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

The presiding judge over the case quite rightly threw the case out of court, claiming in his statement:

“In this case . . . while the challenged packaging contains the word "berries" it does so only in conjunction with the descriptive term "crunch." This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a "crunchberry." Furthermore, the "Crunchberries" depicted on the [box] are round, crunchy, brightly-colored cereal balls, and the [box] clearly states both that the Product contains "sweetened corn & oat cereal" and that the cereal is "enlarged to show texture." Thus, a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into believing that the Product in the instant case contained a fruit that does not exist.”

As we said before, you probably won’t remember her name, but you will certainly remember her lawsuit. Ms. Sugawara will probably be known as “The Crunch Berry Lady,” and she will be lumped in with “The McDonalds Coffee Cup Lady” and the “Million Dollar Pants Guy.” She will be offered up as Exhibit A by tort reform organizations every time they are pushing for restrictions on the rights of regular citizens to go to court. In all probability, this ridiculous case will be offered up as proof that the system is somehow “broken.”

We would argue quite the opposite. We think that had the case been allowed to continue, then maybe the tort reformers would have a point. (In which case, the makers of “grape” and “orange” flavored soda would have had to seriously rethink the titles of their beverages.) But it wasn’t allowed to continue. It was recognized as ridiculous and thrown out.

One aspect of the tort reformers beliefs that we find profoundly troubling is that they seem to believe that you somehow need to QUALIFY in order to have access to the courts. They seem to believe that the only lawsuits that are important are theirs. Lawsuits that involve injuries and illnesses and poorly manufactured and dangerous products are considered bad for business and a waste of time. And we find that very hypocritical, because insurers, HMO’s, pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of all shapes and sizes (in other words, those who fund and vocally support tort reform organizations) spend a great deal of time in court on the plaintiffs side of the judge’s bench.  Yet no one is suggesting that these lawsuits are somehow a waste of time, or “frivolous.”

Our court system is not a country club. It is not available for some and not others. It exists to make sure that ALL of our citizens have a legal venue to settle their grievances, be they rich or poor, black or white, liberal or conservative. And yes, there are lawsuits that are ridiculous, but what do the tort reformers propose? Only allowing lawsuits that involve millions of dollars? Warring CEO’s fighting over billion dollar percentage points in a merger are okay but someone breaking their leg on an unmarked wet floor is not?

Justice is blind, not wearing an Yves St. Lauren pantsuit and checking her stock portfolio. Our laws apply equally to everyone. Try to remember that before you sign a petition or vote for a ballot initiative that keeps you from getting your day in court.

To learn more about personal injury and tort reform issues, please read personal injury.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, Andrew Bederman, Roger Greenberg, or Jason Fernandez, please read their bios, or view our personal injury videos at Youtube.

In 2007, a Washington, D.C. administrative judge by the name of Roy Pearson filed a lawsuit against a dry cleaning service that misplaced a pair of his pants. The lawsuit was for the staggering sum of $67 million, which Judge Pearson later graciously lowered to $54 million.

The case became a cause célèbre among tort reform organizations, offering it up as a perfect example as to why our court system was, as they put it, broken. Believe it or not, as ridiculous as that lawsuit was, we view it as a perfect example as to how our system works.

Of course there are frivolous lawsuits. They are filed every day. But bear in mind that the great majority of these lawsuits are rarely represented by legitimate attorneys, and they are very rarely even allowed to proceed. Many of them are filed by people who are mentally disturbed, and many of them are filed by people who have only the faintest idea as to how the system works. The only reason Judge Pearson’s case was allowed to actually see the light of day and get to a courtroom was because he was, after all, an administrative judge. He knew the rules, he knew how to frame his argument so that his request for such an insane amount of money seemed justifiable in a strictly legal sense, and he knew how to fill out the right paperwork.

But just because he knew how to follow the rules didn’t make his case anymore valid, and when he actually got his case in front of a judge, not only did he lose, but the judge ordered him to pay the legal bills of the dry cleaner that he sued. Again, since he knew the rules, he filed for an appeal, but again, since the case was ridiculous and overblown, the appeal was denied.

The only way that the tort reform argument that the “system is broken” would be proven true is if Judge Pearson had actually won. He did not. And since the judge that heard the original case ruled that the defendants legal bills must be paid for, the family that owned the dry cleaning service will be reimbursed for the amount of money that they had to pay their lawyers. And on top of that, Judge Pearson was released from his position. If that isn’t a sign that the system works, it’s hard to say what would.

