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

You might be asking yourself if this is the accumulation of years of drivecam video footage, considering how many incidents there are. In fact, these are just the noteworthy clips from July to August of 2011. That’s two months with over 150 “incidents.”

We have talked about the various problems with the public transportation available in the D.C. area. Chiefly, we talk about Metro. There are all sorts of smaller public transportation systems available in Maryland and Virginia, but none of them even proportionately come close to having the appalling safety record that exists with the bus system in Metro. It isn’t exactly a secret that there are many bus accidents in D.C. WMATA apparently aren’t very good at getting them off the road and out of the system. For instance, here is a list of the offenses and “punishments” of a particularly bad Metro bus driver: (Bear in mind, the following list falls under “alleged,” but the sources at this website are usually quite reliable.)

• Hired as a bus driver and is involved in an accident
• Gets "fired"
• Gets reinstated as a bus driver
• Gets "fired" again for another accident
• Gets transferred to become a TRAIN OPERATOR! (Safety first)
• Accumulates enough infractions (wrong side doors, platform overshoots, running signals) to be disqualified from ever being a train operator again
• Becomes the face of Metro as a station manager and as such:
• Gets a 5-day suspension for disrespecting a Metro Police Officer
• Gets a 5-day suspension for using a cell phone while on duty
• Gets a 5-day suspension for regularly taking 2-3 hour lunch breaks
• Gets a 10-day suspension for locking someone in the station after closing (This was overturned because Metro lost, or couldn't find, the film from the video cameras at the station.)
• Gets a 12-day suspension for falling asleep on the job after his picture was posted on this blog. (He apparently successfully fought that punishment off after going to the doctor and afterward claiming he had sleep apnea. The other station manager pictured claimed the same thing and got off as well, the source said.)
• But none of that mattered because he took several months of disability leave after "spraining" his ankle.

Again, this is an alleged list. But if it is true, it is absolutely appalling.

Getting hit by a car is bad. Getting hit by a bus is infinitely worse. A city bus is an enormous, and it carries a lot more weight and momentum than even the largest of SUV’s. A bus that is only traveling at a few miles an hour is capable of doing enormous damage to a human being. We know that, so it goes without saying that WMATA officials know that as well. Why it is they continue to allow unsafe operators to arrive in the system is beyond us. We can only hope they get their act together before more people get hurt or worse.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident law firm. We offer legal counsel to those who have been injured by being hit by a car, truck or city bus. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been hurt by public transportation due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today. 

The Fortuna Police Department, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol have been working together between Dec. 16 and Jan. 2 to arrest anyone caught driving while drunk. DUI/driver's license checkpoints, multi-agency DUI task force deployments and roving DUI patrols are scheduled statewide during the Winter Holiday Anti-DUI Campaign. Checkpoints are placed in locations that have the greatest opportunity for deterring drunk or drugged driving.

It is difficult to fathom why it is that so many people continue to think that they can drink and drive. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all the terrible and real examples of what can happen to someone when he gets behind the wheel of a car after he has been drinking.

Drinking and driving accidents already happen with alarming frequency in this country, with one drunken driving accident happening every three minutes on average, and with one drunken driving fatality happening every 40 minutes.

Our area isn’t exactly the worst in the country when it comes to this sort of thing. D.C. is actually listed as the place with the 2^nd best environment in terms of a lack of drunken driving fatalities and multiple offenders, but considering that size of Washington, D.C, that might not be a fair comparison. Virginia and Maryland are pretty firmly in the center of the pack, listed at 23^rd best environment and 26^th best environment, respectively.

For instance, Virginia had 211 DUI traffic fatalities last year, which is 29% of all the traffic fatalities in the state. But this number represents a 13% decline in the number of traffic fatalities. Maryland had 154 DUI fatalities, which is 31% of all traffic fatalities. Maryland also has a pretty large number of repeat offenders on the roads, with over 25,000 drivers with three DUI’s, and just under 4,000 drivers with five DUI’s. (Clearly, some Maryland drivers have not learned any sort of lesson from their experiences with the Maryland legal system. Virginia keeps information about repeat offenders confidential, but if the overall rank is better than Maryland’s, you can make the assumption that there are less repeat offenders on the roads. However, since the overall rankings aren’t that different, you have to imagine that there are at least comparable levels going on between the states.

Nobody can use the excuse that they weren’t aware of the fact that drinking and driving is both dangerous and illegal. There has been no shortage of studies and evidence of the dangers, and there has been no shortage of publicity on the fact that it is illegal. We can only conclude that your average drunk driver has an entirely misguided sense of optimism. “This won’t happen to me.”

It’s the wrong mindset to have, particularly because it isn’t just the drunk driver who is put in danger. Quite often, people get struck and injured or killed by drunk drivers, and these people had the common sense to not drink and drive. People who drink and drive not only seem to deny that there will be any consequences for themselves, but also not any for anyone else. This theory never seems to bear out.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have offered legal assistance to the victims of drunken driver accidents since 1985, and our attorneys have been helping victims of Maryland, Virginia and D.C. If you or a loved one has been hit and injured due to the actions of a drunken driver over the holidays or at any other time, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free DUI accident consultation.

The hip replacement in question is made by a company called DuPuy, which is a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson. A study determined that the ASH hip implant had a failure rate of 13% after five years. That means that about 1 in 8 of the patients who had a hip replacement can expect something to go wrong with their hip replacement at some point in the future.

For those of you who do not have an artificial hip, you should be aware that it is a long and often quite painful procedure. Anyone who has gone through the process probably doesn’t want to go through it again. But because this DuPuy ASH hip implant is defective, people who have the implant in them when it goes wrong will have no other choice but to go through the surgery again. Surgeons will have to go in, remove the defective hip implant and replace it with one that isn’t defective.

While all of this is bad enough, DuPuy’s handling of the situation (and by extension, Johnson and Johnson’s handling of it) left much to be desired. We would go so far as to make the claim that their delay towards taking action has made circumstances even worse.

According to an article in the New York Times, DuPuy kept marketing and selling the ASH hip implant, even after they were made aware that there was a higher than normal failure rate. Rather than call a halt to distribution until they could be sure about the safety of their products, it was business as usual.

One of the major consequences of this defective hip implant is that the defect causes the ball part to rub improperly against the cup if the two parts are not properly joined together. This causes metal debris (shrapnel, essentially) to separate from the implant. These metal shards are then free to travel around the body cavity of the person with the implant. When the muscles are exposed to this debris, the tissue can become inflamed and the muscles can be damaged. The only way around this is, as we said earlier, to re-do the surgery, which means re-opening the leg, taking out the implant, replacing the implant, and closing the leg.

It is our belief that anyone who has been forced to go through this process a second time should not have to pay for it. They shouldn’t have to open their wallets for one second in the hospital, or to the insurance company. They shouldn’t even have to pay the deductible. Anyone who has a defective hip implant is completely absolved from any financial expenditure whatsoever as far as we are concerned.

We also believe that anyone who has suffered from a defective hip implant should be compensated for their time, and most specifically, their pain and their suffering. Going through a hip replacement twice due to the negligence of someone else is not something that you should just forget about and let go.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those in the Washington, D.C. area who have been injured due to DuPuy’s ASH hip implant. If you or a loved one has been adversely affected by this defective hip replacement, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

These exaggerated claims caused Yaz and Yasmin to become one of the best selling birth control pills in the country, which led to more women unknowingly placing themselves in danger.

Normally when you think of blood clots (if you happen to think about them at all,) you would think of them as positive things. They are part of a naturally occurring mechanism that keeps us from bleeding to death. If you cut yourself, the blood in the area of the cut begins to thicken, making it easier for the flow of blood out of the body to stop. But the problem with drospirenone is that it is apparently creating blood clots where there is no reason for them. These clots generally form in the deep veins of the legs, which causes pain and swelling (deep vein thrombosis.) The real danger happens when these clots break into pieces, because then they are small enough to travel through the bloodstream. They can cause blockages in blood flow to the heart, which is what causes heart attacks, and they can cause blockages in blood flow to the brain, which is what causes strokes. They can also cause pulmonary embolisms, which are blockages in blood to the lungs.

Blood clotting has always been a concern with birth control pills, but the numbers weren’t that high. Our main concern is that Bayer put out a drug that elevates the risk of clotting, and engaged in misleading advertising in order to market it. The sheer number of women taking these pills makes Yaz and Yasmin a very real health risk.

Greenberg and Bederman are currently representing women in the Washington, D.C. area who were taking Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, which is the generic version of the drug, and were injured or hospitalized as a result. Many of these health problems have effects that can last your whole life, and if the cause of the problems was a prescription drug that you took in good faith, then you shouldn’t have to bear the costs of your injury. If you live in Virginia, Maryland or Washington D.C. and you have been hurt due to Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

The FDA had been keeping an eye on this line of drugs, initially for valid reasons but reasons that overlooked the real dangers of the drug. The FDA’s first problem with Yaz was not the clotting dangers of drospirenone, but rather the advertising campaign that Bayer attached to the product. The advertisements inferred that Yaz would help women lose weight, would cure their acne and would cure all the symptoms of PMS. This was a gross overstatement of what Yaz can do for some users. In the first place, it doesn’t help all women lose weight. Some women reported that they lost weight, but some also reported that they simply didn’t gain any weight, while some women reported that they did in fact gain a pound or two. If you ran a survey of practically every woman who was on birth control pills you would probably get the same results.

Secondly, while Yaz provided some relief of severe acne, it didn’t do much for minor to moderate acne. Nor would it “cure” PMS. Instead users who were suffering from Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) reported experiencing some relief, but it should be mentioned that there is a big difference between PMS and PMDD. It’s the equivalent of the difference between a mild headache and a crippling migraine. It was disingenuous at best for Bayer to advertise that these pills would simply take care of conditions that women find troubling as well as providing them with contraception.

Disingenuous or not, the campaign worked. Yaz became the #1 selling birth control pill in the United States, which became alarming considering the damaging and potentially deadly side effects of this birth control pill. The FDA is finally getting around to considering what to do regarding pills with drospirenone, but in the meantime the product is still on the shelves, and is still being prescribed at an alarming rate.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have been providing legal counsel for several victims of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, and are still offering legal services for women who have been adversely affected by Bayer’s birth control pills. But we are still concerned about this rogue ingredient drospirenone, which Bayer doubled down on in the new pill called Beyaz, and has been picked up by other manufacturers of birth control pills. This includes the brand names Syeda and Loryna, as well as Zarah. We would urge any woman in the D.C. area who has been prescribed these pills to please re-think your prescription and ask for a different method of birth control, preferably one that does not contain drospirenone.

If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured or hospitalized due to injuries suffered from Yaz, Yasmin, Ocella, Syeda, Loryna, Zarah, or any other form of birth control with drospirenone, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

This means that if you ride a Metro bus to and from work every day, you have a two out of seven chance of being involved in an “incident.” Those odds are terrible for any sort of transportation, much less a public bus service. To be fair, most of these “incidents” are either fender benders or situations where the bus hits a curb or other object that isn’t a person or a car. About 3% of these accidents end up causing injuries, while the rest mainly cause inconvenience and damages to properties both public and private. But one thing that concerns us is that Metro itself says that their drivers could have prevented about 41% of these accidents. Is this a statement on a lack of training for bus drivers? Or is it perhaps a reflection on the relative inexperience of so many of Metro’s bus operators? About 28% of Metro’s bus drivers have been on the job for less than five years.

