Maryland Injury and Disability Law

Social Security Disability Is Not Welfare

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:42:54 -0500

One aspect of our practice is working with some of our injured clients to help them get through the Social Security Disability Insurance process. We don’t have to do this with all of our clients. Some of our clients suffer injuries that they will be able to recover from pretty quickly.

But the ones who won’t recover from their injuries or illness-- the ones who will be unable to live the lives that they lived before; the ones who won’t be able to go back to the jobs that they had for a very long time, or any other job for that matter, these are the clients that we help get through the Social Security Disability process.

After all, this is what Social Security Disability Insurance is for. It’s an insurance policy that’s designed to provide you with some form of income in the event that you get hurt or are medically unable to work and support yourself. There has been a tendency in the media lately to make it seem like SSDI is simply welfare under another name; that it’s easy to get, and that you don’t have to be injured or sick to qualify for it. We can tell you that this is not the case.

SSDI is not “welfare.” The concept behind “welfare” is that you receive state or federal money subsidies because you can’t afford to live on your salary. Some point to this study by This American Life as evidence that people on disability are lazy or mooching for a free handout, or are using disability as an income resource when they cannot find a job. According to The Washington Post, where This American Life got it wrong is that the vast majority of disability applicants are denied, and there are quality diagnoses that are very stringently applied to be approved.

Social Security Disability is money that you receive because you physically or mentally cannot work. Your being unable to work is a medical or injury issue. And again, SSDI is an insurance policy not simply a giveaway. If you have worked any sort of job at all for at least 10 quarters, this means that you have effectively bought an insurance policy from the government in the event you become disabled. Social Security is meant to offer you a supplement income once you get to retirement age, and part of that money goes to offering you income should you become injured. SSDI is no more of a hand out than an insurance policy is from State Farm.Social Security Disability is not easy to get. In order to qualify you have to present real, documented, and proven reasons why you can’t work, and you may have to present these reasons in a hearing if you are not approved when you apply. It isn’t a matter of filling out paper work and getting rubber stamped. Most people who apply for SSDI are denied on their first attempt.

Being on SSDI certainly isn’t like winning the lottery. It isn’t a lot to live on. The idea that Social Security Disability Insurance is a lifetime handout that puts the lazy on easy street on the taxpayers’ dime is completely wrong.

Try to keep this in mind when you hear politicians, talk radio hosts and people on cable news decry Disability Insurance for the injured as a scam a hand out. And if you have been injured and can no longer work, you should not feel any shame whatsoever in applying for SSDI.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm that devotes a significant part of our practice towards helping the injured get through the Social Security Disability Insurance process. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, DC has been injured and can no longer work, please contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Colonial Parking Faces Lawsuit for Serious Injury

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:46:14 -0500

Petula Dvorak is a columnist for the Washington Post, but not the sort of columnist that grabs national headlines or gets invited to cable talk shows. She covers Washington, DC, the place where regular people work and live, and not Washington, DC, the political center of the universe.

Mostly, it’s locals who read and appreciate her columns, and we certainly count ourselves among that number. Today she had a great article that illustrates what an injury case actually is, and what punitive damages are actually supposed to be. Normally we get the cartoonish characterizations and negative portrayals in the media, so it’s nice to see a positive and accurate reflection of the sort of work that we do.

The case in question involves what is called “premises liability.” When someone opens up a store or place of business, it involves a little more than simply throwing open the doors. The business is obligated to make sure that its customers don’t get hurt. This means simple things like keeping the floor dry, or letting them know when the floor is wet. It also means making sure that any stairwells are adequately lit, and that anything that could fall on someone is adequately secured.

In this particular case that Ms. Dvorak was covering, the business in question was a parking lot in a hospital. A six year old fell into an open airshaft and plummeted two stories onto concrete. Miraculously, he’s still alive.

He had to undergo surgery to fix his wrists and scalp, and not surprisingly, he still suffers from nightmares four years later.

The mother of the boy who fell is suing both the hospital and the company that runs the parking garage, and they are doing so for one very good reason, which is this: What on earth was an air shaft doing uncovered in the parking lot of a hospital that serves children? Because Children’s Hospital was where this happened.

According to Ms. Dvorak’s article, the attorneys for the plaintiff are suing for $57 million, and that does seem like a pretty high number if all you are thinking about is that the boy survived. But there is more to it than that.

Colonial Parking is a huge and profitable business, and they have parking lots all over Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. They also operate and maintain lots that don’t specifically belong to them. They are a company that failed to perform one of their primary responsibilities, which is to maintain a safe and secure place for people to park their cars at Children’s Hospital.

The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs cited Colonial for that open air vent the day the accident happened. Here’s how it was put in Ms. Dvorak’s article:

“Grilles are old, rusted and lack the structural strength to act as sufficient safeguards to provide fall protection for the four (4) level parking garage exhaust shafts,” the engineer’s report said.

Children’s spokeswoman Paula Darte said they “began a thorough investigation within minutes of this incident being reported.”

“It was not clear why a vent cover to the air shaft in the parking garage was off,” Darte said. “The entire parking garage was assessed, and no other vent covers were found to be missing. Nonetheless, our team reinforced all vent covers as a precautionary measure.”

So how did Colonial miss this? It wasn’t exactly an air vent hidden behind something.

A parking lot attendant was put on the stand, and was asked about an inspection form that had his name all over it. He claims that his bosses at Colonial came up to him after the accident and asked him to sign it. The inspection form was backdated to make it seem like inspections were happening all the time. To his credit, the attendant refused to sign it. To their shame, Colonial signed it anyway.

So, why is this lawsuit for $57 million? Colonial Parking is a business. Businesses can do lots of positive and wonderful things for the community and the economy, and sometimes they can do the exact opposite. You can’t really make a business feel bad, or shame it. It’s a thing, an entity. The only thing that matters to a business is whether it made money or whether it didn’t. So costing them money is the only way that you can punish them.

That $57 million is to make a statement, which is that you can’t just not pay attention to the premises and surroundings of your business, and you certainly can’t lie about it and pretend that you did in the event that somebody gets hurt. This is what Colonial Parking allegedly did.

Punitive damages don’t exist to simply make the plaintiff rich. They exist to send a message that actions matter and have consequences. And no matter what happens with this trial, we can guarantee you that Colonial Parking should never slack on their inspections again. And we hope that every other business that reads about this case won’t slack on inspections either. If so there won’t be pointless accidents due to negligence.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes those who have been injured due to the negligence of business or property owners. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC has been injured and it wasn’t your fault, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Senseless Teenage Accident Deaths in Ohio

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:34:52 -0500

As far as car accidents go, you really can’t get much worse than this:

“A car crash in Ohio this weekend killed 6 teens. The Honda Passport was carrying eight teenagers when it crashed into a guardrail just south of Warren, about 60 miles east of Cleveland, on Sunday morning. The two survivors ran to a nearby house after the crash in order to call 911. Unfortunately, emergency responders could not save the other passengers.”

The car did more than hit a guardrail. It flipped over and landed in a pond, where it began to sink.

If you are able to do the math, that means there were 8 kids in that car. Nobody was wearing a seatbelt, and the vehicle was overloaded, and who knows what triggered the accident, but the number of kids in the car and their lack of seatbelt use certainly made the outcome much worse than it would have been otherwise.

It appears that the car was speeding as well, and it also turns out that the car had been stolen. It is unclear if all of the kids in the car knew that the car didn’t actually belong to the driver. They are still waiting on the toxicology reports to come back, so we don’t know yet if the one who was driving the car was drunk or high.