Predictably, tort reform groups jumped on this case and milked it for all the publicity they could get. Rare cases like these are, after all, the reason that these organizations get up in the morning. By stoking public outrage (which in Roy Pearson’s case was completely justifiable,) groups like the ATRA hope to gain support for their ideas, which almost always involve restrictions to the access of everyday people to our court system, or artificial limits to the amount of damages that they can receive, whether those damages could be considered reasonable or not.

Tort reform groups don’t just limit themselves to the cases that are overblown. They also underemphasize the damages received by real victims and distort the reasoning behind their lawsuits.

Probably one of the most pilloried legal cases in the past twenty years was the case of Stella Leibeck, who sued McDonalds over what people perceived to be the spilling of a mere cup of coffee, but in actuality was a lawsuit over third degree burns, a week’s stay in the hospital, skin grafts, and the refusal of McDonalds to even help with the medical bills. But as far as the tort reform groups are concerned, this was the story of a woman who simply spilled a little coffee and got millions of dollars for it.

If you take the tort reform people at their word, it almost makes sense. People spill coffee on themselves all the time and are none the worse for it. Some of you reading this might have spilled coffee on yourselves today, yet nobody is presenting you with checks for millions.

But the facts of the case don’t bear out this narrative. For one thing, McDonalds made it a practice to heat their coffee about twenty degrees hotter than anyone else. The water was hotter, and the hotplates that kept the pots heated were more powerful. If you think twenty degrees in temperature doesn’t matter, try dipping a toe in the bathtub when it is filled with eighty degree water, and then try it with one hundred degree water. You’ll notice the difference.

It should also be mentioned that the McDonald’s Corporation knew perfectly well that their coffee was too hot. There had been hundreds of cases of people being scalded by hot coffee that were in fact settled financially by McDonald’s prior to Ms. Leibeck.

Ms. Leibeck’s did not simply stain her sweatpants with spilled coffee. She dumped 8 ounces of 185 degree liquid directly into her lap, which was hot enough to cause third degree burns. The coffee from your coffee maker at home isn’t nearly that hot. Nor is the coffee at Starbucks, or 7-11, or Dunkin Donuts, or Caribou Coffee.

What is important to note is that Ms. Leibeck did not immediately file suit against McDonald’s. She simply asked them to pay for the medical bills, which were quite substantive considering that she had to endure skin grafts and stay in the hospital for a week. McDonald’s refused to even consider helping her. It was only after being faced with tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills that Ms. Leibeck contacted an attorney.

After hearing the facts of the case, as well as hearing that McDonald’s knew full well that their coffee was too hot, the jury sided with Ms. Leibeck. This decision was not left in the hands of some broken and unfair “system,” but rather by twelve people picked at random from the populace. In other words, people like you or me.

She didn’t even get that supposed “million dollars” that the “million dollar coffee case” was supposed to be about. An appellate judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. And bear in mind that the punitive damages in this case, or in fact any other case, do not exist to simply make people rich. If you could have asked Ms. Leibeck, she probably would have rather not have been burned at all. But the point of punitive damages is to penalize a corporation in the only way that matters to them, which is in their pocketbooks.

Remember, there had been hundreds of incidents of coffee scaldings at McDonald’s, and they had simply settled them. They did some arithmetic and decided that it would be cheaper to just cut a check and have people sign a waiver rather than get new hotplates and lower the temperature of their coffee. Hitting them with punitive damages was simply a legal way of letting McDonald’s know that that practice was not going to be acceptable anymore. And it worked. McDonald’s coffee isn’t brewed and heated at 180 degrees anymore, and scaldings are rare, if not nonexistent. And it cost McDonald’s less than one days worth of profit from coffee.

Is that “frivolous?” Is that an “outrage?” Is that “ridiculous?” Or is it a citizen using our court system to both address her personal damages and to help rectify a situation that was dangerous to others? But the tort reform organizations don’t mention that. They say “What about that crazy judge, huh? That’s almost as bad as the woman with the million dollar coffee. You know what we need? Damage caps. Damage caps and restrictions on lawsuits. That should fix everything.”

To learn more about personal injury issues, please read our personal injury law page.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please read about Roger Greenberg, Andrew Bederman, or Jason Fernandez, or contact Greenberg & Bederman for afree consultation.

While the resulting economic collapse has been profoundly destructive to the overall wealth of Americans everywhere, the incident at AIG has at least provided everyone with proof of how insurance companies operate financially, and what their real motives are when they engage in bad faith tactics.

