Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

The Waiting Might Get Shorter in Maryland

As we have mentioned before, there are some very specific and important advantages that insurance companies have over their policyholders. They have money, and they have time. These are things that many of us possess to a certain degree, but most of us certainly don’t have insurance company time and money.

For instance, if any of us get injured in a car accident, it usually goes without saying that we could use that insurance money as soon as possible. There is rent or the mortgage payment to worry about. There are utilities, groceries, and any number costs that we all accumulate in day to day life. The last thing anyone needs is a delay in getting that insurance settlement.

Unfortunately, those delays happen more often most of us would like, and they often happen on purpose. Insurance companies rarely simply receive a bill and then send a check. They haggle, they deny, they make a list of what they will and will not pay for, and then they offer you what they think is reasonable rather than what is fair.

Rarely do these payments cover all of the expenses that injury victims incur, and often the victim is left with the option of either taking less money than they should, or having to go to court. This is when the “waiting” aspect comes in, and this wait never works to the advantage of the injured. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite.

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Personal Injury Lawyers Who Advertise

As injury attorneys who serve the Maryland, Virginia and D.C. area, we at Greenberg and Bederman have been very fortunate in that our practice has grown exponentially since we started it in 1985, although both Roger Greenberg and Andrew Bederman have been practicing lawyers long before 1985. Greenberg & Bederman has provided thousands of injury victims in Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Alexandria, Arlington, Adams Morgan, Fairfax and all points in between with dedicated legal counsel. We have helped those who have been injured due to no fault of their own receive fair and decent compensation for their injuries, when otherwise they most likely would have received either nothing or an amount that would have been incredibly unfair.

The process of building our practice into a successful one was not something that happened over night. It took time to build a client base and establish ourselves as trusted, highly rated injury lawyers. But just under twenty five years later, we are pleased with the results of our work on behalf of the injured, and we look forward to continuing that work for the foreseeable future. We are also proud of the fact that we built our practice the right way. There are, unfortunately, some attorneys who pull out all the stops in order to get as many clients as they can, regardless of whether or not those methods fall within the boundaries of ethics or even good taste. We are proud to say that we obtain clients through smart and creative marketing, word of mouth, and reputation within the legal community, rather than using some of the more aggressive and less tasteful tactics.

Advertising: We have spots marketing our services on the radio and on television. We are willing to bet that you have seen or heard them. In these spots, we tell people what it is that we do and tell them how we might be able to help them. There are also spots that feature the testimonials of clients whom we have represented successfully. We also have a channel on YouTube, in which these spots are readily available for viewing at any time.

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Automobiles have dozens of safety features built right in. Seatbelts and airbags are standard on practically every vehicle on the current market. Cars have anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, and steering wheels that collapse in the event of a car accident.

Driving cars has become much easier as well. There is power steering, power brakes, GPS systems that tell you exactly where you are going, and cruise control for highway driving, which allows you to maintain a rate of speed automatically without putting your foot on the gas.

Most vehicles have fairly expansive entertainment systems, with CD players and docks for an iPod or mp3 player, while some of the higher end vehicles come equipped with DVD players and television screens.

But what none of these cars have is the ability to drive themselves, and that seems like it should be a priority for the Research and Development departments of automakers. The reason that we believe this is a necessity is because these days, drivers are so distracted with CD players, GPS systems, DVD players, iPods and cell phones that they are paying attention to everything except keeping their cars on the road.

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Choosing the Right Attorney

The recent DC Metro Red Line crash has been on everybody’s mind lately, and for good reason. It isn’t often that a disaster of such magnitude hits the D.C. area. The last real catastrophic event that occurred in our area was when the plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

Although the train crash where nine were killed and so many were injured was certainly a terrible event, we can at least take some solace in the fact that nine years between major disasters is an admirable span of time for any major metropolitan area, particularly one as politically charged as ours.

In the aftermath of any accident, victims and their loved ones are usually worried about basic things. They worry about their medical treatment, if and when they will get better, and if and when they will be able to get back to work. The idea of lawsuits and legal representation falls quite far down the list of immediate priorities, and we think that is entirely right and proper.

The decision to file a lawsuit should rest entirely on the victims, and they should not be pressured or connived into filing suit in any way.  An attorney who contacts an injury victim in the immediate aftermath of an accident is, ethically speaking, just as bad as an insurance adjuster who visits an injury victim in the hospital and attempts to get him to sign away his rights. But behavior of this sort on the part of attorneys is not only ethically wrong; it is also against the law.

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NTSB Report: Too Little Too Late

The government of the United States has any number of agencies that are experts at coming in when it is already too late.

Consider the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. Whenever there is a disaster, either natural or man-made, FEMA comes in and offers assistance and monitors rescue and clean up efforts. Sometimes they perform their tasks admirably and sometimes they don’t, as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina showed us in too vivid detail.

There is also the Securities and Exchange Commission, which prosecutes investors and other financial professionals who engage in fraud and insider trading. They were featured prominently in the investigation of Bernard Madoff, a financier who was recently convicted of running what was nothing more than a billion dollar pyramid scheme.

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“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, what sound does it make?”

That’s an old Zen Buddhist koan (or fable) that is meant to be used as an intellectual exercise. The idea is to ask an unanswerable question, which is supposed to send your mind into a transcendental state.

A version of this koan also appears to be a defense strategy for a law firm in Maryland. It goes like this:

“If a five year old boy drowns in a pool and nobody saw it, did he suffer?”

Whether that strategy sends the minds of a jury into a transcendental state remains to be seen, but we are of the opinion that drowning is a horrible and painful way for someone to lose his life, regardless of whether there are witnesses to that suffering or not.

On June 22^nd, 2006, a five year old boy named Connor Freed went swimming with two friends and an adult at the Crofton Country Club. The adult who was in charge of watching him removed Connor’s life jacket so the child could use the bathroom. The adult continued to watch the other two boys. Unbeknownst to the adult, Connor came out of the bathroom and ended up in the crowded pool without his life jacket, where he drowned.

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Tort reform organizations often paint a very erroneous picture when it comes to injury settlements. They make it seem that every stubbed toe is worth a million dollars, or that getting insulted or getting your feelings hurt is practically a guarantee of an enormous financial settlement.

As personal injury attorneys who practice in the Washington, D.C. area, we can tell you with great certainty that that is not the case. While we do our best to secure the most compensation for injuries that we can for our clients, getting to that point is not the walk in the park that the tort reformers describe.

There is an important aspect to injury verdicts or settlements which many people are unaware, and this is that quite often, an injury settlement has strings attached. It is not simply a big bag of money or an enormous cardboard check that is handed over to the victim as soon as he or she walks out of the courtroom. For one thing, your insurance company might need to be paid.

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This is a true story that Greenberg & Bederman is sharing that happened to a colleague of ours to illustrate yet another reason our country is in a healthcare crisis.

Back in 2003, I got sick.

I know that isn’t the most earth-shattering of statements. Everybody gets sick, after all. But I got VERY sick.

At the time, I had just gotten out of college and was struggling to find a job. In order to pay the bills I began substitute teaching, which meant that every day I was sent into a different classroom full children, with the age ranging anywhere from 5 to 17. On occasion I would end up in a high school, but for the most part my duties would involve looking after grade school students.

Young children, as many of you who are parents may know, are quite susceptible to illness and infections. And considering that I was a bachelor in his twenties, I can tell you with great certainty that my immune system wasn’t exactly operating at its peak performance. So within three weeks of starting my substitute teaching duties, I got a sore throat.

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