There is not one element of this incident that doesn’t fall under the definition of “senseless.” It was senseless of the kid to steal the car. It was senseless for all those kids to pile in and not wear their seatbelts. It was senseless of the driver to speed.

This is the sort of tragedy that usually teenagers do to themselves. Their brains are wired in ways that steer them towards risky decisions, and they have a tendency to not consider the consequences. It takes time and experience to get over those impulses, and unfortunately, not all of them make it.

Car accidents are far and away the number one cause of teen deaths in the United States. About seven teens between the age of 16 and 19 are killed every day behind the wheel of a car, and about 282,000 teens in that same age bracket are seriously injured every year.

16 – 19 year olds are three times more likely to get into a fatal accident than 20 year olds. They are more likely to speed. They are more likely to tail gate and allow less room between cars. They are more likely to underestimate dangerous situations or to not even see them at all. They are more likely to drink and drive. They are more likely to not wear seatbelts. They are more likely to text and drive. If you can think of anything behind the wheel of a car that you simply aren’t supposed to do, teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 are more likely to do it than any other age group of drivers.

We aren’t saying that every teenager is going to do something stupid like steal a car, or drink and drive, or speed, or drive recklessly. But we do know that these are the sorts of things that happen to teenagers more often than anyone else.

We cannot stress enough the importance of driver education for teens, and more importantly, we cannot stress enough the importance of driver penalties for teens. Teens believe access to a car to be a source of freedom, but they should know that it could be taken away from them quite easily. Do not hesitate to take away your teens driving privileges if you suspect that they are being unsafe behind the wheel.

Doing that might earn you even more resentment from your teen than you usually get, but that seems a small price to pay if you compare it to the parents of those kids in Ohio, or any of the parents of the seven teens that die every day in car accidents.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car wrecks due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident in Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C. or Maryland, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Greenberg & Bederman Argues For Tougher Tavern Liability

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:32:19 -0500

Every client that we represent at Greenberg and Bederman is important to us. Every case that concludes favorably means that we helped an injury victim avoid being taken advantage of. We help the injured get the financial compensation to recover, and move on with their lives. That means a lot to us, and we know it means a lot to our clients.

It’s rare that we get to work on a case that might fundamentally alter the way our state views injuries and liability. The vast majority of the clients we represent involve issues that fall squarely within the parameters of established law. But now we have an opportunity to help a client by pointing out a flaw in the Maryland state code, and if we are successful, the changes that it would bring about in Maryland would not only help our client, but make the entire state more safe.

Between 2006 and 2011, there were 3381 fatalities in Maryland that occurred due to drunken driving. The number of injuries is much higher than that.

In 2008, one of those fatalities was Jazimen Warr. Jazimen Warr was not drunk. Jazimen Warr was not driving. Jazimen Warr was just a 10 year old little girl.

She was riding in a car driven by her grandfather on Route 270 in Maryland. A man named Michael Eaton slammed into the back of her car at around 90 miles an hour. For the better part of a day he had been sitting in a bar in Gaithersburg, where he consumed 17 beers and three shots of whiskey. He paid his tab, left, and then got into his car. Her drove onto the highway, and then slammed into the Warr family's car.

Obviously, Michael Eaton committed a serious error in judgment. He was irresponsible and negligent, and as a result Jazimen Warr died. But we believe that Michael Eaton was not alone in culpability. What about the bar that continued serving him enormous amounts of alcohol without cutting him off? What about the bar that let an obviously inebriated man walk out without even checking to see if he was calling a cab? And can we also consider that the bar is located in the suburbs in the middle of a parking lot, with no easy access to public transportation? If he didn't call a cab or a friend, how else was he supposed to get home except to drive himself?

As far as we are concerned, the staff and the ownership of The Dogfish Head Alehouse bears some responsibility for the death of Jazimen Warr. Current Maryland law absolves them of any responsibility. Maryland is one of the few states that doesn't have what are called "Dram Shop Laws," which are laws that hold those who sell alcohol irresponsibly liable for the actions of their customers.

We brought this case to court in the hopes that the judiciary would address what the Maryland legislature has not. Our case has been slowly moving up through the courts, and we made our arguments before the Maryland Court of Appeals on Tuesday. It is our hope that the Court will see the legal points that we believe are self-evident; That bars and restaurants in Maryland must sell alcohol responsibly.

States that have dram shop laws in place have lower incidents of alcohol related car accidents, deaths, injuries, and other damages that result from driving while intoxicated. Most states in our country have dram shop laws enacted. It is time for Maryland to do the same.

Here is a link to the news 4 story.

Greenberg and Bederman is a injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, we are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been hurt in accidents due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one in Northern Virginia, Maryland, or Washington, DC has been injured in an accident due to the negligence of someone else, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

The Sequester Cuts Will Hurt

Greenberg & Bederman — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:08:01 -0500

There are lots of regions and cities in the area that are known for the way their citizens earn a living. Some states and counties have mines, some have plants, some have factories, some have ranches and farms.

Even if these industries go away, these jobs still remain part of the local identity. They even name professional sports teams after them. The Green Bay Packers, The Houston Oilers, The Hartford Whalers, The Edmonton Oilers, and the Milwaukee Brewers were all named to reflect a source of employment and regional pride to those areas.

Here in the Washington, DC area, the source of employment is the government. A huge percentage of the population either works directly for the government, is working for a company that is working for the government, or is working to influence the government on behalf of one cause or another. This can be a bit of a bone of contention for people who don’t live in the area or understand how the system works. As far as they are concerned, “government worker” equals “lazy, overpaid, ineffective and unnecessary.”

Right now, our government finds itself in dire financial straits. There are multiple reasons for this, and each side of the political spectrum likes to point the finger at causes that they don’t like and conveniently avoid the causes that they do. People on the right side of the political spectrum will blame it all on so-called “entitlements” like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and government benefits in general. People on the left side of the political spectrum like to blame it on heavy defense spending, the cost of fighting two wars over ten years, and the financial sectors misadventures in the housing market in 2007 and 2008.

Last year, we hit what is called “the Debt Ceiling,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It is the predetermined limit of the amount of money that we as a nation allow ourselves to borrow. There is some debate over whether the President has the authority to simply override the limit and raise it himself, but at any rate, he chose not to. He chose to get permission to raise the debt ceiling through Congress.

In order to get permission to raise the debt ceiling, Congress and President Obama promised to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from the debt over 10 years by a certain date. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives would ideally have liked to have seen this done by not raising taxes and to have the debt reduction achieved solely through cuts in entitlements and social programs, while President Obama and the Democratic Party would have liked to have seen this done by a combination of revenue increases (taxes) combined with spending cuts.

As an incentive to coming to an agreement (which they have historically not been able to do on much of anything,) they put together a series of enormous cuts worth around $500 billion that would take place only if they weren’t able to reach an agreement. These cuts were designed to be equally painful to both sides. These cuts are what are known as “The Sequester Package.”

Since the Republican Party does not want to see cuts to defense spending, and the Democratic Party does not want to see cuts to government services, it was assumed that they would reach an agreement on how to reduce the budget within the Sequestration deadline. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and at around 9 in the evening on March 1^st, President Obama was forced to put these cuts into effect.

