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Are you a local municipality looking to make a few extra bucks in this economy? Anne Arundel County has the answer: Starting next month, Anne Arundel County will reportedly start charging $500 for emergency ambulance rides.

Anne Arundel County officials note that county residents will not be personally responsible for any of the fees. Instead, the county will try to get the injured or sick person’s insurance to foot the bill. The county will not seek collection from uninsured people using these emergency services in Anne Arundel County.

The folks running the show in Annapolis are understandably pressed for cash these days (even more pressed in 2020 post-COVID). But how is Blue Cross going to feel when they find out they are paying a bill that is not being charged to people without insurance? What happens when the insurance companies get wise and deny payment?

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Sandy Waterman’s Virginia Injury Attorney Blog points out that under Virginia law, Virginia injury lawyers can mention the ad damnum amount – the amount sought by Plaintiff’s lawyer in the complaint.

The problem with this rule is that it uses accident lawyers’ form requests which usually seek as much as the law would allow to be used to create the appearance of a greedy plaintiff.   When juries see a large ad damnum clause, studies show it lower awards, reversing the anchoring effect of a large number.  The reason for this is obvious.  Jurors want reasonable parties and reasonable lawyers.  If you got out on a $50 million ledge in your Complaint, you can bet the jury will it against you if they find out about it.

Maryland accident lawyers who play it smart do not face this problem. Maryland courts have routinely granted our accident lawyers’ motion in limine to exclude the amount sought in the ad damnum clause by citing Merzbacher v. State, 346 Md. 391, 396 (Md. 1997):

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This Maryland Daily Record last month reported on a twice tragic fatal Frederick, Maryland accident case. A woman was killed by a fire truck that was responding to an emergency.

Compounding the tragedy, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Plaintiff’s maximum recovery in the case is $20,000 because the Federal Tort Claims Act allows the Plaintiff to piggyback onto a Maryland law that gives fire departments and their agents immunity “from civil liability for any act or omission in the course of performing their duties” except to the extent provided by the maximum coverage limits in Maryland of $20,000.

No reasonable person can argue that judging the negligence of a fire department must be viewed though the obvious lens: they are rushing to put out a fire. But negligence is negligence. What if the jury believed that a woman was killed because the driver was doing something that no reasonable person would do, even in response to an emergency? What if he was looking away from the road because he was in an argument with his girlfriend on his cell phone? Shouldn’t that woman’s family be entitled to an award beyond $20,000 for her death? The law is too inflexible and it provides too little trust in juries.

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Jury Verdict Research released fresh data (2001-2008) last week that showed that the median compensatory award for motor vehicle accident lawsuits in Maryland is $11,925. Accident plaintiffs receive compensation in 71 percent of cases that go to trial.

Another interesting tidbit is that rear-end collisions made up 37 percent of the total number of accident verdicts in Maryland. Intersection collisions accounted for 13 percent of Maryland accidents that went to trial. Turning collisions accounted for 9 percent and chain reaction collisions and pedestrian suits each accounted for 5 percent of the total Maryland accident lawsuits that went to verdict.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released the 2007 numbers for motorcycle fatalities and injuries. The news on the safety of motorcycles does not surprise any lawyer handling motorcycle accident cases in Maryland: it is bad and it is getting worse. Fatal motorcycle accidents rose 7% in 2007 to 5,154. Motorcyclists are 35 times – think about that – more likely to die in an accident. Motorcycle injuries have also increased, there were 103,000 reported injuries—a 15 percent increase from 2006’s 88,000 injuries. Motorcycle riders are also 8 times more likely to suffer an injury in an accident than an occupant of a car.

Our motorcycle accident lawyers have handled a lot of wrongful death motorcycle accident cases in Maryland. I cannot remember one fatal motorcycle accident we have accepted where I believed that the victim was at fault for the accident. But have I often wondered what would have happened if the victim had been in an automobile? Of course.

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Note: This post was updated in 2020 to provide more information on CPRS/RSD claims in Maryland.

The Maryland Daily Record reports that a federal court awarded less than $10,000 to a Montgomery County woman claiming permanent injuries to her arm as the result of negligence at a Gaithersburg Sam’s Club.

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The recession has created another problem for Maryland accident victims: more uninsured motorist accident lawsuits. A new study indicates that one in six drivers in the U.S. might be driving without insurance by 2010. Uninsured drivers had been declining because of sharper enforcement efforts. (In Maryland, the hammer is the FR-19 which Maryland sends out every time you leave your current insurance company.) In fact, the estimated percentage of uninsured motorists in the United States decreased to 13.8% in 2007 from 14.9% in 2003, but it’s expected to sharply increase because of the recession.

A recent study estimated the number of uninsured motorists by using a ratio of insurance claims made by people injured by uninsured drivers to claims by people injured by insured drivers. I’m not sure about the accuracy and I doubt there is an entirely linear relationship, but the theory is that an increase of 1 percent in the unemployment rate causes a nearly three-quarters of a percent increase in the uninsured motorist rate.

That sounds incredibly high, but I don’t know. In Maryland, we have never really gotten a handle on the number of Maryland uninsured drivers. A study from 1977 – sorry it is all I have – suggested the uninsured motorist rate in Maryland was 2.8%. I cannot imagine it was that low, either.

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The Baltimore Examiner reports that Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell will suggest that judges give up five days of leave as a way of helping address Maryland’s budget crisis. Bell has scheduled a hearing tomorrow to propose taking away five of the 27 days of leave state judges will receive in 2009.

The full Maryland Court of Appeals is expected to vote on this issue. Judge Bell’s flip flop on this issue – he originally opposed the plan – underscores the increasing appreciation for the severe budgetary constraints facing Governor Martin O’Malley.

Twenty-seven days is a stunning about of leave for those of us in the private sector. There are not too many Maryland accident lawyers taking more than 5 weeks of vacation. But you have to remember that judges are being paid a lot less than they would be in the private sector, so allowing them perks like this is probably more than a fair tradeoff for Maryland taxpayers.