It’s an increasingly connected world that we live in. An important part of that connection is electronic—most of us interact with others electronically through social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and SnapChat, to name a few. Of course, there are also e-mail messages and text messages.
This is how we communicate with our family, friends, and the 10,000 other people who have friended us. It’s fun to have an online presence, we encourage you to do so, if it is something that works for you.
But if you have a personal injury claim, we need to talk. The title is a bit harsh—you don’t need to cut all ties with online social media, but you do need to be careful. The problem, from my perspective, is context. As a lawyer, I will search for the social media posts of my adversary. We saw a post once from a defendant (who denied causing the accident) that said (and I’m paraphrasing for a G-rated post, here), saw a beautiful woman on the street, and got into an accident. Now, maybe he was distracted, and the accident caused because his attention was elsewhere. Maybe he was just trying to be funny, or make light of a serious situation because that the type of humor he has. I don’t know. But I can tell you that it was important evidence to show the jury, and that they didn’t trust his story at trial.
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TRIAL TESTIMONY
Posted on April 11, 2018 in Trial
Trial is scary. If you have a trial, and you’ve never been, you probably have some anxiety about the whole thing. Where do I sit? What questions are going to be asked? Can I bring notes?
You will have a long conversation with your lawyer to go over all of this before trial. We’ve been through it before, and we’ll answer all of your questions. There is one thing we need you to prepare in advance: a list of your non-economic damages.
Non-economic damages include the following, according to the Rules (Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 11-108):
In an action for personal injury, pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of consortium, or other nonpecuniary injury; and
In an action for wrongful death, mental anguish, emotional pain and suffering, loss of society, companionship, comfort, protection, care, marital care, parental care, filial care, attention, advice, counsel, training, guidance, or education, or other noneconomic damages
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HOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR DISCOVERY MEETING WITH YOUR LAWYER (DISTRICT COURT VERSION)
Posted on April 08, 2018 in Trial
Every case, whether a circuit court or district court, has a phase of discovery. In the district court, this simply involves the exchange of written questions, known as interrogatories. In the circuit court, this involves more interrogatories, plus some document requests, and likely depositions.
We’re going to cover what to expect in the discovery process for district court in this article. In the district court, unless you are proceeding by way of small claims (case limited to $5,000.00 recovery), each side is permitted to ask the other side up to 15 written questions (interrogatories). There is not specific required form, so we don’t always know what is going to be asked of us. But, most lawyers tend to use the same interrogatories over and over again, so we can tell you the questions that GEICO lawyers usually ask, the questions that State Farm lawyers usually ask, and so on. (For examples, click on these links: Allstate IROG (04-08-18), SF IROG (04-08-18))
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SHOULD I ACCEPT A SETTLEMENT OFFER?
Posted on March 27, 2018 in Settlement
In most cases, there will come a time when your lawyers have negotiated the settlement offer as high as it will go—the insurance adjuster or defense lawyer tells us that there will be no further offers (whether true or untrue—we’ll help you determine whether we believe it or not). The question becomes: Do I settle or move forward.
Answering this question depends on you—I frequently tell my clients that they are in the driver’s seat—my job is to give the best advice that I can, but in the end, we will do what the client wants. As the lawyer, we cannot settle a case without a client’s permission. So, here are the facts that we give the client:
- What does the settlement mean for you? I want my clients to know the amount of money they will receive in their pocket after a settlement. This means, I tell them where every penny is going to go. What medical expenses are outstanding, what health insurance liens exist, how much are case expenses and attorneys’ fees. Depending on the stage of the case, some of that might not be fully ascertained, but we can usually give a very close idea (for example, Medicare liens take a long time to resolve). Most clients don’t care what the final settlement amount is, they simply want to know, importantly, how much money they will get in their pockets after all expenses are paid.
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FAMILY EXCLUSION—NOT IN MY POLICY!
Posted on March 25, 2018 in Insurance
Don’t ever buy insurance with a family exclusion. Here’s how it worked for a recent client of mine:
Mom was driving, didn’t pay attention to the slippery conditions of a Maryland winter, and her car slid into oncoming traffic. Her vehicle was totaled, and more devastatingly, one of her twins the back car-seat was catastrophically injured. She had brain damage, requires a feeding tube, and now needs 24-hour care. Thinking they had done the right thing when they purchased GEICO insurance, their policy provided for $250,000.00 if they injured someone else, or if someone without insurance injured them.
However, there was a caveat that they didn’t pay attention to: if a family member was injured because of the negligence of another family member, the most the insurance would pay out is $30,000.00. That’s $30,000.00 for nursing care, medicine, therapies, wheelchairs, disability vans, and ramps to the front door. From a legal perspective, it was easy—the insurance company offered $30,000.00 without much more evidence than the initial hospital bill. From an emotional and financial perspective, however, it was devastating. The family needed to go on public benefits, which do not provide nearly the level of care that sweet girl deserves.
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WHY SHOULD I USE MY INSURANCE WHEN I WASN’T AT FAULT?
Posted on March 23, 2018 in Automobile Accidents
Insurance is an interesting thing. You pay regularly (monthly, or semi-annually) to protect your family when they get hurt, and to protect other people that you may accidentally hurt. However, many of our clients are steadfast in their efforts to avoid using their own car insurance at any cost, fearing an increase in their insurance rates. What’s the point of having insurance if you don’t use it when you need it?
We understand the gut reaction—if I wasn’t at fault, why should my insurance pay? There are three situations where you should go through your insurance policy. Most importantly, you should know that your insurance company is not allowed to raise your premiums when you take advantage of these policies.
Personal Injury Protection (PIP)
Unless you waived it (you shouldn’t), your automobile policy comes with a guarantee that your insurance company will pay you, typically up to $2,500 (you should opt for more, if you can), for medical expenses and lost wages incurred because of a collision. It doesn’t matter whether you were at fault or not. This is extra money that can help alleviate problems in the ordinary automobile collision case—a settlement doesn’t usually happen until well after your medical treatment, so getting some money early on (often within 30 days of submitting those expenses), can help keep you out of collections.
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I’VE NEGOTIATED MY CASE, AND RECEIVED AN OFFER—DO I NEED A LAWYER?
Posted on March 19, 2018 in Automobile Accidents
Every now and then we get a call from someone who has been slugging it out with the insurance company on their own in an effort to save legal fees and handle it themselves. These calls often come at the time that negotiation is wrapping up because the callers want some advice about whether the settlement offer is a good one. We try to be helpful to people who call us, and we take the position that lawyers should be responsible members of the community, so we will usually try to give some helpful general advice. The truth that some lawyers won’t tell you is that yes, you can settle your own personal injury case. Here are some criteria to determine whether you forgo a lawyer and settle a case on your own.
The main question that people have when talking to a lawyer while simultaneously trying to settle their own case is this: “What happens if I hire you and we get more, but I personally get less?” This is not a question with a simple answer. Until we evaluate your case, we cannot always make you a guarantee. Every case is unique, and we will come up with an agreement that reflects the work you did on your case. Without all the information about your claim, we don’t know whether the insurance company is undervaluing it or valuing it correctly.
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