Posted on September 09, 2008 in Personal Injury

Many individual automobile insurance policies do not provide adequate coverage for catastrophically injured victims. As a result, a product liability case against the manufacturer of the automobile may need to be explored. Such cases can be extremely complicated and expensive to prosecute effectively. As such, it is imperative to consult a trial attorney with significant experience handling such cases.

In addition to a simple "negligence" theory, Maryland law recognizes the "crashworthiness doctrine" and doctrine of "strict liability." A claim may also be pursued under Maryland’s Consumer Protection Act in appropriate circumstances. Pursuing such avenues may be the only way to obtain full compensation for the catastrophically injured client. Therefore, at the beginning of a case, counsel should take affirmative steps to determine whether a product liability theory of recovery should be considered. At a minimum, counsel should take steps to secure the vehicles involved in an accident and send a "spoliation" letter to any parties involved in the accident to preserve evidence for later inspection.

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 Posted on September 09, 2008 in Personal Injury

Maryland is a major transportation corridor for trucking and other interstate travel with Interstate 95 running from North/South and Interstate 70 running East/West. As such, accidents involving tractor trailers and other large motor carriers oftentimes occur on Maryland’s frequently traveled roadways. In many of these cases, the tractor trailer is equipped with a "black box" containing critical information, such as average speeds of travel, top speeds, braking information for "hard stops" or other valuable information just prior to the point of impact. It may also contain information regarding the number of hours the truck was in operation; information that can be compared with the log books the driver and trucking company are required to keep. The black box can be a gold mine of information. The information contained in the black box can be critical to proving liability not just for the negligent truck driver, but for the company that employs him or her. This information can be used to show that a trucking company should have known there were problems with a particular driver.

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 Posted on September 09, 2008 in Personal Injury

An Iowa jury recently awarded a woman $1.5 Million Dollars in a lawsuit she filed against the man who infected her with HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that causes genital warts. Karly Rossiter filed suit against Alan Evans claiming he told her he was free of sexually transmitted diseases in order to coerce her into having unprotected sex with him, when in fact he was carrying the human papilloma virus which causes genital warts.

Under Maryland law, a person who contracts a sexually transmitted disease from an infected partner who neglects to tell the victim they carry the disease is entitled to monetary damages. An experienced Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer, can Maryland residents who were infected with an STD, recover monetary damages from the person who infected them if they knowingly carried the virus yet failed to disclose it to the victim. Maryland allows for one to recover damages under several causes of action.
If you or someone you know are infected with an STD (sexually transmitted disease) and contracted this disease through unprotected sex with a partner who failed to tell you their status, you may be entitled to monetary damages.

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 Posted on September 04, 2008 in Criminal Defense

A Maryland Lawyer Referral Service refers many cases to silvermanthompson.com. As a Maryland Criminal Attorney or Maryland Criminal Lawyer I regularly handle cases involving allegations of both sexual child abuse and physical child abuse. In most physical child abuse cases, the issue of the parental discipline privilege is central to the defense. I had a case last week in Baltimore County in which my client was charged with child abuse as well as misdemeanor assault but before I get to that particular case I think an overview of the law on child abuse as well as the parent discipline privilege will be helpful.

The Child Abuse Section of Maryland Criminal Code was last Amended in 2002. In this Amendment the Legislature separated child abuse into two degrees, first and second degree. First degree child abuse states that a parent or any other person with permanent or temporary custody of a child may not cause the death or "severe physical injury" of a child. Severe physical injury is defined by the Code to mean brain injury or bleeding within the skull, starvation, or physical injury that creates a substantial risk of death or causes permanent or protracted serious disfigurement or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ. First degree child abuse is a felony and any person convicted under this section is subject to imprisonment of up to 25 years.

Second degree child abuse is far more vague in its definition of abuse than is first degree. In fact, it does not contain a definition. It simply says that a parent or any other person with permanent or temporary custody of a child may not cause abuse to a minor. However, in 1973 when the legislature first defined abuse they made clear that in order to violate the statute, the parent or other person must cause some physical injury. Second degree child abuse is also a felony carrying up to 15 years in prison.

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 Posted on September 03, 2008 in Medical Malpractice

A South Carolina hospital and doctor have agreed to pay more than $1.2 million to settle a medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died after she failed to receive a physician-ordered blood test. Apparently, the woman had surgery and was later discharged. Two days after the discharge, she went to the emergency room of the defendant hospital complaining of numbness in her left leg. The medical negligence lawsuit claimed that a doctor ordered a blood test that was not done. The woman subsequently went into a coma and died.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice and wrongful death cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland involving a failure to follow-through with a doctor’s orders. One of the cases I handled involved a failure to timely give blood that was ordered by a doctor. As a result, the patient bled out and died. These cases are always tragic because the problem was recognized by the doctor, but the staff just did not follow the order.