We aren’t laboring under the delusion that Metro should have a completely spotless record when it comes to car accidents or car crashes in the D.C. area. But 6.8 crashes a day seems like the sort of number you would get for transit in Guadalajara or rural China.

The main point of public transit is to allow those who don’t own their own cars to get from one point or another, but another point is for this to occur in as safe a manner as possible. You shouldn’t be putting your safety at risk when you get on the bus or the subway, yet it seems that is what everybody who rides the bus in D.C, Maryland or northern Virginia is doing.

If you consider that the infrastructure of our subway system is also in particularly dire straits, then we are having a hard time recommending the use of our transit system at all. Let’s consider the following scenario: Say you have to commute from Arlington, Virginia to Bethesda, Maryland every day. Every morning you take the 7A bus from North Fairlington to the Pentagon. That puts you at risk of what Metro calls “an incident.” If you manage to get to the Pentagon, then you would take the escalator that might be working or might not be working down to the platform, where you would wait for the Yellow Line train. The Yellow Line train will move along at a high rate of speed on a track where the sensors are in dire need of replacement and the tracks are prone to catch on fire. You will take the Yellow Line to Gallery Place, and then transfer to the Red Line, again using escalators that might be running or might not be, and are also prone to the occasional brake failure and collapse. You would follow the Red Line all the way to Bethesda, where you would exit the station via the longest escalator in the western hemisphere, which is presumably held to the same standards of maintenance and care as the rest of the escalators in the Metro subway system.

Now that you have that information, doesn’t the daily commute seem a lot less mundane? The problem is that the daily commute is supposed to be mundane. It isn’t supposed to be a scenario where you are white-knuckling it from one end to the other. It should be up to everyone who utilizes our public transportation system to remind the people who operate and maintain it of that fact. Please contact WMATA and urge them to tighten up the standards for the bus drivers, repair the escalators and upgrade the sensors on the tracks.

If you or a loved one has been hurt in a transit accident on the Metro, Metro buses or any other bus system in Northern Virginia, Maryland or D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Doing a simple Google search with the words “Halloween” and “accident” will give you some examples of what happens every year. You will see stories of teenagers or adults getting into car accidents because they got drunk at a party or you will see stories about careless drivers hitting children while they are out trick-or-treating. This is a serious concern. The child pedestrian death rate doubles on Halloween night.

There is one obvious solution to the first problem, which can be summed up in four words: Don’t drink and drive. That’s a piece of advice that should be heeded all year ‘round, and not just on Halloween. The second problem is not as simple to solve, but here are a few general tips to help you avoid adding to the list of victims of pedestrian accidents on Halloween.

The first thing that you should do is be aware of what Halloween is. It’s the one night of the year where small children are allowed out of the house when it’s dark. On any other night of the year you could be forgiven for not expecting to see kids running around the neighborhood at night, but not on Halloween.

With that in mind, you should drive slowly and carefully around any neighborhoods, particularly suburban ones. There is a level of excitement that occurs naturally to children on Halloween, so they often do reckless things like darting across the street, or racing their friends to the next house. They might not be as aware of their surroundings as they normally would be, so you definitely have to be. Halloween costumes are not always brightly colored and easy to see. There was one boy in our neighborhood who dressed up like a ninja, which is a great costume during the day, but an extremely dangerous one at night, especially considering that most of these pedestrian accidents don’t occur at crosswalks. Suburban kids don’t particularly feel the need to go down to the end of the block to cross the street, so what you usually see on Halloween are kids running into the road wearing non-reflective, dark costumes. Or rather you don’t see them, and that’s the problem.

Staying alert and driving a few miles below the speed limit is an absolute necessity on Halloween. It would also be a good idea to avoid distractions. We constantly tell people to never text while driving, and to avoid fiddling with your iPod or iPhone while driving, and that goes double for Halloween. It might seem like you are only taking your eye off the road for an instant, but in that instant you could easily travel 20 yards.

On the other side of this is the responsibility of the parents. Parents should take a few moments to explain to their children how important it is to avoid running out into the street. They should also give their costumes the once-over to make sure that there is some manner of reflective tape somewhere, or at the very least they should have them carry flashlights or glowsticks. But the best preventive method is to accompany your kids as they make the rounds in the neighborhood.

Halloween can be the highlight of a kid’s year. But for an increasing number of them, it can turn out to be the worst. Do what you can to help avoid Halloween pedestrian accidents.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have lawyers currently offering legal assistance to people in Washington, D.C, Maryland and Virginia who have been injured in car accidents. 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.

Insurance giants like Allstate, State Farm or GEICO didn’t get to be insurance giants by signing a lot of big checks. When you get into a car accident, the first question they ask isn’t “How can we help?” but rather “How can we get out of paying for this?” And they are very good at getting out of it. Harry Houdini had nothing on your average insurance company.

MSN recently published an article about some of the more notorious insurance adjuster tricks of the trade, and you would be well advised to learn them. Knowing how they work might be the difference between getting reimbursed for your damages and getting stuck with the bill entirely.

One of the more common insurance tactics is offering you a check as soon as possible. And when we say as soon as possible, we mean as soon as possible. Some insurers have adjusters on the scene before the wrecks are even carted away, and in some cases they even show up at the hospital if you have to go there. You might be thinking that the adjuster is using his amazing damage appraisal skills to do an instant financial calculation, and to a certain extent, that’s exactly what he’s doing. The rub here is that when he offers you that check, it may be for significantly less than what the damage will cost. And when you accept that check, you essentially absolve them of any further financial responsibility. You will be footing the bill for the difference between what the insurance company paid you and the actual cost of the car accident.

That’s the obvious trick. Some of the others are a lot more subtle, and most of the time it involves just sitting back and letting you talk.

If you just got into a car accident, your nerves are probably shot. Your adrenaline has kicked in. You might not always mean what you say, or even know what you are saying, for that matter. So if you say something like “I’m so sorry!” or “That was stupid of me!” or anything that can be misconstrued as you having anything at all to do with the causing of the accident, you are giving the other driver’s insurance company an out. Your best bet is to make sure that everyone is ok, and then don’t say anything.

The aversion that insurance companies have towards paying for damage claims is nothing compared to their loathing for paying for medical bills, and people who have been injured in an auto accident often aren’t immediately aware of their injuries until hours or even days later. Just because you feel ok after an accident doesn’t mean you are ok. If your injury manifests itself after you have already told the adjuster that you are fine, you will have a very difficult time getting the insurance company to cover your medical costs. If the adjuster asks if you are injured, the smart thing to do is say “I don’t know yet.”

Bear in mind that we aren’t encouraging anyone to be obstinate or unhelpful after a car accident. But you should know that insurance adjusters have a very specific job to do, and that job involves minimizing their financial responsibilities. If you get into a car accident, you should always keep that in mind. Keep what you say to the bare minimum, and don’t sign anything until you have a clearer understanding of the real costs of your accident, or have retained a lawyer.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Maryland car accident law firm located in Silver Spring, but we can help car accident victims in Virginia and Washington, D.C. as well. If you or a loved one has been injured in an auto accident anywhere in Maryland, Virginia or the District, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

What really happened to Stella Liebeck was that she suffered extremely severe burns to the inside of her legs, so much so to the point where there was speculation that she might not survive. Secondly, she didn’t try to sue for millions of dollars. She merely sued for her medical fees, which were around $20,000. (Skin grafts are quite expensive, as it turns out.) McDonald’s offered her $800.

There are a few more elements of the case that you never hear about when the case is discussed. You never hear that McDonald’s kept its coffee heated between 180-190 degrees as a matter of company policy. That temperature can cause third degree burns in seconds. You never hear that there were about 700 other people who had suffered severe burns from McDonald’s coffee. And you never hear that McDonald’s had settled in court cases over instances that were quite similar to Ms. Liebeck’s.

For some reason, the McDonald’s Corporation decided to toe the line with Ms. Liebeck, but since there was a history of settlements (which means that they had previous knowledge of the coffee being too hot for safe consumption) and since there was no effort to change the corporate policy of scalding hot coffee, that meant that McDonald’s both knew that the coffee was dangerous and flat out didn’t care.

It should also be mentioned that Ms. Liebeck didn’t demand $1 million. The jury came to the conclusion that it wasn’t that Ms. Liebeck necessarily deserved $1 million, but rather that a company that knowingly put out a dangerous product deserved to be penalized, and should be penalized in the only way that they would understand. And since Ms. Liebeck happened to be the one who was severely injured, and since she was the one who happened to be filing the suit, the money went to her.

However, it wasn’t $1 million that Ms. Liebeck eventually received. It was a little under $600,000. But that isn’t what everybody heard. That wasn’t what the news stories, speeches, bumper stickers and references on Seinfeld talked about. They all talked about the “McDonald’s Coffee Lady,” or “The Million Dollar Boo-Boo.” It even got to the point where a writer started “The Stella Awards,” which are given to people who file “ridiculous lawsuits.”

It goes without saying that there are some frivolous lawsuits out there, but Stella Liebeck should not be the person that is synonymous with them. She was seriously injured by a dangerous product. Naming a satirical award after her is practically the equivalent of naming it after someone who died of asbestos poisoning, or someone who died due to the chemical leak at Bhopal, India.

It is about time that someone brought the truth of Ms. Liebeck’s case to a wide audience. And while this film certainly does that, it also tells us about other ways in which our rights as Americans are slowly but surely getting chipped away by well funded corporate interests. “Damage Caps” that extend to compensation to corporations but not to the injured, mandatory arbitration and the railroading of an anti-tort reform judge all serve to paint a very accurate picture of what the less wealthy are facing if they ever decide to go court.

The main premise of this film is that the legal system is meant for all of us. It is not a perk for the rich. We urge you to see Hot Coffee as soon as possible.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the negligence of others. If you or a loved one in D.C, Virginia or Maryland has beeninjured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for afree consultation.

It is a sad state of affairs when you can find more information about the people you hire to hang your drywall than you can about the person who will be doing your bypass surgery. For one thing, the consequences of utilizing the wrong doctor can be life threatening. And when it comes to medical malpractice, it’s the repeat offenders that you have to watch out for.

Before they locked the public out of the NPDB, a group called Public Citizen took a look at the records and determined that of all the cases of medical malpractice that resulted in verdicts or settlements, about 50% of those instances of medical malpractice were committed by only about 5% of the doctors. In other words, there are a few bad doctors out there, but they happen to be really bad. Since 1990, about 4.8% of practicing doctors have had two or more medical malpractice cases go against them. 1.7% of those doctors have made three or more malpractice cases, and combined this 1.7% accounts for a little over a quarter of all medical malpractice payouts.

If your doctor or surgeon was part of the 1.7%, wouldn’t you want to know? If you had a surgery scheduled, wouldn’t you want to know if the person cutting you open had a history of medical malpractice, particularly if they had made three or more medical malpractice payouts? One malpractice payout can be considered an anomaly. Two would make us suspicious. Three or more is a sure sign of someone we would question before going under this person’s care.