So what does this mean for us here in the Washington, D.C. area? Quite a bit, actually. The sequester will affect us in two ways. The first is in defense spending. The D.C. area is the home of the Pentagon, multiple Army, Naval, Marine and Air Force bases, and countless contractors doing work for the military. Systems, weapons development, logistics, anything you can think of, there is a private company doing work for the military on a contract basis. These cuts will certainly affect a lot of these programs, so we expect that there will be quite a few people put out of work.

It will also affect those who work for the actual government as employees. What has been happening as of late is that many employees in many agencies have received furlough notices, which means that they will be forced to take a certain amount of days off during the week or month. These days will be unpaid.

As personal injury attorneys in the Washington, D.C. area, many of our clients are federal workers. We have clients who are car accident victims, or victims of medical malpractice, or victims of defective prescription drugs, or victims of negligence, and some of them work at Labor, or Interior, or Defense, or the Social Security Administration, or Agriculture, or any number of other departments, agencies or sub agencies. We fully expect to receive a lot of lowball settlement offers from the insurance companies that are involved in our legal cases over the next few months. They’ll know if our clients work for agencies that are affected, and will probably try to work that to their advantage.

We would advise you to be patient. If these cuts really start to hurt, we expect that the government will act. There is already talk of ways for government agencies to get around furloughs, or minimize them, and the various public employees unions are hard at work on this. Not to mention that all of the politicians will come under pressure if things get really difficult. So as tough as it might be in the short term, be patient, and if you receive a lowball settlement offer from an insurer, we would advise against it. Hang in there.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in an accident due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been hurt in an accident in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, DC, contact Greenberg & Bederman today.

If You Are A Passenger In A Car Accident

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:01:23 -0500

Where is the most dangerous place to be in a car?

Many of you are probably thinking that the driver’s seat is the most dangerous place. But if you think of the way roads and driving directions are set up, the passenger seat is really the most dangerous place. If you take two cars going in different directions on the same road, the drivers have the entire width of their respective cars separating them. In other words, if two cars traveling in opposite directions get into an accident, the two parts that will most likely come into contact with each other are the passenger sides. You can also consider that a driver’s natural instinct is to steer away from danger, which usually involves putting the passenger between himself and the accident.

Being a passenger in a car involves a bit of trust. There is precious little that a passenger can do to stop an accident, whether it is the fault of another driver or the one driving the car. This is something that you should definitely keep in mind in the event that you get into a car accident and you were in the passenger seat. That means nothing about the accident was your fault.

Car insurance policies don’t just cover the drivers. They cover anybody who is a passenger in that car as well. You don’t have to fill out paperwork or pay a premium. The minute you sit in the passenger seat, the policy covers you.

There are mandatory minimum levels of insurance that have to be purchased in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Virginia has an uninsured driver option, where you pay a certain amount every year in order to drive without insurance, but most people don’t do that.

In Maryland, the minimum level of insurance coverage is $30,000 per person, with a $60,000 limit per accident. In Virginia, the minimum level of insurance coverage is $25,000 per person with a $50,000 limit per accident, and in D.C. the minimum level of insurance coverage is $25,000 per person with a $50,000 per accident. This means that there is money that should be made available in the event that you are a passenger involved in a car accident, and the numbers mentioned above are just the minimum. Often there is more.

This money should be available to cover the costs of your injuries, and that includes medical bills, time missed from work, recovery costs, and even non-economic damages like pain and suffering. But here is the inherent difficulty in getting that money when you get into an accident as a passenger: An insurance company is not going to be inclined to make it easy for you to recover money for your injuries. You aren’t sending premium money into the insurance company of the driver, or the insurance company of the other car that hit you. These insurers have no real stake in you, so it’s their job to try to get out of the incident with as small of a payout as possible.

In the aftermath of a car accident, it can be difficult to know how to proceed, particularly if you don’t know exactly who was responsible for the accident. Was it the person you were in the car with? Was it another driver? And will you have to go into debt while all of this is figured out?

If you are a passenger in a car accident and you have any questions at all, the smartest thing that you can do is talk to a qualified and experienced car accident attorney. Since the insurance companies of both the driver of the car you were in and the driver of the other car will be mainly focused on their own financial interests, you will need to have someone looking after yours. Having an attorney on your side can help you get past the delaying tactics and lowball settlement offers.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car accidents due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC has been hurt in a car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Ray Lahood Was Good For Transportation Safety

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:28:45 -0500

While we can’t underestimate the importance of safe, responsible and careful driving, that is unfortunately only one part of the equation. The safest and most responsible driver in all of Maryland can get in his car, go out on the road, do everything right, and still get blindsided by a driver who is doing the wrong thing.

“The wrong thing” has multiple definitions once you get behind the wheel of a car. It could mean speeding, it could mean changing lanes without signaling or checking your mirrors, it could mean using your mirrors to check your hair, makeup or personal appearance while you are driving, it could mean driving while drunk, driving while under the influence of legal prescription drugs or illegal prescription drugs, or it could mean driving while sending a text, changing the song on your iPhone, or turning around to have a conversation with someone in the back seat.

Believe it or not, we have had clients who have been injured due to drivers doing every single one of those “wrong things,” and unfortunately the number of cases that we get from distracted drivers has remained more or less constant since we founded our practice almost thirty years ago. Cars might change, safety technology might change, but for the most part, people really don’t change all that much.

We have noticed over the past few years that there is one sort of accident has at least dropped off a bit, and that is accidents due to texting while driving.

It seems counter-intuitive to say that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. After all, texting is the preferred method of communication for people under the age of 40 these days. Hundreds of millions of texts are sent every day in the United States. It doesn’t affect your reflexes like alcohol, texting doesn’t result in poor decision making, and you don’t wake up with a hangover like you can with alcohol.

But texting while driving is profoundly more dangerous than drinking and driving. That’s not to say that we would prefer you to do one over the other. Doing either one is reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible. But studies have shown that texting while driving is many times more dangerous and many times more likely to cause the driver to have an accident.

Texting while driving causes you to take at least one hand off the wheel and both eyes off the road. Taking your eyes off the road for just a few seconds when your car is traveling the speed limit can cause you to travel as far as a football field.

When texting came into vogue during the early 2000’s, we saw a huge increase in accidents due to texting while driving. But around 2008 and 2009, many states began to identify distracted driving as a real problem and began to enact laws that outlaw the practice. As of this writing, texting while driving is illegal in 39 states, and that includes Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The laws have helped bring down the rate of distracted driving accidents in our general practice area, but what has also helped has been a huge PR campaign, not only among the states but also at the Federal level. A major player in bringing the dangers of this practice to light was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Secretary LaHood was a Republican congressman from Illinois who got nominated to one of the least glamorous but most important posts in the President’s cabinet. That he accepted the nomination of a man from the opposition party and then went on to serve as well as he did speaks volumes about him as a civil servant. He recognized almost immediately the real dangers of distracted driving, as well as the spiking levels of car accidents, injuries and fatalities that were occurring due to distracted drivers.

Aside from the very important job of maintaining our transportation infrastructure, Secretary LaHood put the considerable resources of the Department of Transportation towards ad campaigns that were specifically targeted towards young people, who are a lot more likely to text and drive than older drivers.

LaHood is retiring from his post as soon as a new Secretary can be confirmed, but it is expected that the focus on preventing texting while driving will remain a priority at DOT. LaHood should be commended for both recognizing that distracted driving was and is a serious danger to the public, and acting forcefully to prevent it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car accidents due to no fault of their own, and that includes those who have been injured due to the actions of distracted drivers. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC has been injured in a car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman today for a free consultation.