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 Posted on August 26, 2008 in Criminal Defense

As a Maryland Criminal Attorney I am often confronted with cases in which a person is charged with possession with the intent to distribute cocaine, heroin, marijuana or some other controlled dangerous substance (CDS) or even simple misdemeanor possession of CDS, where in addition to being charged criminally, the police also seize the person’s property, usually automobiles, weapons and/or currency pursuant to the drug asset forfeiture laws. Most people are surprised to learn that, unlike in a criminal case where the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty of the offenses with which he is charged, under drug asset forfeiture law, once property or money is seized by the police pursuant to a narcotics arrest or even a narcotics investigation, it is presumed that the property or money is subject to forfeiture and the owner bears the burden of proving otherwise. Not only that but the government maintains possession of the asset throughout what can be a long and expensive legal battle to have the property or money returned.

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 Posted on August 25, 2008 in Medical Malpractice

A New York surgeon has settled a medical malpractice case for $1.9. The Plaintiff was only 16 when doctors found a lesion on one of his ribs, more than seven years ago. The tumor was removed in 2001, but the hospital’s attending pediatric surgeon allegedly failed to get all of it. Despite assurances to the contrary, the tissue turned out to be cancerous and spread to three other ribs, said the lawyer. The man had to undergo additional surgeries, radiation treatment, and now is at greater risk for reoccurrence of his cancer. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland, and in the District of Columbia, involving a failure to timely diagnose and treat cancer. In cases involving tumor resection, it is critical for the surgeon to make sure that what is removed is greater than the area of the tumor’s margin. This is the standard of care in these cases.

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 Posted on August 22, 2008 in Medical Malpractice

It is now possible for patients to compare the care received at hospitals in Maryland and the District of Columbia. This can be useful in determining whether certain Maryland and Washington D.C. hospitals have a higher incidence of medical malpractice. As reported today in a leading newspaper, consumers can now search a website and compare local hospitals to see how they stack up against each other.

Last year, the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a comparison of death rates for heart failure and heart attacks, noting how hospitals compared with the national average – better, worse or no different – without releasing the death rates themselves. This year the agency disclosed that information to consumers. The website contains statistics on what percentage of a hospital’s patients get appropriate care for a variety of ailments, including childhood asthma, and 10 measures of patient satisfaction with the hospital experience. Knowing a hospital’s death rates also gives consumers the ability to decide where they want to be treated, and where medical malpractice is more prevalent.

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 Posted on August 18, 2008 in Criminal Defense

Maryland Criminal Lawyer Maryland Criminal Attorney – Baltimore Criminal Lawyer – Baltimore Criminal Attorney. I had an interesting stop and frisk case today in the Baltimore City Circuit Court. I was prepared for trial today but unfortunately the case was postponed because the Assistant State’s Attorney was in trial on another case. In this case I will be moving to suppress the evidence because although I believe that the State has a reasonable argument that the police officer who stopped my client had reasonable articulable suspicion to do so, I do not believe that the officer had reasonable articulable suspicion to believe that my client was armed and dangerous and conduct a pat down of my client which led to the recovery of illegal narcotics.

The facts of the case are simple. The police allege that they observed my client drive up to an apartment complex in area of town with a high volume of drug activity. They claim that they watched as my client beeped his horn a few times signalling a women to come out of an apartment. The women then allegedly gets into my client’s car for just a few seconds and the police claim to see some sort of exchange take place. The women then exits the car and is allegedly examining small objects in her hand that the police claim are consistent in size and shape of controlled dangerous substances such as cocaine or heroin. Based solely on these observations the police pull my client over, order him out of the car and pat him down, supposedly looking for weapons to ensure officer safety, and recover 40 capsules containing cocaine.

As I said, I believe that if a court were to believe that the officer’s really saw what they claim to have seen (I find their claims rather dubious given that this incident occurred at night and my client has dark tinted windows) that a case could be made that they had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop my client for a short duration to investigate and ultimately confirm or dispel their suspicions. That type of stop would usually involve questioning the individual who is stopped and making observations about him and his vehicle to either raise their suspicions to the level of probable cause at which point they could search him and the vehicle, or dispel their suspicions and let the person be on his way.

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 Posted on August 17, 2008 in Medical Malpractice

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving doctors (surgeons usually) injuring an artery or vein during a surgical procedure. For example, in one severe injury case, a spinal / orthopedic surgeon was installing hardware on the cervical spine of a woman who had cervical disk (disc) disease, when he hit an artery with a drill and caused the woman to have a severe stroke. The storke caused the woman to have a lifetime of medical and other care expenses as a result of the surgeon’s negligence.

In another case, a woman who had a long history of peripheral vascular disease underwent a bypass of the blood vessells of her lower leg, called a fem-pop (femoral to popliteal) bypass. After the surgery, the woman complained to her doctor of excessive bleeding from the surgical wound site. The surgeon negligently said not to worry about it, and told the woman that if she kept on bleeding she should put her finger on the wound to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, when the woman went to sleep that night, the wound really opened up and she bled profusely. She woke up covered in blood and screaming, causing her family to rush to her rescue. Unfortunately, she could not reach medical treatment in time and bled to death (exsanguinated).

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