Here are just a few of the doctors and surgeons whose records have been sealed from public view (all of these were taken directly from the Public Citizen report):

• Physician Number 94358, licensed in New Jersey, settled or lost 33 medical malpractice suits involving improper diagnosis or treatment between 1988 and 1993, inflicting over $400,000 in disability costs to his patients. This doctor has not been disciplined by authorities in New Jersey.

• Physician Number 64625, licensed in Pennsylvania, paid 24 medical malpractice claims involving improper performance of surgery between 1989 and 2001. Damages to this doctor’s patients exceeded $370,000. This doctor has never been disciplined by Pennsylvania authorities.

• Physician Number 125457, while licensed in Nevada, paid 5 malpractice claims involving improper performance of surgery between 1995 and 1997, with damages totaling $2.3 million. Recent news accounts have reported that doctors are fleeing from Las Vegas to other states to avoid high malpractice insurance premiums. Physician 125457 was ahead of the curve in moving his practice to California. There he paid another 8 malpractice claims with damages exceeding $7.5 million. This doctor has never been disciplined by authorities in either Nevada or California.

• Physician Number 37949, licensed in Texas, settled or lost 13 medical malpractice suits involving improper treatment or improper performance of surgery between 1990 and 1997. Two of the suits involved the same allegation—a foreign body left in the patient during surgery. Damages to this doctor’s patients exceeded $2 million. This doctor has never been disciplined by authorities in Texas.

What is sticking out at us here (aside from the obvious multiple cases of medical malpractice) is that none of these doctors were disciplined. Not by the American Medical Association, not by their state medical boards, not by anyone. Thanks to the Department of Health and Human Services for closing our eyes so we can’t tell if our doctor is one of the “fortunate” who has something to hide.

Tort reform organizations like to use the word “lawsuit lottery,” as if malpractice victims were actually quite lucky to be able to get injured by their doctor and sue them. We can tell you with great certainty that there is no such thing as a “lawsuit lottery,” as every single one of our medical malpractice clients would rather have their lives back to normal rather than fight through a multi-year malpractice trial. So no, there is not a “lawsuit lottery.” But because the National Practitioner Data Bank has been shuttered, there is now a “physician lottery.” Who knows who you might get when you book a surgery? Who knows what you might get when your doctor writes a prescription? Your doctor or surgeon might be the model of competence and professionalism, but then again, he might not be. As of right now, you have no way of knowing.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia who have been injured due to the negligent actions of a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional. If you or a loved one has been injured because of medical malpractice, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Back in the 19^th and early 20^th century, there used to be places called “workhouses.” This was where the destitute poor were placed. The majority of them were either children or the elderly. These places were essentially prisons. They would be fed the bare minimum, and they would work 12 hours shifts six days a week. Their tasks included picking oakum out of hemp rope, making brooms, or performing other menial tasks so they could earn their keep. Those who were placed in them were actually considered “lucky,” mainly because the only other option was life on the street with nowhere to go. It was a fairly popular background for novelists like Charles Dickens, whose name has become synonymous with bleak living conditions and the utterly destitute.

We don’t live in a society like that anymore. But anyone who thinks we can’t slide back into that sort of thing if we just get rid of the bothersome Social Security tax is delusional.

Sure, we won’t have them make brooms or pick tar out of rope. It would probably be a more twenty-first century kind of menial labor. Maybe working at a call center? Sending out spam e-mails? I’m sure they’ll think of something.

Detractors of Social Security claim that many recipients of social security are getting a “handout” or an “entitlement,” but we have a hard time seeing it that way. An entitlement or a handout is something that you get for free. Social Security is something that you pay into for your entire working life, from your first job as a 15 year old at McDonalds to your last job as a CPA. Your employers pay into it as well. What about that is a “handout?” In fact, we would argue that it is the only government program that takes dues from the taxpayers and provides them with tangible money at the end of it. Taxpayers pay for farm subsidies and receive no real tangible monetary benefit. Taxpayers pay for spare engines for jets, yet never get to fly one. Taxpayers pay for everything this country does, but the only program that gives them money back is Social Security. So when someone asks “Why should I have to pay for somebody else’s retirement,” the answer is “You are paying for someone else’s because someone else will be paying for yours.”

And what about those who become injured and are unable to work?  Do we want to live in a country where those who are unable to work are left with absolutely no income whatsoever? For those of us in gated communities, it probably won’t be that much of a big deal. But for those of us who are not financially well off, and for the majority of us who didn’t make it through life without a significant financial catastrophe, the idea of having nothing, either when we retire or get injured, is not something that we think would be a good idea.

Social Security Insurance and Social Security Disability Insurance is not perfect. There are a lot of things that we can do to make it more efficient and fair. But either privatizing it or abolishing it all together smacks of a different, darker time in America. We shouldn’t go back there again.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Social Security Disability law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance for those who are applying for Social Security Disability Insurance. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or D.C. need assistance in getting through the Social Security Disability Insurance process, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

People who get severely injured and experience a severe decrease in the quality of their lives are certainly unlucky, but as far as we’re concerned, they are only unlucky if the injury was the result of a random occurrence, or as insurance companies call it, an “Act of God.” If somebody gets severely injured due to the negligence of someone else, then that person is not “unlucky.” That person is a victim.

Here is an example:

Everybody knows Martha Stewart, right? Whether you like her or not, you know who she is. You’ve probably bought or cooked something that she designed or dreamed up without even realizing it. She is not just a person. She is a brand name. She has lent her name to everything from sweaters to pots and pans to dishes to furniture.

The furniture is where the injuries come in. Ms. Stewart’s company designed, built and marketed a line of patio furniture. The problem was with a certain brand of deckchair. The chair was built in such a way that the legs slip forward when you sit down, which means that if you happen to have your fingers underneath the chair, your fingers could very easily get sliced off by the hinges.

This isn’t conjecture on our part. This has actually happened to people. For at least one case, three people either lost or badly damaged the tips of their fingers, and this happened because they bought a specific type of deck chair. It wasn’t a power saw, or a belt sander, or a set of sharp steak knives, or a product where you can assume that there is some risk of injury. It was a deck chair, which shouldn’t be a dangerous product by any stretch of the imagination.

If you buy a belt sander, and you slip while using it and mangle your hand, that’s “bad luck.” If you buy a set of extra sharp knives and you cut your fingertips off while dicing an onion, that’s “bad luck.” If you buy a chair and use it exactly as you are supposed to, but end up losing the tips off of your fingers, that isn’t “bad luck.” That’s negligence.

To Ms. Stewart’s immense credit, she thought so too. Her company ended up settling with three injury victims for an undisclosed amount. But there are many corporations, insurers and tort-reform organizations who feel differently. Their advice for the three people who mangled their hands would be to walk it off. Let it go. Move on with your life. Sorry you lost three fingers, but hey, accidents happen, right?

We don’t buy that premise. If you get injured due to no fault of your own, and if the fault can be squarely placed on the actions of someone else, why is it considered “weak” or “greedy” to expect financial compensation for your medical bills? Or for money to make up for the pay that you lost when you had to recuperate in the hospital? Or to simply make up for the fact that you don’t have finger tips anymore? How is that an unreasonable set of expectations?

Do not let anyone tell you that seeking compensation for your injuries is the wrong thing to do. Nobody asks to get hit by a drunk driver, or to get injured due to medical malpractice. Nobody asks to be hospitalized because of a dangerous prescription drug or a faulty product. The day that medical treatment is free and the banks start adopting a “don’t worry about it” policy regarding your mortgage, then maybe we can start telling you to “walk it off.” But until then, we recommend contacting a lawyer.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. injury law firm. We are currently offering legal counsel to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been hurt in a car or truck accident, or if you have been injured due to medical malpractice, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

As a real-world example as to how bad an idea privatization can be, consider what happened to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This is an independent government agency that has a function similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, except that while FDIC guarantees bank deposits up to $100,000, the PBGC guarantees pension programs. In other words, if your pension plan goes belly up due to bad investments, the PBGC is there to guarantee that you will receive your retirement money.

One of the reasons that the PBGC is able to do this is because they keep their money in bonds and securities, specifically bonds and securities that are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. At least, they did until 2008. It was at this point that PBGC head Charles Millard thought that it would be a good idea to create a new “investment strategy,” which involved moving 45% of the PBGC’s assets into the stock market. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

From theAssociated Press, October 24, 2008:

WASHINGTON — The federal agency charged with backstopping pension benefits for 44 million Americans lost almost $5 billion from investments in stocks in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, the agency head acknowledged Friday.

The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. will lose 6 percent to 7 percent on its entire investment portfolio, PBGC Director Charles Millard told the House Education and Labor Committee. It lost a significantly higher percentage of its investments in equities.

In other words, Mr. Millard thought it would be a good idea to put pension guaranty funds into stocks instead of boring old bonds. And as everybody knows, stocks can turn valueless practically overnight. Can you imagine what would have happened to the retirement savings of millions of Americans if they had put their money in the stock market? What if their investor told them that mortgage backed securities were the way to go? Or to pool their resources so they could get in on what this guy Bernard Madoff had going on?

Privatization or turning the retirement money of Social Security over to everyone in America is not any way to “save” it. In fact, we aren’t even convinced that it needs to be “saved.” Many people are under the impression that when the money for Social Security is taken out of your paycheck, it is then put in a specific account for you. But that isn’t what happens, any more than an insurance company would take your premium dollars and put it aside for you specifically when you get into an accident. The money that you put into Social Security is used to pay the benefits of current recipients, and what is left over is put into the Social Security Trust Fund.

To be sure, sometimes the government borrows money from the Social Security Trust Fund. But they pay it back with interest. And while the mass retirement of the baby boomers might cause the United States to occasionally dip into the trust fund, the only way that it could be completely depleted would be if it were completely deprived of income. If you can foresee a future where absolutely nobody in the United States is working at all, then you can imagine Social Security “running out of money.” If you can also make the assumption that absolutely everyone in America will live to be 100 years old, then you can imagine that Social Security will run out of money. And if you can further make the assumption that absolutely everyone in America will make it to the age of 65 to begin collecting Social Security benefits, then you can imagine that Social Security will go bankrupt. If you can imagine that the economy will continue to be in bad shape for the next 40 years and nobody will pay in as much, then you can imagine that Social Security will go bankrupt.

We don’t practice disability law with the vision of all of those scenarios taking place, so we can’t imagine Social Security going bankrupt. When we help our clients get Social Security disability benefits, we do so with full confidence in the funding.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury and Social Security disability law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to the newly disabled, particularly those who have been injured due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. needs the services of an injury lawyer, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

One of the main principles behind Social Security is that it is not a charity. It is a fund that you pay into throughout your entire working life. The amount of money that you receive every month once you turn 65 depends on how much money you earned over the course of your career. But aside from a retirement fund, Social Security also exists as a way to provide some sort of income for those who become disabled and can no longer work.