There Is No Medical Malpractice Crisis

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:23:24 -0500

One particular challenge that plaintiff’s attorneys have to deal with often doesn’t actually have to do with the law as much as it has to do with public relations.

A lot of people believe that plaintiff’s attorneys, injury lawyers, or medical malpractice lawyers sue everyone, all the time, for no reason, and for millions of dollars. None of this is true, but one of the reasons people think it is true is because they get this false narrative recited to them all the time. They hear it on talk radio, they hear it on cable news, they see it in the plots of TV shows, and they hear politicians bring it up more or less constantly. And when politicians bring it up, they always use the word “crisis.”

The message is usually about a lawsuit “crisis,” or a medical malpractice “crisis,” or a tort case “crisis.” And they always make it seem like the entire judicial system is about to collapse because personal injury attorneys are able to file lawsuits. And the lawsuits are always referred to as “frivolous.”

Here’s an example of what we mean. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is attempting to lure more doctors to his state, and he’s proposing a few measures to bring this about. Some of them are ideas that we think are great. For instance, he wants the state to spend about $2 million annually to help pay off the student loans of 20 doctors who agree to come to Iowa and commit to five years practice in rural parts of the state. We think that’s a fantastic idea, and we would be willing to bet that that sort of thinking would work in the more rural parts of Virginia or Maryland as well.

But what isn’t fantastic is his idea about medical malpractice lawsuits. He is proposing that each medical malpractice case in the state be examined by an appointed medical expert to determine whether or not the case has merit. If the expert agrees that the case has merit, then the case will be allowed to proceed to the court. Governor Branstad claims that this is necessary because it will lower the number of medical malpractice lawsuits in Iowa.

In the first place, we don’t think the number of medical malpractice lawsuits in Iowa can get much lower. There are 3 million people in Iowa, and there were only 159 medical malpractice lawsuits filed in the state in 2012. This is hardly a crisis that needs to be solved.

Secondly, we’ve heard this proposed solution before. It’s been proposed in lots of other states (Georgia for instance.) The way we see it, an idea like this simply adds an unnecessary obstacle to the legal system. There already is a system in place where a case is presented before an official with legal authority, who then decides whether or not the case has merit. This is called the court system, and it has worked perfectly well since 1789.

Contrary to what politicians, tort reformers and insurance companies would have you believe, medical malpractice cases are not “easy to win.” Medical malpractice cases do not get all the way through the legal system and argued before a jury if they are frivolous and based on speculation. The fact that there were only 159 medical malpractice lawsuits in Iowa for all of 2012 should give you an idea as to how difficult these cases are to prove. And we are quite sure that there were more than 159 mistakes made by doctors, surgeons and other medical professionals that year.

You should always view reports of a medical malpractice “crisis” with a skeptical eye. Anyone who paints a picture of medical malpractice lawsuits as legal hocus pocus done by unscrupulous lawyers is not telling you the truth. As medical malpractice attorneys who practice in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC, we can tell you that there isn’t anything easy or frivolous about it.

Greenberg and Bederman is amedical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the actions of a doctor, surgeon, or medical professional. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or DC has been hurt by a doctor, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

The Dangers of Mirena IUD's

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:16:21 -0500

We don't have a lot of faith in Bayer's ability to make safe birth control. We have no problems with their aspirin. They've been pretty good at making that for about a century now. But their track record with birth control is less than stellar.

Their last foray into the market involved two separate types of pills. One was sold under the name Yasmin and the other was given the shorter and punchier name of Yaz. What these two pills had in common was an ingredient called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin.

With some women who used them, Yaz and Yasmin had an occasional tendency to do other things than prevent pregnancy. It lessened severe forms of acne in some women, and some women lost a little bit of weight as opposed to gaining it (which unfortunately happens with a lot of women on birth control,) and some women stopped suffering from a particularly bad condition called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD.) During an ill-advised marketing campaign, Bayer took these occasional occurrences and made it seem like they would occur for everyone. They also broadened the scope of what these conditions were. "Severe forms of acne" became just regular old "acne," and premenstrual dysphoric disorder became "PMS." These conditions are not the same thing, but that didn't stop the commercials that pretended that they were.

Predictably, Yaz and Yasmin became huge sellers for Bayer. If you are a woman who wants to take birth control pills, we can't imagine that you would be upset about one that prevents PMS, acne, and weight gain.

Exaggerating the benefits is one thing, but failing to mention the other, less positive side effects of Yaz and Yasmin is quite another. There is a risk of blood clotting with practically every birth control pill on the market, but the risk for users of Yaz and Yasmin is significantly higher. We believe the reason for this is the new ingredient in these pills.

Blood clotting is a serious problem. Users of Yaz, Yasmin, and the generic version Ocella started to experience deep vein thrombosis, which is blood clots in the bigger veins in the legs. After awhile, these larger blood clots start to fragment into smaller ones. These smaller clots travel through the blood stream, which leads to things like cardiac arrest, strokes, and pulmonary embolisms. And since the market for Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella was higher than any other birth control pill, and since the risk for blood clotting was higher, you had thousands of otherwise perfectly healthy women being hospitalized or even dying.

So, no, we don't have a lot of confidence in Bayer's ability to make safe birth control. They don't exactly have a stellar track record so far. This is why we have a real problem with Bayer's new birth control product, which is not a pill but an Intrauterine Device. (IUD.)

As far as birth control devices go, IUD's don't have the greatest history either. They require a doctor to put in and take out, and they are prone to infection. So when we heard that Bayer has decided to revisit that particular method, we were more than a little concerned.

And it turns out that our concerns were justified. Bayer released the Mirena IUD, which is meant to provide five years worth of contraception. It's the sort of thing that is meant to be forgotten about.

What is supposed to make Mirena different is that it emits the contraceptive levonorgestrel in addition to the regular contraceptive function of IUD's. Bayer claims that testing proved that the levonorgestrel had no side effects, but that was pretty close to what they said about drospirenone. But even with the added ingredient, what you are ultimately dealing with is an IUD, which we believe to be an inherently unsafe method of birth control.

Here are some of the injuries that women have been experiencing because of complications with their Mirena IUDs:

· Perforation: The Mirena IUD has caused uterine perforation in some of the women who have been using it. The first way is perforation during insertion or removal, and the second is gradual uterine perforation over time.

· Abcesses: These are pus-filled cavities that are lined with inflamed tissues. They can cause infection and chronic pain, and if they occur deep in the body, they can't be seen.

· Ectopic Pregnancy: This is when an egg gets fertilized outside of the uterine cavity.

Bear in mind, these are only some of the reports that are coming through. We wouldn't be surprised to see reports of blood clotting, staph infections or infertility.

We have spent the past few years helping women who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, and we have every intention of helping women in Washington, DC, Virginia and Maryland who have been injured due to using Bayer's Mirena IUD. If you or a loved one has been hurt or hospitalized because of the Mirena IUD, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Greenberg & Bederman Sponsors NAMI

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:30:07 -0500

In helping people obtain their Social Security Disability benefits, we frequently work with individuals living with mental illness. Even claimants who begin a claim with purely physical maladies may wind up dealing with the symptoms of depression or anxiety by the end of a case. Unfortunately, the myths, social stigmas, and effects of mental illness often mean that the people who need help the most are unable or unwilling to get it.

Since 1979, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has been helping erase the stigma of mental illness through education, support, advocacy, and research. They provide a network of support to individuals and families, dispel myths, and help shine light on the issues surrounding mental illness. As a non-profit, NAMI receives most of its support through private donations. One major way they achieve this is through a series of walkathons around the country.

