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

There is usually a great deal of talk from both sides of the political spectrum about a phenomenon called “judicial activism.” This phenomenon is also called “legislating from the bench.” It’s usually spoken about with derision.

Essentially, what this means is when a state or federal court makes a ruling that either negates or enhances existing laws. It also applies when a court rules in such a way that the ruling has consequences that affect many more people than those involved in the case before the court. Whether this is considered a good thing or a bad thing generally depends on who you ask and when you ask them. Democrats and liberals, for instance, would argue that the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling (which allows unlimited and anonymous spending on political advertisements from anyone who wants to spend the money) was judicial activism, primarily because most of them vehemently oppose unlimited money in politics. On the other side of the coin, many conservatives and Republicans would argue that a case like Griswold v Connecticut was judicial activism, because the ruling turned what was supposed to be a case on the legality of birth control into a broader ruling on the right to privacy. We hope this doesn’t sound too cynical, but it seems to us that in many cases, “judicial activism” is political shorthand for “judges that did not rule the way we wanted them to.”

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We’ve always disagreed with the reasoning for caps on damages for medical malpractice cases. It’s been our contention that they are unfair, arbitrary, and don’t accomplish much of anything except offer unnecessary protections to insurance companies.

Texas has some particularly harsh restrictions. Awhile back we wrote a piece on how caps on medical malpractice damages aren’t doing anything but pricing victims out of the courtroom. And while that aspect of the law is bad enough, there is also another element of the law down there that is keeping victims of medical malpractice from getting to court at all.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you hire a plumber to fix a leaky pipe. Let’s  say that he doesn’t do his job well, and his shoddy work causes other leaks in your house, with the end result being tens of thousands of dollars in water damage. You take this plumber to court. The plumber’s entire argument in his defense is that he “didn’t mean to” cause all of that damage. Based on this argument, the judge rules in his favor.

This sounds like a completely bizarre argument.  A drunk driver certainly “didn’t mean to” cause an accident with fatalities, but he did anyway. A teenager texting while driving “didn’t mean to” hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but he did anyway. There is no conceivable way that “I didn’t mean to” should be a valid excuse in court of law.

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It is has officially been the Holiday season for about three weeks now, and we here at Greenberg and Bederman would like to extend our warmest wishes to you and yours. It is certainly nice to spend a few days of the year focusing on family and friends rather than all of the other concerns that seem to take up so much of everyone’s time. This is particularly true in the Washington, D.C. area, where work seems to take precedence over everything.

But while we encourage everyone to relax and enjoy themselves over the holidays, we would also urge everyone to exercise a modicum of caution. We’ve been reading a few statistics and reports, and we have come to the conclusion that the holiday season can be dangerous.

Accidents happen or are caused all the year around, but there seems to be a strange category of Holiday related injuries that happen every year. From falls to drunk driving to burns in fires to specifically bizarre occurrences, the spike in visits to the emergency room or worse appears to be fairly constant year after year. We thought it would be useful to share some of these statistics with you so that you might take a few simple precautions.

What follows is some information about Holiday injuries.

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We aren’t big believers in the idea that accidents simply “happen.” To be sure, there are certainly instances that can be called “acts of God.” If a gust of wind blows a moving car over, you can’t say that anyone is at fault there. Or if somebody gets struck by lightning out of the clear blue sky, there would be no conceivable way to lay the blame on anyone. Sometimes, things just happen.

But as injury lawyers in Washington, D.C, it has been our experience that most accidents are “caused.” Somebody makes a poor decision, or somebody neglects to perform an expected task, or somebody acts without thinking about the consequences, and the end result is that someone gets hurt or worse. You can’t really call an instance of negligence by a doctor “an accident.” Nor can you call it “an accident” when a driver hits a pedestrian in the crosswalk because he was texting while driving.

Another thing that isn’t an accident is continuing to serve a patron alcohol after he has already had enough to be visibly intoxicated.  It’s hard to make the argument that you didn’t know that there would be potential harmful effects if you served a patron close to twenty drinks over the course of an evening and then didn’t even bother to try to call him a cab.

In many states, there are laws in place that hold establishments that serve alcohol liable for any damage that might be caused if their patrons get drunk and behave irresponsibly. These are called Dram Shop Laws. There are limits to these laws, of course. For instance, if a man walks into a bar after drinking heavily elsewhere and only orders one drink, and that man shows no visible signs of being drunk, it could be argued that there was no way for the bartender to know what the customer had been doing before entering the establishment. Bartenders have many talents and capabilities, but telepathy is not one of them.

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When you consider how casually we used to use lead, it seems to be a miracle that more people weren’t killed. We used to use lead based paint. We used to put lead in our gasoline. There used to be toys made of lead. We can even remember a toy kit that was sold with lead and a miniature soldering gun that actually worked. Lead used to be used in the glass making process. Lead used to be part of practically everything we used.

In hindsight, we probably should have picked a better substance to work with, because lead is actually quite dangerous. The problem is that when you are surrounded by it, it is quite easy to ingest into your body. Lead is one of the softer metals, and it can very easily turn into dust. Particles can break away from larger pieces. And these particles can easily find their way into your food or water. And the results can be disastrous.

Lead interferes with body processes and is toxic to most of the organs in your body. And since it’s a heavy metal, once it is in your bloodstream it has a tendency to stay there. Lead can accumulate in your system over time, and the more you ingest into your body, the worse the effects can get. Heavy exposure to lead can cause severe impairment to mental development in children. At its most extreme levels, lead poisoning can kill you.

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