This was a smart and compassionate thing to do. Not everyone who gets into an accident or suffers a debilitating injury has independent financial means. In fact, the vast majority of us do not. And not everyone thinks of buying long term disability insurance. In the event that you are injured and cannot return to any meaningful employment, Social Security Disability Insurance can provide you with some income, provided that you have a history of consistent employment.

There are also options for people who do not have a history of consistent employment. Economically disadvantaged people have also been known to have accidents and become disabled as well. So people who fall into that category can be eligible for what is called Supplemental Security Income.

Here are the major differences between the two programs. Social Security Disability Insurance is for disabled people who have fully paid into the Social Security trust fund for 20 quarters (with a quarter being a three month period) over the past ten years. Supplemental Security Income is for those who have become disabled, but don’t have a history of regular employment and don’t have very many financial resources.

Here are the specifics:

Social Security Disability Insurance:

·         Available to the disabled and blind, their spouses and their children.

·         The amount of money that you receive is based on your work history.

·         Eligible for Medicare after two years of disability payments.

Supplemental Security Income

·         Also available to the disabled and blind, their spouses and their children.

·         “Need based,” meaning that you have to be below a certain income level to qualify.

·         Less than $2000 in resources if single, $3000 if married.

·         You are allowed to own one home and one automobile.

·         Automatically eligible for Medicaid.

While this might sound straightforward enough, you should remember that the process for applying to either Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income can be a complicated legal process, particularly if you are attempting to go it alone.  A newly disabled person has a lot to deal with already without having to worry about the Social Security process. It can be a time consuming and contentious and more than a few applicants are rejected on their first application. Having an experienced Social Security disability lawyer can help you get through the process in less time and with better results for you and your family.

Greenberg and Bederman is a social security disability  law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently helping newly disabled people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. get through the Social Security disability application process. If you or a loved one needs assistance with either SSDI or SSI, contact Greenberg & Bederman for afree consultation today.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This is a good thing to have if you happen to find yourself accused of a crime, but for those of you who are pursuing a civil remedy to a personal injury or a breach of a contract, there is no real time line for your case to get to court. You will get there eventually. But quite often, it benefits the defense to drag out the process as long as possible.

Here is an example: We have been discussing the serious health problems that have occurred with women who have been using Bayer’s line of birth control pills for about two years now. The issues with Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella have been going on for a lot longer than two years. It has been pretty well established that otherwise healthy women have been hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, deep vein thrombosis, strokes, heart attacks and gall bladder disease, and the one major thing these women had in common was that they were taking Bayer’s line of birth control pills, each of which contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drospirenone. This ingredient can cause an increase in potassium levels in the bloodstream, which leads to a more active clotting mechanism. Clots form in the bloodstream, and then they start to travel, which leads to blockages in the bloodstream. This is where the pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks come from. The contention of the majority of these lawsuits is that Bayer failed to adequately research the effects that this new ingredient would have on the women who used their birth control pills.

As we said before, we have been discussing this for over two years now. In fact, we have a few clients who have been injured due to what we believe are these defective yaz birth control pills, and thousands of other women all over the country have filed suit for identical reasons. A few of these cases have finally been scheduled for October of next year:

 “The first trial dates for any Yaz lawsuits, Yasmin lawsuit or Ocella lawsuit pending in New Jersey state court will begin in the fall of 2012, with at least two cases to be selected as test cases out of hundreds of claims pending in the state.”

If this were a criminal case, the delay wouldn’t nearly be this long.

In many respects, defendants in injury cases use this delay to their advantage. The longer it takes for an injury victim to get to court, the more likely it is that this person will either accept a settlement that is much less than they can deserve, or will give up the case entirely.

For instance, let’s say you get hit by a car and have to spend six weeks in the hospital. During these six weeks, you aren’t working. You have no source of income. This does not matter one bit to the utilities, the bank that holds your mortgage, and the credit card companies. They expect to get paid. The insurance company of the driver that hit you has no such financial worries. Ultimately, they have you at a disadvantage, and many insurance companies will offer you much less than you will need to support yourself. If you refuse that offer, they have all the time in the world. They can request delays in the court proceedings, and often do. In the meantime, your financial situation gets more precarious with each passing day. All of a sudden, that initial lowball settlement offer starts to look pretty good.

One of the major problems with the Sixth Amendment is that it does nothing to address the delay that injury victims have to face to get their cases heard. While having an experienced attorney to help you navigate the legal process in your injury claim ensures your rights are protected, there is unfortunately, no such thing as a “speedy trial” for injury victims.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes car accidents, medical malpractice, defective drugs, and pedestrian or bicycle accidents. If you or a loved one has been injured due to someone else, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Here’s the law about crosswalks in Virginia:

§ 46.2-924. Drivers to stop for pedestrians; installation of certain signs; penalty.

A. The driver of any vehicle on a highway shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian crossing such highway:

1. At any clearly marked crosswalk, whether at mid-block or at the end of any block;

2. At any regular pedestrian crossing included in the prolongation of the lateral boundary lines of the adjacent sidewalk at the end of a block;

3. At any intersection when the driver is approaching on a highway or street where the legal maximum speed does not exceed 35 miles per hour.

Here’s the law about crosswalks in Maryland:

§ 21-502. Pedestrians' right-of-way in crosswalks.

(2) The driver of a vehicle shall come to a stop when a pedestrian crossing the roadway in a crosswalk is: 

(i) On the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling; or 

(ii) Approaching from an adjacent lane on the other half of the roadway. 

It’s a pretty simple premise. If you are driving down the road and you see a pedestrian or bicyclist in the crosswalk, you stop and let him continue. You don’t floor it in the hopes that you can make it past him before he gets to your lane. You don’t swerve into the oncoming lane to get past him. You stop and let him continue.

On July 25^th, there was a three car accident on the George Washington Parkway. A driver stopped at an intersection to allow a bicyclist to cross at the intersection, which is exactly what a driver is supposed to do. The bicyclist was about to cross when he saw a pickup truck approach without changing its rate of speed. The pickup truck then slammed into the back of the car of the driver who was obeying the law. Two people were injured, and fortunately the bicyclist was not one of them.

There are a great many crosswalks on the GW Parkway that don’t have any signals on them. A lot of people assume that they can just breeze past them without giving any consideration towards joggers, pedestrians or bicyclists. This misconception is not being helped by what the National Park Police have been doing lately.

A man named Andrew Beaujon, who is a reporter at TBD, was crossing the GW Parkway on August 2^nd. A driver slowed down to let him cross, and for his troubles this driver was pulled over by a NPP officer and reprimanded. The officer’s argument was that the driver might have caused an accident similar to the one that happened on July 25^th. This is probably the first time in our memories that we have ever heard of someone being reprimanded for obeying the law.

Is there something we have missed? Did pedestrians and bicyclists become second class citizens all of a sudden? Is preventing car accidents more important than preventing pedestrian and bicycle accidents? We were under the impression that all three are something that should be prevented.

One particular way that this could be handled would be to place either stoplights, stop signs, or at the very least a flashing orange light at the multiple unmarked pedestrian crossings on the GW Parkway. Surely something can be done to facilitate this, but in the meantime, National Park Police should not reprimand drivers for obeying the law, and drivers should continue to stop for crossing pedestrians and bicyclists.

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

Investigators found the skeletal remains of Caylee within a short walk from the Anthony family home. The child had duct tape over the remains of her mouth. A search of Ms. Anthony’s computer found that she was entering phrases like “chloroform recipe” and “shovel” and “home weapons” into a search engine at around the same time that Caylee had initially disappeared. All of this, combined with the lying about seemingly everything and the strange behavior, was certainly enough for the authorities to take her into custody.

But as the whole country saw just a few weeks ago, it wasn’t enough to convict her in a court of law. Ms. Anthony was found not guilty on all counts of murder. The only counts she was found guilty on were the charges of lying to the police.

Predictably, the reaction by the public was one of pure outrage. There was anger directed at the jury for not drawing the obvious conclusion, and there was (and still is) an enormous level of fury directed towards Ms. Anthony. If you were watching some of the more apoplectic commentators on cable television, you would think that the jury was a parcel of simpletons unable to see the nose in front of their collective faces.

We don’t see it that way. It is our opinion that the jurors acted entirely appropriately, and while they might not have come to the conclusion that would have pleased the general public, they came to the only decision that they could have based on the evidence that was presented to them. And while there was a great deal circumstantial evidence in this case, there wasn’t one shred of it that could say with certainty that Casey Anthony was responsible for the death of her daughter.

The coroner couldn’t say exactly what caused her death. There was no DNA from Ms. Anthony anywhere on the remains of Caylee. We will say that there was plenty of evidence that made Ms. Anthony look extremely suspicious, but there wasn’t any that could have said that she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

If Ms. Anthony is in fact guilty of murder, the burden of proof lies with the police, the forensics team, and the prosecution team. It is the job of the police to gather the evidence and come up with a plausible theory as to what happened. It is the job of the forensics team to examine the evidence to back up that plausible theory and turn it into something that can be proven. And it is the job of the prosecution to relate that proof to a jury and convince them that the person on trial is in fact guilty of the charges. The prosecution team failed to do that.

If there is anything to be learned from this, it is that the skills and judgment of the attorneys very much matter in any sort of court case. It doesn’t matter if it is a contract case, an injury case or a criminal case. The prosecution team from Orange County, Florida handling the Casey Anthony case moved forward with evidence that was circumstantial, trusting that the jury would be able to “read between the lines.” But that is not what juries are supposed to do, particularly when the prosecution is planning on calling for the death penalty.

There is no such thing as a “guaranteed win” in the courtroom. Any number of factors could cause the case to go against you. The attorneys prosecuting this case knew that, the attorneys defending Ms. Anthony knew that, and now, the general public knows it all too well.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own. Our attorneys can help you if you have been injured in a car accident, truck accident or pedestrian accident. We can also help those who have been injured due to medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today. 

We’re pretty sure that the ATRA and the Chamber of Commerce have plenty of lawyers themselves, and we are willing to bet that they understand the definitions of “plaintiff” and “defendant.” The reassignment of the word “victim” is a clever juxtaposition of roles in a legal case, and if it gets hammered into the heads of the general public long enough, they will probably start to believe it.

We also have a problem with the idea that lawsuits are epidemic. They simply do not occur very often.  According to the Center for Justice and Democracy, only about ten percent of injury victims file a compensation claim, and only two percent of those that file a compensation claim go on to file a lawsuit. The National Center for State Courts states that tort lawsuits have declined 21 percent over a ten year period in 30 states, and they further mention that contract lawsuits (corporations suing corporations) have increased 25 percent in 13 states over that same period of time. Oddly enough, you never hear from tort reformers and the Chamber of Commerce complaining about the explosion in contract lawsuits. It appears those sorts of lawsuits are just fine and dandy.

What about the contention that lawsuits are the bane of the small businessman’s existence? The Chamber of Commerce claims to be the official spokesmen for businesses everywhere, both small and not so small. As far as the Chamber is concerned, every small business out there is terrified of lawsuits. But a recent poll suggests that they maybe they should ask the small businessmen themselves; mainly because it seems that fear of lawsuits is pretty far down on the list.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses surveyed a large group of small business owners in order to get an overall sense of their worries and concerns. The various problems faced by small businesses were ranked in order of concern, and to be sure, fear of lawsuits was on the list. However, it was listed at number 65 out of 75, with 36.7 percent of respondents claiming that it “was not a problem.” Above the “fear of lawsuits” was listed such concerns as “traffic,” “delinquent accounts,” “getting information on government assistance programs” and, “cost of health insurance,” which was solidly in first place.