Greenberg and Bederman is proud to be sponsoring the Maryland NAMIWalks in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on May 18, 2013. The Walk will help raise money for the organization to continue its work. It will also help to raise awareness about mental illness.

With one out of every seventeen adults living with a mental illness, and one out of four adults experiencing a mental health disorder in a given year, the odds are you know someone who has been affected by mental illness. We encourage you to join us on May 18 to help NAMI raise money and awareness for this important issue.

Greenberg & Bederman is a personal injury lawfirm located in downtown SIlver Spring, Maryland. Greenberg & Bederman handles social security disability denials, and SSI denials. For a free consultation, please call us at 800-800-1144 and ask for our Social Security Disability attorney ELi Baumwell, or fill out a free consultation form.

Carbon Monoxide Can Kill You

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:34:25 -0500

What’s the most dangerous thing in your house?

If some of you are hunters or gun owners, your mind is probably thinking about guns. And while we fully agree with the fact that a gun can be dangerous, it’s only dangerous if it’s being used or mishandled. When we say dangerous, we mean something that can hurt you or your family without being touched at all.

How about something that you can’t see, smell, or taste, but is capable of poisoning you and your family? It’s called carbon monoxide and lots of things in your house are capable of emitting it.

It’s the fact that you can’t see, taste or smell it, combined with the fact that the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning is getting drowsy and falling asleep, so that makes CO poisoning a fairly popular way for people to take their own lives. They normally park in the garage, shut the door, and start their engines.

Fuel burning heaters, furnaces, water heaters, butane or gas heaters, stoves and gas ovens, central heating systems, and even refrigerators are capable of emitting carbon monoxide if they aren’t maintained properly.

Between the years 1994 and 2007, 16,447 people in the U.S. died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and in that group, 2,361 of those deaths were listed as accidental. You should bear in mind that the “accidental” classification is considered approximate, mainly because the CDC often received incomplete information about the circumstances of the deaths involved.

Regardless, the point is that carbon monoxide is the byproduct of machinery that burns fuel to operate, and we still haven’t figured out how to operate without those.

So what causes accidental carbon monoxide deaths? Leaks.

Leaky vents, pipes, coils and tubes can cause CO to drift into the areas where people live, sleep and breathe. The leak doesn’t have to be particularly big. And since there is no way to smell, see, or taste this gas in the air, the danger is self-explanatory. People can go to sleep and never wake up.

There are some really simple things that you can do to avoid being injured or worse by carbon monoxide poisoning. The first and most obvious one is getting a carbon monoxide detector. Please bear in mind that these are different than smoke detectors. Most store-bought smoke detectors aren’t equipped to detect carbon monoxide, so make sure that you have purchased the right type.

Also make sure that any appliances that you have vent towards the outside if possible. Dryers that are heated with gas springs to mind. You should also make sure that your heating system and appliances are serviced by licensed technicians. Getting a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy can to handle it can be a recipe for disaster.

If you happen to have a fireplace and use it, always make sure to get the chimney cleaned, and use a professional chimney sweep to do it. Also make sure that the flue is open and that the chimney is otherwise unobstructed.

Never use gas powered heat lamps inside. We are referring to the ones that a lot of restaurants are using on their outside patios when the weather gets colder. Even though they don’t emit visible smoke, those heat lamps are emitting carbon monoxide.

Another dangerous thing to do is trying to heat a room by leaving the oven open. Gas emits carbon monoxide, no matter how “clean burning” the natural gas companies claim it to be. Leaving the oven open is a way for CO to get out into the room.

We understand that it is cold outside, and we understand that sometimes people have to get creative in order to stay warm, but make sure you remember that carbon monoxide is a poison.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, DC has been hurt in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Granuflo And Naturalyte Dialysis Deaths and Recall

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:06:46 -0500

If 941 patients died inside a doctor’s office, wouldn’t you think that something was terribly wrong there?

We certainly would. But Fresenius Medical Care didn’t see anything particularly strange about that many patients suffering heart attacks while receiving dialysis treatment in their clinics. Well, they found it strange, but not strange enough to tell anyone.

An internal memo that was leaked on a site called RenalWEB indicated that Fresenius was well aware that there was an increased level of risk with one of the most crucial parts of their treatment. It should be mentioned that Fresenius is an enormous provider of dialysis. They have the most dialysis centers in both America and the world in general.

Dialysis is a way to remove the impurities and toxins that build up in the blood over time. Generally, these are removed when the blood is filtered through the kidneys, but when a person is missing a kidney, the dialysis process is used to help this filtering along.

According to the memo and subsequent reporting in the New York Times, the major problems with the dialysis is an increase in risk of cardiac arrest from Granuflo and NaturaLyte, which are key ingredient in Fresenius’ dialysis process. GranuFlo and NaturaLyte are acid concentrates that become components of dialysate, which is used during hemodialysis treatment to neutralize acid build up in the blood. GranuFlo is a dry acid and NaturaLyte is a liquid formulation.

The increase in risk is by no means miniscule. Reports have shown that the risk of cardiac arrest in dialysis patients using Granuflo and NaturaLyte is six times greater than people who don’t use these products for dialysis.

The Food and Drug Administration administered a recall of Granuflo and NaturaLyte in March of 2012.

There are a few things about this that got our attention. The first is obviously the number of people who suffered cardiac arrest and died in Fresnius offices all over the country. We have no idea how this wasn’t noticed earlier. A much lower casualty list should have been enough to trigger some alarms.

Second, we noticed that these deaths aren’t occurring in some out of the way renal clinic. They are occurring on the premises of the biggest provider of kidney dialysis in the country. To put it in perspective, this would be like a million people getting food poisoning at a big name fast food restaurant chain in franchises all over the country.

We imagine that it is difficult enough to live your life having to go through dialysis on a regular basis, and having to risk cardiac arrest due to faulty medical products during the process makes it even worse. Equally disconcerting is the idea that Fresenius allegedly knew about the increased risk of these products and did nothing to either warn their patients of the increased risk of heart failure or to attempt to fix the problem themselves.

Maybe it was a case of having blinders on. Granuflo and NaturaLyte are two of their biggest selling products, and the idea of having to stop using them was a costly and less profitable one. Maybe Fresenius was able to convince themself that the problem wasn’t as severe as they thought. But 941 deaths on their premises should have opened their eyes.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance to those who have suffered heart attacks or other injuries as the result of dialysis treatment with the Granuflo and NaturaLyte products. Putting out a dangerous product is bad enough, but keeping it on the market after it becomes obvious that the product is dangerous is inexcusable. There are 941 people who were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, and friends who are no longer with us. Greenberg and Bederman are here to help bring justice to their memories.

If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC has suffered a loss due to Granuflo or NaturaLyte, contact Greenberg & Bederman today for a free consultation.

Recall On Wheelchairs That Catch On Fire

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:17:25 -0500

When you think of “manufacturing errors,” what springs to mind for a lot of people is a product that is cheaply made, or one that wears out easily. They think of the difference between, say, a toilet brush that you buy at Home Depot and one that you buy at the Dollar Store.

That isn’t a manufacturing “error” as much as it is “poor manufacturing.” In order to save money, manufacturers use inferior ingredients, or use a modeling plan that doesn’t work as well. But really, if it’s a toilet brush that’s on sale for 50 cents, who’s going to complain about that if it breaks after a month or so?