The common assumption among many Americans is that insurance companies take your monthly premium and place it in a vault for safe keeping, so they will have it on hand in the event that you get into a car accident, or your house burns down, or you get sick.

That isn’t how it works at all.

Insurance companies are only required to keep a certain percentage of their premium income on hand to cover the needs of their policyholders. This amount of money is called “the reserve,” and the percentage levels of the reserve are miniscule in proportion to the amount of money that they take in. The rest of the money goes to operating costs, advertising, salaries, incidentals, and, of course, investment.

Which brings us back to things like subprime mortgage based securities and 180 billion dollar bailouts.

Normally, when the investment margins of insurance companies take a nose dive, the general practice is for them to raise the premium rates to make up the difference. A rise in insurance rates normally has very little to do with an increase in accident rates or money paid out in settlements.

For instance, in the early part of this decade, insurance companies who underwrote medical malpractice policies increased the rates on their policyholders, so much so to the point that many doctors began to despair of being able to afford to keep practicing medicine. The insurance industry as a whole manufactured a Public Relations offensive that was called “The Medical Malpractice Crisis,” where the culprits were “frivolous lawsuits” and “greedy trial lawyers”, despite the fact that there were no meaningful increases in malpractice lawsuits, settlements, or judgments against doctors.

But this time around, the scope of the financial loss is too large and too public for the usual scapegoats to work. A token swipe at “greedy trial lawyers” is not going to be sufficient here.

The money that AIG has is on loan from the U.S. Government, and the main thrust of that money is going to be dedicated toward fixing the damage to the retirement portfolios of Americans. That means the pressure is going to be on the other branches of AIG to become more profitable so AIG can right its financial ship that much faster.

What we predict is that if you have a claim filed with an AIG subsidiary, you can expect the settlements offers to be lower, more treatments to be deemed “voluntary” or “unnecessary,” and denials to come more frequently. And you can expect other insurance companies to follow suit. After all, AIG isn’t the only one who had a bundle in the stock market.

This is why it is more important than ever to have your accident or injury claim looked at by experienced attorneys. Insurers will be pulling out all the stops to recoup their losses, and injury victims everywhere will need someone on their side to help them receive fair treatment.

The law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has been serving the injured of the D.C. Metropolitan area for more than twenty years, and what has made our practice successful is our ability to get our injured clients past the standard games and denials of insurance companies. If you or a loved one in Maryland, the District, Northern Virginia or Baltimore has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about auto accident claims, please read our auto accident page or watch our video by Jason Fernandez.  To learn more about personal injury claims, please read our personal injury page, or watch our video by Andrew Bederman..

"Case of the Flying Shrimp of Death"

Defendant’s Spin:

A Long Island widow claimed that her husband’s death resulted from an injury sustained while dodging a piece of flying shrimp at the Japanese steakhouse Benihana. The man’s widow alleged he injured his neck while trying to avoid a hot shrimp playfully tossed at him by a table-side hibachi chef at Benihana, the Japanese steakhouse chain, that the neck injury required an operation, that an apparent infection necessitated another procedure and ten months after dodging the shrimp, he was dead of a blood-borne infection.
 

Actual Argument:

Certainly, no one would find fault with someone attempting to dodge an object flung directly at them, whether that object is a shrimp or a rock. Even though Benihana is supposed to be "a fun place to eat" I certainly do not think that "fun" includes having food thrown directly at me. If I wanted that, I could go eat dinner with my cousin’s family (3 boys under the age of 8). The basis for this case being deemed frivolous undoubtedly stems from the injuries suffered as a result. The man hurt his neck when he jerked it to dodge the wayward crustacean. In American tort law, we have the doctrine of the "eggshell Plaintiff." This doctrine holds that a defendant is responsible for a plaintiff’s injuries even if that particular person was more susceptible to injuries than the average person. In short, we injure someone, you take them as they are – injurer beware! The man may have been more susceptible to neck injuries. He suffered an injury that required an operation. It is well settled in American law that should an injury require surgical correction, the defendant assumes all risks inherent in surgery, including death. This is merely a case of the comedy (the fact it was a shrimp as opposed to any other object) hiding the tragedy of the circumstance. Without the neck injury, the man would not have needed surgery. If he had not had surgery, he would not have died of a blood-borne infection.
 

To learn more about personal injury, pleasee see our website at personal injury law.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please click on personal injury lawyers maryland, and read our firm bios on Andrew Bederman, Roger Greenberg, or Jason Fernandez.