Small businesses seem to be the watchword of the day over at the Chamber, along with “job-killing,” which is the term they hang in front of anything that they don’t like. As they push forward with more and more legislation on state and national levels, the rationale is that “caps” on damages and restrictions on who can go to court will “help small businesses”, but if the small businesses aren’t particularly worried about lawsuits, who benefits the most from these caps?

We suspect it would be the “non-small businesses.” Large corporations, chemical manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, who interact with a much wider percentage of the populace, and therefore have more of a tendency to do more damage if they are negligent. If anything, these caps and restrictions could actually help prevent small businesses from receiving fair compensation if they are forced to go to court against a large corporation, to say nothing of the restrictions they already place on individual citizens.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We offer experienced and dedicated legal counsel to those who have been hurt due to no fault of their own. If you have suffered from a medical malpractice, been injured in a car accident, suffered an adverse effect from a pharmaceutical drug or medical device, or been hurt due to the negligence of someone else, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

“WARNING: The following show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, MTV and the producers attempt to recreate or re-enact any stunt or activity performed in this show.”

We can’t speak for anybody else, but we can’t imagine ever having the urge to try any of these stunts. But we are mindful that young people sometimes make poor decisions, so having that warning in place is the right thing to do.

It should be noted that the whole Jackass phenomenon is wildly successful. The three movies and multiple series of TV shows have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, DVD sales and ticket sales.

Sadly, Ryan Dunn died in a particularly bad car accident yesterday. Mr. Dunn, who was one of the featured players on Jackass, was driving at about 140 mph when his car tore through a guardrail and careened through a heavily wooded area. His car eventually hit a tree and burst into flames. Both Mr. Dunn and a man named Zachary Hartwell were killed instantly.

Mr. Dunn’s blood alcohol content was 0.196, which was 2½ times the legal limit in Pennsylvania. He also had a history of poor and reckless driving habits, racking up 23 total citations over the course of his driving career. Mr. Dunn’s cause of death might as well have been listed as “The Law of Averages.”

Nobody has their own personal highway or street. Any time you get in the car, you are sharing a public space with other drivers, motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists. You aren’t just putting yourself at risk when you drink and drive or decide to speed. Zachary Hartwell serves as an unfortunate example of that fact. Please watch your speed, and please don’t drink and drive.

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

The District of Columbia subway system was built on what was essentially a swamp. It is not exactly the firmest of ground. While they were building the Washington Monument back in the 19^th century, the structure started to sink and tilt until they extended the foundation to around 37 feet. If they had kept the original foundation, the Monument would look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

It is for this reason that the subway tracks are much deeper here than in New York. There are places in Washington and Maryland where the tracks would have been unsupportable if they weren’t positioned deep underground. So when people have to walk up the escalator at DuPont Circle, they have to walk up 319 steps, which span 188 feet. And Bethesda is known for having the longest escalator in the entire western hemisphere, which spans 475 feet. To put that into context, it’s actually longer than the staircase that leads to the interior of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. And while none of the other stations have escalators that are longer than Bethesda’s, many of them are still pretty long.

Now, how many of you would like to climb up broken escalators like that, particularly when the temperature is 100 degrees outside? If any of you rode the Metro on June 1^st, you probably had to walk, whether you wanted to or not.

From the June 1^st edition of the Washington Examiner:

“One out of every five Metro escalators was out of service Wednesday, leaving riders hiking up and down what should have been moving staircases as temperatures soared into the mid-90s…As of 9:40 a.m., 126 of the agency's 588 escalators were out of commission. But that number wasn't an anomaly. On Monday, it was 113 at one point. Last Wednesday it hit 110.”

You should remember that public transportation is for everyone, not just young, fit people who can make a trip up a staircase like that with no problems. It is also for the elderly, and for people with injuries, and for travelers and shoppers who are encumbered with luggage and groceries. Forcing them to trudge up and down lengthy flights of stairs due to negligence of the system goes directly against the spirit of what a public service is supposed to be about.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal help to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes people who have been injured due to the negligence of public transit officials and employees. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free personal injury case evaluation.

For instance, let’s say you are a public school teacher and get severely injured due to the actions of an enormous corporation. Would you like to run the risk of paying the law firm that this corporation hires to defend itself in the event that you end up losing your case? Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as a “slam dunk” lawsuit, corporations often drag cases out in order to make lowball settlement offers more appealing. Do you have any idea how much that would cost? Probably a lot more than it would cost to make you whole after your injury.

It is already difficult enough for people in Texas to access the courts in the first place. Tort reform laws for medical malpractice have essentially made it impossible for low income individuals to enter the courtroom. With strict damage limits on non-economic damages, malpractice lawyers (most of whom operate on a contingency fee basis) can’t afford to bring these cases to court. After court costs, hiring expert witnesses, and the general labor of bringing a case to trial, most attorneys would end up losing money on the case. And a cap on non-economic damages might not bother you if you happen to play first base for the Washington Nationals, but if you are like the vast majority of the rest of us, non-economic damages are a crucial part of an injury case. Plus, if you happen to get injured due to the actions of emergency room personnel, the only way they can be found guilty in Texas is if they admit that they meant to hurt you. And who in their right minds would do that?

So now that doctors (and their insurance companies) are squared away and protected in ways that don’t extend to their patients, Governor Perry has decided to make sure that the rest of the folks who need the least protection get the most of it. The code word is “small businesses,” which is actually just short hand for “large businesses.” Basically, it doesn’t matter how much damage they do. There are now a series of safety nets in Texas that allows businesses to do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences. I mean, what are you going to do if you get hurt? Sue them? Are you sure you want to do that? What if you lose? And if you win? You might be able to maybe keep your house with the winnings. But it will be back to business as usual for them.

It’s worth mentioning that in the press release, there is plenty of talk of judges and defendants, and how this new legislation will make everything easier for them. But there is not one mention of the rights of plaintiffs, injury victims or victims of medical malpractice. Mentioning injury victims wouldn’t be very popular with this bill.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to victims of medical malpractice in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been a victim of a surgical error, wrong diagnosis, prescription error or any other form of medical malpractice, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation. 

But there are two major differences between my experience with the coffee and Ms. Liebeck’s. In the first place, Ms. Liebeck accidentally spilled the entire cup into her lap. Secondly, Ms. Liebeck’s coffee was about 40 to 50 degrees hotter than the coffee that comes out of my coffee maker at home. It’s the difference between “hot” and “third degree burns.” Ms. Liebeck spent about eight days in the hospital, and her burns required skin grafts and painful recuperation. 

When you ask the tort reform people about this case, this is where they usually say “…and this woman sued McDonald’s for $1 million, and she won!”  But actually, that isn’t what happened at all.

Mrs. Liebeck asked for $20,000, mainly because she underwent painful skin grafts. McDonald’s refused her claim. If McDonalds had simply paid $20,000, they could have avoided the whole thing. Instead, they offered her around $600, which doesn’t seem like a lot for that much time in the hospital. So the case was essentially forced to move on to trial.

During the discovery portion of this trial, Ms. Liebeck’s attorneys discovered that between 1982 and 1992, more than 700 people had filed claims against McDonald’s because they had been burned by the coffee there. Ms. Liebeck’s claim was hardly an isolated incident. Upon further investigation, Ms. Liebeck’s attorneys determined that the coffee at McDonalds was kept heated between 180 and 190 degrees. Denny’s didn’t do that. Waffle House didn’t do that. Nor did Burger King, Krispy Kreme, Wendy’s, or any other major restaurant chain. In fact, McDonalds had specially built heaters that kept the coffee at that temperature.

180 degree liquid can cause a full thickness skin burn in around 2 seconds. So essentially, Mrs. Liebeck was only one out of 700 people who had been injured by coffee that was kept dangerous due to a companywide policy. McDonald’s couldn’t claim that Mrs. Liebeck’s claim was unheard of or ridiculous, not with over 700 similar claims in their history.

The jury awarded Mrs. Liebeck $180,000 for her ordeal and stay in the hospital. The so called “million dollar verdict” was initially $2.7 million in punitive damages, which was later knocked down to $480,000. The punitive damages did not exist to make Mrs. Liebeck rich, but rather, as the term indicates, to punish McDonald’s for knowingly having a dangerous corporate policy in place. As a result of this verdict, McDonald’s has since lowered the temperature of its coffee, and nobody has been severely burned since.

We don’t find anything “frivolous” about third degree burns or eight days in the hospital. Nor do we find anything “frivolous” about a company that knowingly serves products in a dangerous manner. But for some reason, tort reformers everywhere latched on to this case and turned what Mrs. Liebeck went through into a joke, or portrayed it as a money grabbing con game.

From what we understand of it, Hot Coffee not only tells Mrs. Liebeck’s side of the story, but also delves into a few other notable cases where Americans have actually lost their right to a court hearing, thanks mainly to fake outrage and tort reform legislation that was ginned up after Mrs. Liebeck’s verdict came in. We would urge everyone to see this film once it is released nationwide.

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

The report also claims that of the 1600 cases of acute liver failure each year, and acetaminophen is the leading reason. Also mentioned in the report are 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths over a ten year period. This is quite a number for something that costs about 10 cents a pill.

There are two elements of this problem, one of which is based on the ingredients. When it is taken, a small percentage of acetaminophen is converted into a metabolite, which in this case is toxic. In small doses, this is something the liver can manage. This is actually what the liver is for. Alcohol is a metabolite as well.

The problems start to happen when the metabolites build up faster than the liver can handle them. This is similar to the problems that occur with chronic drinkers. If a person has the occasional beer, it’s not a problem, but if he drinks a significant amount over the years, one of the more common medical ailments is liver failure. Likewise, if a person habitually takes more than the recommended dose of Tylenol or any other acetaminophen based pill, liver failure could easily be the result.

This brings us to the second element of the problem, which has been a lack of information on the part of Johnson and Johnson, which is the company that makes Tylenol. Most of us have a bottle of Tylenol in our medicine cabinets. If you take a look at it, you will most certainly see a warning label. But you have to look hard to find it. The website has more information, which reads as follows:

“Overdose warning: Taking more than the recommended dose (overdose) may cause liver damage. In case of overdose, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away. (1-800-222-1222). Quick medical attention is critical for adults as well as for children even if you do not notice any signs or symptoms.”

This is sound advice, but it seems a bit misleading. When most of us think of the word “overdose,” particularly when it comes to pills, we think of someone taking about twenty or thirty of them on purpose. You don’t necessarily have to have that printed on the warning label. We think what needs to be on there is a warning about chronic overuse.

Everybody knows somebody who always seems to have a headache, or knows someone who has a bad back, or a mild case of arthritis. They always have a jumbo size bottle of Tylenol in their desks, purses or glove compartments. These are the folks who take three or four Tylenols every four hours or so, and we believe they could use some straight shooting from Johnson and Johnson or any other company that makes acetaminophen based pain relievers. We hope to provide it to them now, because we seriously doubt Johnson and Johnson will.