When we say “manufacturing errors,” we mean errors that can be dangerous to the people who bought that faulty product in good faith. There have been lots of unfortunate examples of those types of mistakes.

A lot of them happen in cars. Just of the top of our head, we can think of a few. There were the cruise control switches in certain Ford models that caused vehicle fires. There were the floor mats in Toyotas that caused the accelerator pedal to remain stuck. There were also problems with the Firestone tires that were on Ford Explorers, which had a tendency to blow out when the car was traveling at high rates of speed.

Equally prevalent (and equally unfortunate) are manufacturing errors in toys and products for infants. Several models of high chairs, cribs, car safety seats and strollers have all had to be recalled because they posed dangers to the babies that used them, and a popular children’s toy like the E-Z Bake Oven had a recall after flaws in one particular model led to children being burned.

Hopefully that illustrates the difference between “cheap” and “errors.” One can be considered an inconvenience, while the other can very much be considered a danger to those who bought the product.

As an example, there is nothing cheap about a motorized wheelchair. The prices range from between $1,600 to $11,000, and there are a few models that cost a great deal more than that. Another thing to consider is that while you might not need an E-Z Bake Oven, those who need wheelchairs really need them. Making, marketing and selling a faulty or dangerous wheelchair is on par with making, marketing and selling a faulty or dangerous baby crib in terms of being important for safety.

And believe it or not, people are making, marketing and selling faulty wheelchairs. And we don’t mean things like wheels getting stuck or short battery life (each of which would be bad enough.) We mean electrical fires.

Can you imagine anything worse happening to a person confined to a wheelchair than for that wheelchair to catch on fire? It’s not like the person in the chair can stand up and move away from the danger.

In April of 2000, a company called Invacare began recalling a great deal of their motorized wheelchairs after more than a few people who used their products were either burned or ended up dying. What is incredibly tragic about these fires is that they could have been prevented had the chairs been equipped with fuses and circuits that cost a little under $1.

Even after this recall, motorized wheelchair fires are still happening, which means that some companies either haven’t updated their technology, or have been putting out outdated and faulty models.

We aren’t electrical engineers, but if we were building electric wheelchairs, we would have two questions:

1: Will this wheelchair catch on fire?

2: Is there any conceivable way that at any point in the future that this wheelchair will catch on fire?

If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” then we wouldn’t put out the wheelchair. We’d like to think that any responsible company on earth would do the same, but apparently we are wrong.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance to anyone in Washington, D.C., Virginia or Maryland who has been injured due to electrical fires in motorized wheelchairs. If you or a loved one has been injured because of a faulty electrical system in a motorized wheelchair, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Understand Maryland PIP Insurance

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:39:43 -0500

When was the last time you actually read your auto insurance policy?

It’s understandable if it has been awhile. It’s also understandable if you have never read it at all. Dense legal jargon is not a fun thing for most people to sort through. But we would recommend taking a bit of time and going through it.

Many of you might not see the need to do so. You probably remember seeing a chart or something when you signed up for your policy online, or maybe you have a pamphlet lying around that can tell you exactly what sort of coverage that you have. But you would be surprised how much people have a tendency to forget once they have actually been in an accident, particularly if they have been injured. In a lot of cases, they end up not only getting short changed, but short changing themselves.

Maryland is a state that requires all auto insurance policies to have what is called “personal injury protection.” While it is true that you can opt to not have PIP in Maryland, you have to be informed and sign a waiver specifically saying that you don’t want it. Most people don’t sign that waiver.

Personal Injury Protection is exactly what it sounds like. It acts a supplement to things that aren’t necessarily covered by a regular auto insurance policy. For instance, while a policy might cover medical bills or property damage, there often isn’t a provision to cover things like lost wages or funeral expenses (in the event that things go as bad as they possibly can.)

The minimum amount of PIP that you can have on your auto policy in Maryland is $2,500, and this can be used by you regardless of whether or not you were responsible for the accident. You can apply for this funding for up to a year after the accident. Once this funding is made available, you can use it for accident related expenses for up to three years.

But here’s how a lot of Maryland accident victims short change themselves. They fail to ask for the PIP benefits. And since insurance companies are never in a hurry to tell you that money is available to you, they rarely remind their policyholders about the PIP coverage. They are hoping that you will either not remember that you have PIP coverage, or that a year will go by before you bring it up.

If you are a Maryland driver and you get into a car accident that causes injury, your first call should be to the insurance company, and your first request should be for your PIP coverage, particularly if you have to spend time in the hospital. Time in the hospital is time spent away from work, which means that that’s money out of your pocket. The bank doesn’t take a break from collecting on your mortgage, the landlord doesn’t take a break from collecting the rent, and the power company doesn’t take a break from charging you, regardless of whether you are in the hospital or not. Personal Injury Protection is meant to supplement your salary, and in Maryland they are supposed to supplement up to 85% of it.

Here is another thing to remember: If your insurance company refuses to offer you your PIP benefits, even if you bring them up within a year after the accident, you should contact an attorney immediately. Sometimes insurers deny coverage because they think you will accept the denial without a whimper, and unfortunately in many cases they are right. Having an attorney on your side will make the insurance company think twice about trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury and car accident law firm in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car accidents due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, DC, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Owe Montgomery County

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:13:56 -0500

When is a government agency not a government agency?

Montgomery County, Maryland and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both have different ideas on the matter, and these differing ideas are currently being resolved by way of a class action lawsuit.

Whenever a mortgage is transferred in Montgomery County, (in other words, whenever a house is bought, or whenever a deed or title is filed with a county record office,) there is a fee that is paid to the County. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a tendency to claim that they were exempt from such taxes, because they believed themselves to be government agencies, which meant that they were exempt from those fees.

This is something that will ultimately be decided by the courts, but it is our opinion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not government agencies. In the first place, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both created by the government, they are known as “government sponsored enterprises” (GSE’s.)

Fannie Mae went about forty years without receiving any government assistance, financial or otherwise, and why would they have needed any? Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac presided over a significant portion of all the mortgages that were taken out during the biggest expansion of middle class prosperity the world has ever seen.

This changed in 2008, when both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took just as much of a beating as all the other non-GSE mortgage companies thanks to the housing market collapse. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned or guaranteed about half of the $12 trillion worth of mortgages in the United States, and when the bill for all of the sub-prime mortgages finally came due in late 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to be bailed out.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell under the conservatorship of the United States Government, specifically the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But again, does this make them “government agencies?”

Again, we believe not. For a brief period of time, the biggest shareholder that General Motors had was the U.S. Government. While that meant that GM was technically the “property” of the U.S. Government, it didn’t make General Motors the Department of the federal government.

And while we are on the subject of shareholders, it should be mentioned that you can go online and purchase stock in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Your shares can raise and lower in value, just like they can with General Motors stock. You cannot go online and buy shares of the IRS, Department of Defense, or the Secret Service.

Government agencies are not allowed to contribute to political campaigns. That would be considered a serious conflict of interest. Yet Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have a long and proud history of donating money to the campaigns of many politicians, and their current stewardship by the government has done nothing to prevent them from continuing to do so.

So what does this have to do with you?

Believe it or not, this has an effect on you if you live in Montgomery County, even if you aren’t a homeowner.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s avoidance of transfer fees means that Montgomery County had to go without tax revenue while still performing the service that it normally received tax revenue for. It means that Montgomery County was essentially working for free. Tax revenue that could have been spent on road improvements, better schools, new teachers or new police officers, or any number of crucial needs went unfunded. In other words, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking from you.

