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Yesterday I received an order from the Court of Appeals of Maryland scheduling oral argument in two cases I am handling. Really, it is one argument, but relates to two cases that have been consolidated on appeal.

The first case is a case my colleague Rod Gaston had for trial in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. The defendants named a neurosurgeon as an expert witness. Rod obtained an order compelling him to produce certain financial records in an effort to find out how much he is paid for testifying in general, and for the defense attorneys, defense law firms and insurance companies involved in the case specifically. The doctor has appealed that order.

The second case is a truck accident case I am handling in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. That case has been stayed in the trial court pending the outcome of the appeal. There, the trial court entered a similar order, only with a strong confidentiality provision protecting the privacy of the records to be produced. The doctor has appealed that order as well.

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Last week, I argued an appeal in a truck accident case. I was in the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, which is our state’s intermediate appellate court. My case was fourth in line on the day’s docket. That meant I got to (was forced to) sit through the argument on the cases ahead of mine.

The other arguments ran the gamut from abominable to excellent and featured a range of attorneys from young lawyers to experienced appellate advocates.

One thing I saw some of these other lawyers do was to address the questioning judges by name. For example, “Great question, Judge Hollander.” Actually, my example violates two rules of appellate argument. Never tell a judge they asked a great question. Presumably, they also thought it was a good question, or they would have remained silent.

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The Baltimore Sun’s Peter Hermann reports about a criminal case in Baltimore City that raises questions about juror disclosure and impartiality.

Apparently, this particular case ended in a mistrial because one juror was holding out for an acquittal. After the mistrial was declared, prosecutors learned that the holdout juror was employed as a lawyer by the Office of the Public Defender.

The prosecutors are mad because this juror merely listed her occupation as “attorney.” They think she had some sort of obligation to disclose who she worked for during the jury selection process.

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I just finished a two-day jury trial in the Circuit Court for Cecil County. Based solely on the preceding sentence, any experienced Maryland personal injury lawyers reading this probably have an idea where this post is going.

I was trying one of the most difficult types of cases to present to a jury. A rear-end collision with no visible damage to the vehicles involved, allegations of a fairly serious injury, and venue in a rural, conservative county with a (well-deserved) reputation for not being plaintiff-friendly.

The defendant driver claimed that she merely took her foot off her brake pedal a little too early while stopped at a traffic signal and drifted into the back of my client’s car. The photos of the vehicle damage supported this version of events- there was no damage visible.

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Our firm obtained a verdict of $1,063,807.37 for our client this week.  Great win for a wonderful 22-year-old mother of a one-year-old at the time of the accident.

Facts of This Truck Accident Case

This was a hotly contested liability case. Our client contended she was injured when the Defendant, driving a full gasoline tanker, ran a red light. The defendant claimed he had a green light, and that our client must have had the red light. The accident happened at the intersection of Pennington Avenue and Church Street in Baltimore City. Our client’s car was totaled, and the gas tanker was damaged, which caused a gasoline spill. Our client had her one-year-old son in the car when the crash happened and had to watch him scream for his mom in a stranger’s arms while our client was trapped in her car due to her badly broken leg.

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The best way to attack a defense medical witness’ testimony is to conduct an effective cross-examination. One of the ways we do this is by exposing the doctor’s financial interest in acting as a professional witness.

Maryland law allows discovery of how much a professional witness earns from testifying, as well as what percentage of his overall income is earned from working as a paid witness. At Miller & Zois, we don’t take the doctor’s word for it. Our practice is to issue a subpoena for the financial records that document the amounts the DME (Defense Medical Exam) doctor is paid by insurance companies and defense attorneys.

The doctors do not like this very much. Usually the response we receive is a Motion for Protective Order from the doctor’s attorney asking that the records not be produced. If the court orders that the financial records be produced, usually that is the last you see of the DME doctor. Doctors will generally refuse to testify before producing these records.

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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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prince george's county verdictLast week I wrote about a car accident injury case we tried in the District Court of Maryland for Prince George’s County.  We do not handle many district court cases anymore but we liked the client in this case.  The crash was a rear-end collision with a soft-tissue injury. The damage to the vehicles was extremely minor,  about $400.00. My client had $4800.00 in medical expenses.  Today we called the court to find out what the verdict was. It was $10,500.00. That is a very good result for this kind of case, especially considering we only sued for $10,000.00 in the first place.

Even if a motion is filed to reduce the verdict to the ad damnum, we are happy with this result. So is our client. Again, plaintiff’s lawyers need to try these cases.  By my math, $10,000 is a lot better than zero.  We really do not make money in cases like this.  We get a $4,000 fee.  That is a lot of money in my pocket if you handed it to me personally.  But from a business perspective?  It is not worth the time and expense.  But the hope is that when something awful happens to that client’s cousin’s brother’s friend, they call us.

GEICO’s Strategy in Low Property Damage Cases

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We always have a few cases going on in the office involving car accident injuries caused by uninsured motorists. One of these cases had something interesting happen today.

The defendant insurance company had identified two doctors as expert witnesses. They secured an order compelling plaintiff to submit to an “independent medical examination” (three lies for the price of one, since it’s not independent, nothing medical takes place, and there’s barely any examination). After obtaining opinions from both doctors, the insurer withdrew one as a witness. Unsurprisingly, it was the one whose opinion was more favorable to the plaintiff.

There’s a real argument to be made that this practice exhibits a lack of good faith. Shouldn’t the insurer have to stand by the “independent” opinion they asked for?

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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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