If you are a person who suffers from chronic mild pain, please stick to recommended dosages when you take Tylenol. Don’t take more than what is printed on the label. While there is a definite risk to overdosing, there is also serious danger in taking even a little bit more than you are supposed to over a long period of time. There has been enough evidence over the years that taking acetaminophen in this manner is dangerous. All the FDA did was mention what Johnson and Johnson should have been warning people about all along.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have suffered from liver damage due to the use of Tylenol or other acetaminophen-based medications. We believe that Johnson and Johnson deliberately understated the danger that their product can cause, and we believe that they also failed to adequately warn the public about the consequences of taking this medication in the wrong way. If you or a loved one has been injured or hospitalized due to the use of Tylenol or any other medicine based on acetaminophen, contact Greenberg & Bederman today for a free legal consultation. 

There are quite a few things wrong with these assumptions. In the first place, we have yet to see medical malpractice insurance companies dramatically lower their rates in states where these caps have been put in place. Nor have patients who have been injured by their doctors suddenly stopped filing lawsuits. It seems to us that the only people who are helped by caps on damages in medical malpractice cases are the medical malpractice insurance companies, and considering that malpractice insurers are more profitable than 99% of all Fortune 500 companies, it doesn’t seem like they need much help at all.

Another troubling element about these caps is that they seem to favor those who are financially well off but completely disregards the suffering of those who are not. Economic damages basically compensate you for the amount of money that you lost due to the negligent actions of your doctor or surgeon. This can be a significant amount if you happen to be a stock broker, airline pilot, or if you happen to be a doctor yourself. That amount can be even more if the actions of the doctor or surgeon prevent you from returning to your job. But if you happen to be a retail worker or if you happen to work in a restaurant, the amount of compensation won’t amount to much, particularly once your insurance company goes through its usual round of claim rejections. So for those of us who don’t make millions of dollars a year, non-economic compensation is particularly important. Ultimately, what these caps do is make it incredibly hard for malpractice injury victims to collect for damages suffered as a result of negligence. Plaintiffs have to hire attorneys if they’ve been wrongfully injured, and these attorneys work on a contingency basis. Often expensive expert witnesses have to be hired. If there is a strict cap on non-economic damages, quite often the process of bringing a malpractice case to court becomes financially impossible. So while this legislation would not specifically make it illegal to file a medical malpractice case, it might certainly make it impossible financially. A malpractice suit would become the equivalent of buying a Lamborghini. Theoretically, anyone is able to buy one. But there are very few of us who can actually afford to do so.

The memorandum for today’s hearing gives us the inevitable mention of “frivolous lawsuits,” which to us is simply corporate-speak for “lawsuits that do not benefit us directly.” Coincidentally, today we also read a story from Northern Virginia Daily which gives a little more perspective on the sort of cases that would essentially no longer exist in America if H.R. 5 were to become law.

A 29 year old woman in Winchester, Virginia was suffering from persistent diarrhea and went to see a doctor. The doctor decided to perform a colonoscopy. When she was given a preparation medication before the colonoscopy took place, she had a great deal of difficulty handling it. She was suffering from nausea, abdominal pain and cramping. Rather than ascertain the cause of this pain, the doctor simply gave her Demoral and went ahead with the colonoscopy. The end result of this was that the woman had her colon perforated, which only added to her already existing medical problems. The woman came very close to dying.

If the allegations in the official complaint are correct, the doctor failed the patient in a number of ways, and her injuries are extensive. But let’s say that these medical malpractice caps are put into place. What are her options? She could still sue the doctor, of course. But what does she do for a living? Does she manage a bank? Is she an executive with Lockheed Martin? Is she a housewife? Is she a waitress? With H.R. 5 as established law of the land, that could matter more than the extent of her injuries,whether or not the doctor was guilty of negligence.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the negligence or incompetence of a medical professional. We have helped hundreds of medical malpractice victims in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia receive fair treatment from the court system. If you or a loved one has been injured due to an instance of medical malpractice,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation.

All of these numbers were put together in a very interesting New York Timesarticle, which can be somewhat uncomfortable to read. The article outlines what is essentially a cost/benefit analysis where they determine whether or not new regulations on industry would be financially feasible. For instance, let’s say that there is a new technology that would prevent a certain type of accident, but it is an accident that happens relatively rarely. Federal agencies would then take their version of monetary value of a human life, multiply it by the amount of times that particular accident happens, and then compare that number to the cost of forcing industries to implement that technology. This is not to say that this formula is the arbiter of whether regulation gets put into place, but if the cost of implementing regulation is much cheaper than the cost of lost human life, it certainly makes a clear argument for enacting that regulation. The howls of protest that come from businesses and industries of all types are quite interesting, particularly because they are placed in the awkward position of having to haggle over what they truly believe a human life is worth. After all, the more human life is valued financially, the more likely they are to have to obey regulations that could cost them money.

As mentioned in the article, one group that is very much against increasing the value of human life is the Chamber of Commerce, who are doing everything they can to encourage more Congressional control over regulations in general. If you wish to know exactly how much they think a human life is worth, all you have to do is take a look at the non-economic damage caps that are in place in quite a few states. These caps are in place largely because of the legislative influence of the Chamber of Commerce.

Alabama, for instance, believes that a human life is worth a maximum of $400,000. Alaska believes a human life is worth $250,000. Maryland is a bit more generous, with a current cap of $680,000. Virginia believes human life is worth $2 million. And there are several other states that have determined that if you subtract what you are worth financially, then your life in general is worth significantly less than what the federal government has determined it is worth.

We have a hard time accepting caps of any sort, regardless of whether they are on the high or low ends of the spectrum. We have a problem with caps primarily because we have a serious problem with the idea of a predetermined monetary value placed on human life. But we would at least admit that the amounts that the federal agencies use for their arithmetic seem reasonable, even if the industries that fight against regulation do not. And if you are going to place a strict monetary value on a human life, wouldn’t it seem decent to have it on the higher side rather the lower? In many of the states where these caps are in place, the compensation levels can barely be called compensation, and actually price many injury victims directly out of the courtroom. That’s fine for the insurance companies, and its fine for the businesses, but for people who get injured due to the negligence of someone else, “equal justice under the law” is a theory rather than a fact.

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 car or truck accidents, pedestrian or bicycle accidents, medical malpractice, product liability or premises liability. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. has been injured in an accident due the actions of someone else,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

It also would have gutted WMATA’s ability to make the changes and upgrades that the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending for years, particularly so after the Red Line crash in 2009 that killed nine people and injured seventy six. It would have been fairly galling to have one element of the federal government recommend much needed improvements and then remove our ability to pay for them.

The DC Metro system needs new subway cars, and it absolutely needs to revamp the sensors that were the primary mechanical cause of the fatal train crash. It also needs to revamp the culture. The NTSB report also mentioned that there were multiple human factors involved in the crash, all of them stemming from an unfortunate institution-wide notion that passing the buck is how things get accomplished.

These are only two of Metro’s immediate needs. There are certainly other things that WMATA could put some of that $300 million towards. The first would be the escalators, and the second would be security.

There has been one high profile escalator failure at a Metro station in the past year. By “high profile,” we mean failures that result in people getting hurt. This failure happened at L’Enfant Plaza, on the same day as an enormous rally at the National Mall. Miraculously, only four people were hurt, which seems amazing when you watch the video. There was also an incident at Foggy Bottom where the last four steps on one of the escalators suddenly dropped through the bottom of the stair case, leaving a big hole that a woman fell in to. Again, fortunately, she was able to get pulled out before she got hurt. And just last month, there was another failure at DuPont Circle, where the escalator suddenly stopped, which caused people to fall. In case you didn’t know, the escalators at DuPont Circle’s north entrance are 188 feet long. While it is fortunate that nobody was seriously hurt, it would seem to be only a matter of time before there is a serious injury.

The obvious malfunctions are bad, but there are also the problems with keeping these escalators running in general. At any given time, multiple escalators aren’t working, which causes people to have to walk up and down the stairs. Would you like to walk up 188 feet, particularly during the summer months? And, how does this affect the disabled? The escalators don’t work for multiple reasons, chief among them being that WMATA does not have an adequately trained maintenance staff. This is another area where some of that $300 million could be used.

With regards to security, there have been multiple instances of violent crime taking place on our subway system. We aren’t talking about on occasional mugging. We mean multiple instances of random and severe beatings of innocent passengers. The police presence on the trains and in the stations has been severely lacking, and there have been extremely disturbing accounts of Metro personnel not even lifting a finger to help people who are being attacked right before their eyes.

We believe that operating costs will take up a fairly substantial amount of this money, but surely somebody over at Metro is aware of the multiple safety problems that exist on our subway system. These aren’t the sort of problems that you can simply ignore, because at this rate, it’s simply a matter of time before we have another serious crash, or an escalator breakdown that results in a death, or a crime that escalates into a murder. The safety of our public transportation system should be a priority.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured on our public transit system due to no fault of their own. This includes escalator malfunctions, injuries due to sudden starts and stops, and instances of neglect by the WMATA Police. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured on the Metro, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

One branch of law enforcement that is held to a particularly high standard is the FBI, which basically functions as our national investigative police force. They investigate bank robberies, terrorism, financial fraud, forgeries, kidnapping, or any crime that occurs over multiple states. It takes a lot more than standard police training to be able to join.

We were recently very shocked to learn about the following incident, particularly because it involves an FBI agent breaking the very law that he is supposed to uphold and enforce:

WASHINGTON - Law enforcement officials have identified the FBI agent suspected in a fatal drunk driving car crash in Brandywine, Md. Monday night as 37-year-old Adrian Norbell Johnson. The FBI says the agent has worked for the bureau for six years…Law enforcement sources tell FOX 5 Johnson's blood alcohol level shortly after the deadly crash was .25, three times the legal limit in Maryland. Prince George's County Police say that amount of alcohol in a driver's system is extremely dangerous.

Speaking as attorneys who help victims of drunk drivers, we can tell you  that a .25 blood alcohol level goes beyond “extremely dangerous” and veers right into “extremely reckless.” He would have had to consume at least 10 drinks in order to get to that level of drunkenness, and considering that the job of most law enforcement officers is to prevent people from drinking and driving, he must have known that drinking that much and then getting behind the wheel was both illegal and completely negligent. But he did it anyway.

If Agent Johnson had been pulled over by another police officer or got arrested at a sobriety checkpoint, this might have just been an unfortunate and embarrassing incident for the FBI. Instead it turned out to be an accident where one person died and another was left in critical care in the hospital. So this incident has turned out to be both a tragedy and an embarrassment, especially considering that Agent Johnson was meant to join the security detail for the Attorney General.

Drunk driving is a serious problem in this country, particularly in the Washington, D.C. area. There were 243 DUI fatalities in Virginia last year, 10 in the District, and 162 in Maryland. And the DUI accidents where people were injured numbers in the thousands. The cost of these accidents ranges in the tens of millions. Drinking and driving is a detriment to the safety of our society, and it is one that could be easily avoided if everyone simply exercised some basic responsibility.