And what if you happened to buy a house or condo in Montgomery County with a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage? Were you charged for a transfer fee, and did Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac then sidestep those fees on the grounds that they were a “government agency?” What happened to that money? Was it given back to you? We suspect that it wasn’t.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cannot have it both ways. They already enjoyed a lot of perks and privileges as a GSE. They were given preferential rates for mortgages, and they were given these rates for the admittedly noble purpose of making it easier for Americans to own homes. But they also profited off of these rates, and, while the market was good, they profited off of the values of their shares. You can’t claim to be a “government agency” when times aren’t as good in order to sidestep taxes, particularly after you experience almost four decades of free-market prosperity.

Greenberg & Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in downtown SIlver Spring, Maryland, one mile from the Washington DC line. We are currently working for Montgomery County to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay its fair share of transfer taxes. We also handle personal injury including car accidents, medical malpractice, and denial of your social security disability benefits. To speak to one of our lawyers for free, please click on free consultation or call us at 1800-800-1144.

AAJ and Greenberg & Bederman On Dram Shop Laws

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:27:37 -0500

We at Greenberg and Bederman are currently representing the family of Jazimen Warr in a case that we believe could have important repercussions for the state of Maryland. It’s a case that needed to be heard, and it addresses a state of affairs in Maryland that we believe to be profoundly unfair.

In 2008, a man named Michael Eaton sat in the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Gaithersburg, Maryland and began to drink. That isn’t a particularly remarkable occurrence. Millions of people all over the country enter bars, pubs, and restaurants on a daily basis and do the exact same thing. But Mr. Eaton sat at this same place and drank for a considerable amount of time, and drank a considerable amount of alcohol.

We don’t stand in judgment of the drinking habits of others. But a lot of bars have a tendency to cut people off after they have had too much to drink. For some reason, the staff at Dogfish Head failed to do anything of the sort. Mr. Eaton finished 17 beers and a few shots of liquor, paid his check, and got up to leave.

Apparently, nobody at Dogfish Head asked Mr. Eaton if he was okay to drive. Nobody offered to call him a cab. Nobody made any move to do anything except take the money that Mr. Eaton was willing to pay for a staggering amount of alcohol.

And why would they? Maryland is one of the few remaining states in the Union that doesn’t have dram shop laws.

Dram shop laws are laws that make alcohol establishments responsible for the conduct of their patrons. Too much alcohol affects the drinker’s emotions, their reflexes, their ability to walk, talk and think. Drunk people have a tendency to do stupid and reckless things when they drink to excess, and dram shop laws hold those who distribute alcohol liable for the actions of their customers.

If a bartender or liquor store owner realizes that he could be held responsible for the actions of someone who drinks too much under their roof, he distributes the alcohol in a more responsible manner. He cuts people off if they’ve had too much. He insists on calling them a cab. He gets proactive about the safety of his customers and the safety of those around them.

The staff at the Dogfish Head Alehouse didn’t have to worry about any of that.

Mr. Eaton got in his car, started the engine, and drove out on to the highway, where he caused an accident that killed 10-year-old Jazimeen Warr and injured three members of her family.

We took this case, knowing full well that the lack of dram shop laws in Maryland would prevent us from filing suit against the owners of Dogfish Head Alehouse. Our intention was to make it clear that the lack of dram shop laws in this state has real consequences for innocent people.

As the case has made its way through the court system, we have had some successes and some setbacks, but each setback has been coupled with encouragement both from the legal system and our colleagues in the legal profession.

We are pleased to announce that Greenberg and Bederman has partnered with the American Association for Justice’s Center for Constitutional Litigation to help with the Warr case, which is currently under appeal in the Maryland courts. Our goal is to reverse the two state precedents, both of which prevent the Warr family from receiving justice, and also absolve bars, restaurants and liquor store owners from any real responsibility as purveyors of alcohol. It is our hope that we can win the case for the Warr family, and also enact real and substantive change in Maryland.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury and car accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes those who have been injured by drunk drivers. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, DC has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Allstate Insurance's Outrageous Behavior

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:19:48 -0500

Insurance companies will cover just about anything under the sun. They will cover individual body parts, they will cover the ransom in the event that you get kidnapped, they will cover paintings, sculptures, comic book collections, you name it.

But the one thing they won’t cover is flooding. We can’t find one insurance company that provides homeowners insurance that will cover surface water damage. They will cover damage from a busted pipe or a leaky faucet, but if the river rises over the banks, or if you live on the coast and a hurricane causes the ocean to come into your neighborhood the insurance companies won’t cover that.

The only way to get flood coverage is to go through the government, which means you have to buy a policy through the National Flood Insurance Program. And since most people live in areas that aren’t prone to flooding, they see no need to buy those policies.

What’s interesting about a lot of these homeowner’s policies is that they will cover wind damage, but not flood damage. So, if a tornado comes and blows your roof off or a storm knocks over a tree which lands on your house, then that will be covered by your insurance policy.

But the funny thing is, hurricanes, such as the one that hit New York and New Jersey a few months back and the one that devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, are a mixture of devastating wind and heavy rain that often leads to floods. So how do insurance companies handle that particular conundrum?

Do they perform a careful analysis on a case-by-case basis? Do they gather testimony from any available eyewitnesses? Do they give the homeowners who have had their homes completely destroyed the benefit of the doubt?

Of course not. Do you have any idea what that sort of thing would cost?

What they normally do is issue blanket denials, and in a lot of cases they have those denials ready before the hurricane even makes landfall. These denials consist of blaming absolutely every conceivable bit of damage that occurred to the property of their policyholders on flood water and nothing else, which means that the cost of cleaning and rebuilding is officially not their problem. If the policyholders have flood insurance, that’s on the governments dime. If the policyholders don’t, well, that’s too bad.

Three days after Hurricane Katrina, insurers were putting out press releases in which they started referring to the disaster as “The Great New Orleans Flood.” This was while people were still living in the Super Dome, and well before any sort of determination on what caused the damage could be made at all. If you go through a lot of the press releases, you would be hard pressed to find the word “hurricane” at all.

Similar things have been happening up in New York and New Jersey, each of which took some serious damage thanks to Hurricane Sandy. Here’s a perfect example:

Sheila and Dominic Traina of New Dorp Beach had evacuated their house as Hurricane Sandy was making its way up the east coast. While they were gone, their neighbor, who had remained behind, called to tell them that the wind had blown the roof off of the house. When the Trainas came back, they found that trees had been blown down and that their house was flattened.

Of course, Allstate blamed the whole thing on a “storm surge,” which is a fancy term for “flood.”

There was an eyewitness to the roof being torn off because of the wind, and there were accounts of trucks and bulldozers pushing wreckage out of the streets and into the yards, and there were fallen trees all over the yard, but the folks at Allstate made no attempts to talk to any of these people. Instead, they offered the Traina’s $10,000. The Traina’s refused that offer and got legal representation.

All of this is bad enough, but to make matters even worse, Allstate had the nerve to actually film one of their heart-warming, “You’re In Good Hands” advertisements directly from the Traina’s ruined living room.

Yes, you read that right. They filmed a commercial about what a great insurance company they are from the living room of a family that they refused to help.

You should not be surprised about this. As injury attorneys practicing in the Washington, D.C. area, we find ourselves in court with insurance companies and their lawyers more often than not. Despite all the talk about being “good neighbors” and being in “good hands,” the main focus of insurance companies is to get away with paying claimants as little as possible, and if possible, to get away with paying nothing at all.

