caused by the accident.

This Maryland law that protects the vulnerable is reflected in Maryland pattern jury instruction 10:3:

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In the late 90s, Europeans figured out that thousands of fatal truck accidents occur every year as the result of head-on collisions between cars and large trucks. The EU did something about it and required European truck builders (Volvo, Renault, Scania, and Mercedes-Benz) to develop a front underride bar connected to the bumper and the chassis to prevent the underride effect in truck accidents. Our country, regrettably, has done nothing to impose the same requirements here in the United States.