There is a big difference between a run of the mill car accident and an accident that is caused by drunk driving. An accident can happen to anyone. But drunk driving is negligent behavior that is often the primary cause of an auto accident. You can’t blame a driver if a deer runs out in front of his car, but you can blame a driver if he drinks ten vodka tonics, and then attempts to drive home. Agent Johnson should have certainly known this, and why he decided to risk driving home after drinking that much is beyond us.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently helping people who have been injured in car accidents due to the negligence of drunk drivers. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been injured in a drunk driving car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

What is puzzling to us about the fatality cases is that there seems to be a lack of interest on the part of the police to charge the drivers for the accidents. Out of the ten fatalities, only one driver was charged, and  he was drunk and tried to flee the scene. Nobody was charged when Constance Holden was hit by a military truck on her way home. Nobody was charged when David Williams was hit from behind by two cars, one of which fled the scene. Nobody was charged when 9 year old Rebecca Johns was hit and killed as she tried to cross a road in Franconia.

We aren’t sure why this is.  If you ride a bicycle in D.C, Maryland or Virginia are you expected to just take your chances? Are motorcycle riders treated the same way? What about pedestrians? Can you expect to receive no justice from the law when you are not in a car?

One example of this occurred very recently in Arlington on Clarendon Boulevard, which is incidentally one of the streets where there was a fatality in 2010. A bicyclist was travelling down the street when a car owner opened the car door. The bicyclist was “doored,” as the cyclists call it. This is when you collide with a suddenly opened door and then are essentially catapulted over it onto the street.

The police arrived at the scene and questioned both the car owner and the bicyclist. The cyclist claimed that he wasn’t really hurt, so the police sent them both on their way. The problem here is that the cyclist actually was hurt, but didn’t discover this until later.

This is a common occurrence. We have served many clients over the years that didn’t learn about the extent of the damage done to them until much later. Brain injuries often work that way, as does spinal damage or deep bruises. The effects aren’t immediately felt.

Later, when the cyclist realized that he was injured and would need medical care, he contacted the police and found that the officer at the scene had not filed a report. So there was no way for the cyclist to get any insurance information from the man who opened the car door.

Although there is somewhat of a happy ending here (Arlington PD have followed up personally with the bicyclist,)  the end result could be that the victim here might have to go out of pocket for medical expenses, which could be considerable. If you couple that with the fact that he would have to pay for injuries he sustained due to the negligence of someone else, you have to wonder why it was that the police didn’t file a report.

Bicyclists have as much right to our streets as cars and motorcycles do, and if they are struck by motorists, they need to receive the same care as a motorcycle or auto accident victim requires. Your responsibilites don’t disappear when you climb on to a bike, and neither should the responsibility of motorists or the police.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to bicyclists and pedestrians who have been injured due to the actions of motorists. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured in a bicycle accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

It is a rare day indeed where natives of this city can point to a recommendation by a committee or a piece of legislation and say with great certainty that they will immediately feel the effects of it if it becomes a reality. But recently, we heard something in President Obama’s State of the Union that caused us a great deal of concern. As injury lawyers, we have seen firsthand how “caps” on medical malpractice damages have benefited insurance companies, but have left the actual victims of surgical errors and medical negligence with far less than they should have received in compensation for their injuries.

Here is the actual line in the speech, as reported in the Los Angeles Times:

"I'm willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs," besides repeal of his health care bill, Obama said, including "medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits."

We have a real problem with the term “frivolous lawsuits,” particularly when it is coupled with “medical malpractice reform.” In the first place, it advances the fiction that anyone who brings legal action against a doctor or other medical professional is “faking it,” or is looking to be rewarded for nothing. This is absolutely not the case. Victims of medical malpractice are people who have placed their health and trust in the hands of doctors, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and other medical professionals, and have had that trust violated. And we aren’t talking about mere inconveniences. When we say “medical malpractice,” we mean severe and often life-threatening injuries. We mean limbs that have been mistakenly amputated. We mean patients who have been given the wrong blood type. We mean pharmacists who have misread the prescription. We mean doctors who gave a rushed and thoroughly disinterested diagnosis that resulted in real harm being done to the patient. The idea that the people who get seriously hurt due to instances like this are engaged in frivolity of any kind is disingenuous and insulting.

The solution that almost always accompanies talk of medical malpractice reform comes in the form of “caps” on non-economic damages. This means that an arbitrary and unrealistic ceiling is placed on the amount of money that victims of medical malpractice can receive for pain and suffering. In other words, there is a strict limit on the amount of compensation that they can receive for anything about the injury that did not directly cost them money.

While this might seem reasonable, consider what the end effects of these caps have done to the rights of victims. In Texas, for example, cases involving birth injuries or instances where the baby died due to the mistakes of doctors have virtually disappeared. They have not disappeared because mistakes by the doctors have suddenly stopped. They have disappeared because since infants aren’t money-makers, the only real compensation that a grieving family can receive is around $200,000. With this being the limit to the compensation, it becomes very easy for malpractice insurance companies to price plaintiffs out of the courtroom. All they have to do is file for delays and hire more expert witnesses than the plaintiff can afford to match, and all of a sudden the whole court case would end up costing more than the victims could possibly win in damages. When victims and their attorneys are facing this economic reality, often the cases are never even filed.

These caps do not benefit anyone except the people who need it least. Medical malpractice insurance is a multi-billion dollar business, and profits are soaring. We have no idea why President Obama seems to think that protecting these astronomical profits is more important than protecting the rights of medical malpractice injury victims. Perhaps it is a concession of some sort. But if these caps become a built-in part of Obama’s health care reform, “tough luck” will be the only advice available for most malpractice victims.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to instances of medical malpractice. This includes surgical errors, wrong diagnosis, pharmaceutical errors, and unnecessary delay of treatment. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the actions of a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Since we have been practicing injury law in D.C, Maryland and Virginia, we have had more than a few cases where somebody got hurt due to somebody losing their cool behind the wheel. The media takes the more dramatic examples of these cases and calls them “road rage,” but actually, a lot of these cases stem from something minor. A driver is behind another car that isn’t going fast enough. Someone doesn’t go immediately after the light turns green. A driver thinks, “Oh, you cut me off? Well, let’s see if you like it when I cut you off!”

It is very easy to think of your car as not being connected to the real world, especially nowadays. What with cruise control, immaculate suspension, anti-lock brakes, windows that filter out practically all outside noise, GPS devices, iPods, television screens and satellite radio, it is quite easy to forget that you are travelling at a high rate of speed in a vehicle that can weigh anywhere from 2500 pound to a half ton. If everything about your car is easy and convenient, it isn’t that much of a stretch for you to imagine that the world outside of your car should be that way too. But the real world is very rarely easy and convenient.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, aggressive driving leads to deaths in all 50 states every year. Of the 6,800,000 crashes that occur every year, a “substantial number” are believed to be caused by aggressive and angry driving. So if you happen to be in a situation on the road where your patience is being tested, try to imagine what your life would be like if you decide to make up for lost time and get somebody hurt, or worse. Or if you decided that you have had about enough of that person driving slowly in front of you and did something to cause an accident? Believe us; we have represented enough car accident injury victims to tell you that aggressive driving is not worth it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have offered legal assistance to those in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. who have been hurt in car crashes due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the aggressive or negligent actions of another driver, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

While the FDA dithered and failed to use its new powers, literally millions of people were still being prescribed propoxyphene based drugs. This makes the case of Kira Nicole Gilbert particularly tragic. Ms. Gilbert was a 22 year old Cincinnati-area woman who injured her knee while working at an orphanage in April of 2009. Her doctor prescribed her Darvocet for the pain. Eight days later she was found dead in her apartment. The autopsy ruled that cause of death was acute cardiac failure combined with pulmonary edema, which is a medical term for a buildup of fluid in the lungs. Ms. Gilbert was the picture of perfect health prior to her knee injury, and while the pharmaceutical company would be hard pressed to find some other cause for her death, we imagine that won’t stop them from trying.

Ms. Gilbert’s death happened long after the Food and Drug Administration suspected that there was something wrong with propoxyphene, and long after the FDA had the power to move faster to remove dangerous drugs from the shelves of American pharmacies and hospitals. Such behavior is practically expected of pharmaceutical companies, who will go to very great lengths to keep their products on the shelves regardless of the dangers to the people who use them. But regulatory agencies are meant to protect the general public from harm. In the case of Darvon and Darvocet, the FDA acted too late.

When the FDA finally removed these drugs from the shelves, they concluded that Darvon, Darvocet and other propoxyphene-based drugs can cause significant changes in the electrical activity of the heart, even when it is used in small therapeutic doses. This alteration of electrical activity can cause heart palpitations, irregular heartbeats and episodes of cardiac arrest.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. who have been injured and hospitalized due to the use of painkillers containing propoxyphene. We are also offering help to the families of people who have lost their lives due to the use of Darvon and Darvocet. If you or a loved one has suffered from a heart attack, heart palpitations, pulmonary edema or other health complications after taking Darvon or Darvocet, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free drug injury legal consultation.

A recent study in the Netherlands backs this up:

In the current study, the researchers identified the main reasons for errors in 294 successful claims related to surgeries from 2004 to 2005. They then compared those to the items on a comprehensive surgical checklist called SURPASS, which is now used in several hospitals in the Netherlands.

It should be mentioned that this checklist is not an immensely complicated document. It includes simple things like making sure that the procedure is scheduled correctly, and that all of the needed instruments are available, or even marking which side of the patients body is going to be operated on. It’s not unlike the pre-flight checklist that a pilot and co-pilot go through before they take off.

When the researchers compared the successful medical malpractice cases to the items on the checklist, they found that 29% of the malpractice cases were directly related to something that was left off of the checklist. It wasn’t a daring surgical procedure that went wrong. It wasn’t a random action of the body that was blamed on the doctor. It was an easily preventable mistake that could have been prevented if someone had taken the time to make sure that the procedure was properly set up. It was a lack of communication among the hospital staff. It was misread handwriting. It was a scalpel that wasn’t available.

Since patients can’t be expected to handle these things themselves, the responsibility for all of this lands directly on the hospital staff. If a patient or the family of a patient comes to us and explains that their loved one was killed or injured because of a breach of the standard of care, and this was something easily preventable, it’s hardly “abuse of the system” if we try to hold the people responsible accountable.

According to the article, only 25% of American hospitals use any kind of pre-op checklist at all. And while we absolutely dispute that the rate of medical malpractice cases in America is somehow overblown or unsustainable, we have to wonder what the results would be if more hospitals made some sort of pre-op checklist a mandatory part of their practices. After all, medical malpractice cases aren’t filed for fun. They don’t fall out of the sky. They happen because of preventable mistakes, and it appears that by using these checklists, doctors and surgeons all over the country could lower the amount of those preventable mistakes by a considerable margin.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured by a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional. If you or a loved one in Washington, D.C, Virginia or Maryland (including Baltimore) has been injured due to medical malpractice or surgical errors, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

In a nutshell, that’s the difference between a run-of-the-mill accident and an accident caused by negligence. We think it’s an important distinction. While an accident can be an “act of God,” negligence accidents are “acts of man.”