The Traina’s did exactly the right thing by refusing the paltry $10,000 and securing legal representation, and hopefully they will get the funds they will need to rebuild their home.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal representation for those who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and are also offering legal assistance to those who have been denied insurance claims for unfair reasons. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to no fault of their own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for afree consultation today.

Prince William County Lost A Police Officer

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:52:57 -0500

From what we understand of it, being a police officer isn’t how it is portrayed on the screen. Police dramas on television make it seem that it’s all hardboiled detective work where every crime is wrapped up in 48 minutes, with 12 minutes allowed for commercial breaks. But real life is completely different.

For one thing, there isn’t nearly as much gunplay involved. While Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan might have drawn and fired his service weapon every fifteen minutes, many cops go their entire careers without having to even un-holster their guns while in the line of duty.

Nor is there a high speed car chase every other day. Nor are there nightstick swinging brawls with neighborhood toughs on a daily basis. To be sure, these things do happen on occasion, but from what we understand of it, incidents like these are the exception and not the norm.

Police officers use their brains to keep us safe much more often than they have to use any brawn, and that is a perspective of police work that is sadly overlooked when it comes to how they are represented in popular culture.

Cadets who go through police academy training are not just trained in firearms use and unarmed combat classes. They also have to be thoroughly briefed in procedure and the rights of both the citizens that they protect and the criminals that they apprehend.

Whenever a police officer loses his life, the community loses a vital and well- trained asset. It is incredibly tragic when an officer loses his life to violence, but when that happens, all police officers will at least acknowledge that that sort of risk is part of the job. But a police officer dying because of carelessness or recklessness due to the actions of someone who wasn’t paying attention gives new meaning to the word senseless.

By all accounts, Prince William County Police Officer Chris Yung was an exemplary policeman. He died on Monday, December 31^st while he was doing his job. He was responding to a call when a minivan crossed Nokesville Road in front of him. Officer Yung, who was riding a motorcycle, had both his lights and siren on.

We aren’t sure what happened with the driver of the minivan. We aren’t sure how that driver could have possibly missed seeing the flashing lights or hearing the siren, which everybody knows means to pull over immediately. For some reason, the driver of the minivan failed to do so, and now a valued member of both the Prince William County Police Department and the Prince William County community is dead.

Officer Yung was a former Marine who had been with the Prince William Police Department for seven years. He had a wife and three children.

This incident serves as a reminder that car accidents can affect more than just the people involved in it. A mother has lost a husband, three children have lost their father, and Prince William County lost a police officer. And this death didn’t occur due to a firefight or a brawl with criminals. It happened while Officer Yung was doing what he did every day, which was answering a call.

It is a brand new year. Each of us should resolve to drive carefully. That means no texting, no talking on the phone, no fiddling with your iPods, and no drinking and driving. Pay attention to where you are going, check your mirrors, and obey any and all traffic signs and regulations. The roads are populated with more people than just you, and there is no tragedy worse than a preventable tragedy.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those in Virginia, Maryland, or Washington, DC who have been injured in car accidents due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been hurt in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman today for a free accident consultation.

Understanding Negligence Defense

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:44:45 -0500

Every year, the American Tort Reform Association releases a list of states that they refer to as “judicial hellholes.” That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? It brings to mind the sort of place where million dollar lawsuits are filed over stubbed toes, or suits for hundreds of thousands of dollars for emotional distress over an order that the guy behind the counter at Arby’s got wrong.

Believe us when we tell you that it is nothing of the sort. Basically, a “judicial hellhole” is a state with a court system that has the utter temerity to rule in ways that do not benefit the financial backers of the American Tort Reform Association.

This year’s cities, states and jurisdictions who have been listed as “hellholes” are California, West Virginia, Madison County, Illinois, New York City, Albany, New York and Baltimore, Maryland. (Speaking as attorneys who have participated in more than a few cases in Baltimore, we can tell you that it is no more or less fair than any other jurisdiction in Maryland.)

Cities, states, and jurisdictions that have not made the official “hellhole” list but are still on what is called a “watch list” include Philadelphia, South Florida, Cook County, Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada and Louisiana.

If you go over the report, most of the cases that have the ATRA up in arms are class action lawsuits, which are the sort that are almost always filed against large corporations, but there are some other things that bother them too. One aspect that bothers them about Maryland is the current challenge to our state’s contributory negligence law.

For those of you who don’t know what contributory negligence means, it means that if one person injures another, and it can be proven that the injured party was at least partially responsible for getting himself injured, then the person who did the injuring will not be 100% percent liable for the damages.

Here is an example: Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that a guy drinks a pint and a half of scotch and decides to go for a jog down the middle of the street. If (or really when) he gets hit by a car, the driver who hit the drunk guy could possibly not be held liable for the drunk guys injuries. In this hypothetical case, the person who was negligent was the guy who got drunk and stumbled down the middle of the road.

In most states, their negligence defense laws make a little more sense that those in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. Most states deal with cases of contributory negligence in a fair way, meaning they take the entire case into account and assign percentages of blame to each person. For example, if a person is walking down the sidewalk and takes out his phone to send a text message and one foot comes off the sidewalk, and at the same time a driver who is texting while driving swerves into the pedestrian, you can make the argument that both people contributed to the incident in some way, but ultimately the driver was more at fault than the pedestrian. What the pedestrian did was unwise, but what the driver did was illegal. A case like this would probably assign most of the blame to the driver. This blame sharing is called comparative negligence. In our texting example, the driver may have been 90% at fault, and the walker would have been 10% at fault. In Maryland, DC or Virginia, the walker would not be able to sue the driver, for even if he or she is 1% at fault, the defense of contributory negligence is claimed, leaving the walker without remedy. The pedestrian would get no compensation for injuries.

Our region makes up three of the five states that currently have the 1% rule. The rest of the country views 1% contributory negligence rules as completely stone-aged, so it stands to reason that the ATRA isn’t a big fan of Maryland considering getting rid of it, particularly when you consider that most of the major insurance giants are big financial contributors to ATRA. As attorneys who have represented injury victims in Maryland, Virginia and D.C., we can tell you that insurance companies absolutely love the 1% rule, as it relieves them of financial responsibilities.

You should always question what ATRA says not with just a grain but with at least a tablespoon full of salt. They are concerned with profit margins of big business, and that’s about it. Attorneys like those that work at Greenberg and Bederman are concerned with your well being, and with trying to secure adequate compensation for those who are injured.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been hurt in an accident due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

2012 SSI Limits

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:50:00 -0500

2012 is drawing to a close. What can Social Security recipients look forward to in 2013? Every year, the Social Security Administration adjusts the benefits of recipients of Social Security to account for inflation.

The Cost-of-Living Adjustment (or COLA) for 2013 is 1.7 percent. For individuals receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) may now receive up to $710 per month. An eligible spouse may now get up to $1,066. Although barely enough to make ends meet, it’s a step in the right direction.

2013 may be an important year for the COLA. Over the past 10 years the annual COLA has averaged about 2.4%/year. It was as high as 5.8% in 2009, and 0% in both 2010 and 2011. However, under new proposals to change how the COLA is calculated, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated the COLA would average about 0.3%/year.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we will continue to monitor and report on any changes to the Social Security Administration and its programs. Regardless of any changes, we stand ready to help disabled claimants get the benefits they need and deserve.

For a free consultation, please contact Greenberg & Bederman today and ask to speak to ourSSI lawyer, Eli Baumwell.