On October 30, the escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station suffered a system failure. According to the Washington Post, the escalator started speeding uncontrollably, which essentially flung all the riders to the ground at the bottom. The entire Metro system was extremely crowded due to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that was taking place on the mall. Just under a million people were riding the trains that day. If anything positive can be taken out of this, it can be that it was a lucky thing that only four people were hurt. Can you imagine what could have happened if the main escalator at Bethesda metro station suddenly sped up? Or the escalator at DuPont Circle? On the most crowded day Metro has had since the Inauguration?

The escalators in the DC Metro systems are notorious for being broken. It is a rare day where a regular commuter can get to work without having to climb up one broken escalator or another. But there is a difference between an escalator not working and an escalator actively malfunctioning while passengers are on it. And what should be mentioned here is that the escalator malfunction at L’Enfant Plaza wasn’t a random occurrence, nor was it unexpected.

A report performed by an independent firm weeks ago concluded that the escalators are dangerous, unstable and in need of repair or replacement. Among some of the more relevant passages:

• Major amounts of oil and lubricant on step treads and risers. Symptomatic of major leak at drive motor / reducer coupling.
• Significant accumulation of metal shavings around hand rail newel areas from worn newel wheels.
• Brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop.
• Numerous switches in safety circuits were dirty, out of adjustment, and ineffective.
• Skirt panels were adjusted too tightly to the steps, creating metal shavings along the step roller tracks in the interior of the unit.
• Hoist ropes severely rouged [corroded] and worn beyond acceptable life expectancy.
• Sheet plastic being used to protect equipment from water intrusion. This is a critical life safety issue.

Metro authorities had this draft in their hands on September 30^th, which was a full month before the accident happened. So how can they make the standard defense against negligence, which is “We simply didn’t know?” They can’t make the claim that the escalator malfunction was a surprise to them when an independent report commissioned by them on the state of their escalators specifically warned that an incident like the October 30^th disaster was likely to happen. The argument could easily be made that WMATA was negligent in maintaining its escalators, and that they knew about the danger that these escalators posed to riders for a full month before the incident took place.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to injury victims all over the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. If you have been injured due to reasons that were not your fault, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

One man in Minnesota even spent almost four years in prison after his Toyota slammed into another car, killing all three of its occupants. Toyota’s policies of denial and not allowing any attorneys to access company information or the on-board computers that all Toyotas have, effectively helped keep this man in prison.

According to the New York Times, this quick response is part of Toyota’s new “global safety initiative,” and while we certainly have no problem with that (or any problem with the speed and efficiency of this recall,) we do have a problem with the behavior that made this new efficiency and commitment to safety necessary. A commitment to driver safety should be the first priority of any auto company. Safety recalls should not be plea bargained, and crucial information should not be kept from the public.

We also have a problem with Toyota swearing up and down that all of these instances can be chalked up to “driver error,” when there are simply too many examples of this not being the case.

The recalled models are as follows:

2005-2006 Toyota Avalon

2004-2006 Toyota Highlander

2004-2006 Lexus RX330

2006 Lexus GS300

2006 Lexus IS250

2006 Lexus IS350

If you own any of these vehicles, and yours has been affected, you should expect notification via e-mail or postcard from the Toyota Corporation. It is very important that you take your car in for the necessary repairs.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. For twenty five years we have helped injury victims all over the Washington and Baltimore areas, and that includes Northern Virginia. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to a malfunctioning Toyota or other defective vehicle. Dealing with any injury case is not something that you should face alone, particularly if the injury was caused by the actions of a large corporation. Let Greenberg & Bederman handlle your personal injury negotiation. Contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

In this article, we meet a series of soldiers who have suffered from severe traumatic brain injuries, and these men serve as an example as to how complex both the human brain and injuries to the human brain can be:

“There's the Marine whose injury robbed him of the ability to understand speech even though he could still read, another who could no longer laugh, one who could see out of both eyes but only to the left, and one soldier who became dangerously impulsive and started spending thousands of dollars on junk he didn't need.”

Granted, these are the more severe traumatic brain injuries, but the article also mentions that even mild traumatic brain injuries can be enough to disqualify a soldier for service, and some mild TBI’s also require lifelong medical care.

We are certainly familiar with this. While there is certainly a difference in the way our clients receive their traumatic brain injuries (car accidents or slips and falls,) the end results are very much the same. Our clients find themselves unable to go back to their jobs, or find that they are unable to support themselves. Their relationships have suffered and their quality of life has plummeted. They find themselves suffering from mood swings or black depressions.

In other words, they go through the same things that these wounded veterans at Bethesda Naval Hospital are going through, but with one critical difference. Wounded veterans have the benefit of the United States government doing everything that they can to help them, while our clients are usually dealing with insurance companies that are doing everything they can to not help.

Our clients with traumatic brain injuries are often accused of faking it, or of exaggerating the difficulties that these injuries are causing them. In short, they are frustrated about receiving the funds that they will need for treatment, occupational therapy, job training, or even money to live on. This is why they come to see us.  It is our job to help our clients get past the denials and delays that insurers often use to avoid paying what they should.

If you simply accept what an insurance company offers you at the time of the accident, you most likely will be taken advantage of. Remember, the prime objective of any insurance company is to make money, which means that they will do everything they can to pay out as little as possible for injury claims and medical bills. Since brain injuries often have effects that last for decades or even throughout the lifetime of the victim, insurance companies do not want to be on the hook for those costs.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have decades worth of experience in helping brain injury victims deal with insurance companies. We also have decades worth of experience in helping arbitrators, judges and juries understand the seriousness of brain injuries and how the effects of these injuries keep our clients from living normal lives. We take real pride in helping victims of traumatic brain injuries get the compensation that they need and deserve so that they can get their lives back on track. We can help anyone in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has suffered a traumatic brain injury due to the actions or negligence of someone else, contact Greenberg & Bedermanfor a free legal consultation.

There is currently a movement going on up in Frederick County which involves people who have had their lives adversely affected by the decades of severe groundwater contamination that Fort Detrick has been responsible for. While it hasn’t escalated to lawsuit status as of yet, this group of people who are obviously suffering have not received much help or many answers from the United States Army.

So with all of this pollution and extremely shady government programs as a backdrop, the recent bizarre events regarding green water flowing from Fort Detrick and into the surrounding area has probably not made residents of Frederick County feel much better about Fort Detrick’s ability to control its pollution.

From the Frederick Post:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a criminal investigation into what appears to be green trace dye added to several water sources in Frederick, Fort Detrick officials said.

EPA spokesman Roy Seneca would not confirm or deny the criminal investigation Thursday. Still, Fort Detrick spokesman Rob Sperling said the EPA was in the middle of a criminal investigation and other state and federal agencies were involved. 

Green water appeared at Fort Detrick on Sept. 2 when workers at the Army post's waste water treatment plant noticed it in a tank and then later flowing into the Monocacy River.

As of right now, we have no idea what this green dye is, and it appears to be harmless, but the idea that people are walking into the YMCA to find that the swimming pool looks like it is filled with Gatorade does not fill us with confidence, especially considering what it is that they do over at Fort Detrick. By its very nature, medical research involves working with hazardous materials, and the leaking of any sort of substance into the local water supply, harmful or not, does not bode well for the waste securing methods that they have in place over there.

It took eighteen years for the local, state and federal authorities to clean up the toxic waste at Fort Detrick, and you would think that now they have a relatively clean slate that they would put more of an effort in to keeping the public safe, especially considering that the cancer rate in the surrounding area. Yet it is apparent with this latest spill that business as usual is the order of the day.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has suffered obvious detrimental physical effects from industrial pollution, particularly groundwater pollution. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been made ill due to groundwater contamination, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free groundwater pollution legal consultation today.

We would like to say that defective cars are an anomaly, or that all car recalls occur due to minor, cosmetic malfunctions that don’t affect the safety of the car, but the truth is that history is loaded with examples of automotive recalls that occurred because people were put in serious danger. Here are just a few:

In 1971, General Motors recalled over 6.7 million cars due to malfunctioning auto mounts. One of the mounts in particular caused a serious hazard to drivers, mainly because when it broke the V8 engine would shift upwards, which, similar to Toyota’s almost 40 years later, would cause the car to suddenly accelerate. The total of accidents for such a widespread problem was miraculously low (only 18 reported injuries,) but GM still recalled the cars and made the necessary fixes.

Between 1971 and 1976, Ford released a car called the Pinto, which had no reinforcement between the gas tank and bolts attached to the rear differential. In the event of a rear collision, there was a serious danger of the gas tank getting punctured and leaking. Gasoline on the ground is never a positive thing in terms of safety. Even though the recall affected 2.2 million vehicles, six people died in Pinto fires after rear impact collisions.

Ford also had issues with a transmission defect in the 1970s that allowed cars to slip into reverse while the gear was in “park.” Although the NHTSA received thousands of complaints, only 98 accidents were attributed to the defect.

Ford Explorers made in the year 2000 were also subject to a massive recall, not necessarily due to the car but because of the Bridgestone/Firestone tires that were issued with them. They had a tendency to blow out. 250 people died as the result of these faulty tires.

Again, car recalls are nothing new, and sadly, deaths and injuries are the result of car defects. What is  not new is the fact that car companies rarely offer fair compensation for the people who were injured or killed.  Initial settlements offered are quite often incredibly low, and if the case is taken to arbitration or court, many car companies do everything they can to discredit the victims or pay the least amount they can. This is the reason that it is so important to have experienced legal counsel in the event that you have been injured by a defective car.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C, and we are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to cars that are faulty and defective. We haveserve Maryland and Baltimore, and we can help anyone in the Washington, D.C. or Northern Virgnia area.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident caused by a defective car, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

The arbitrator’s ruling means that Mr. Biller can offer proof to his claims that Toyota asked him to hide evidence regarding the many faults of Toyota vehicles, such as accelerator pedals that stuck, brakes that didn’t work, and steering that failed. The reason that this is important is because Mr. Biller’s contention shifts the premise from negligence to criminal negligence. It’s one thing if there were defects in Toyotas and the people at Toyota were unaware of them. But it is a different matter entirely if Toyota knew about these defects and actively tried to suppress other people finding out about them.

These defects weren’t minor in nature. It wasn’t a faulty radio knob or a glove compartment latch. Toyota’s defects put the lives of drivers, passengers and anyone in the vicinity of these malfunctions in serious danger. Thousands of Toyotas had defective floor mats that made the accelerator stick to the floor. Thousands more had accelerator pedals which stuck to the floor regardless of the floor mat. Thousands more had steering that momentarily gave out. These would all be bad enough if Toyota simply didn’t know. But Mr. Biller is claiming that they did know, and chose to cover these defects up rather than act to fix them, all while Toyota drivers were losing control of their cars. Again, this goes beyond negligence and into criminal behavior, and it is a positive development that Toyota will not be able to hide behind any corporate privilege or trade secrecy laws.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm based in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured incar accidents caused by faulty and malfunctioning Toyota vehicles. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a Toyota crash, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Morally speaking, there are many things wrong with this concept. And there are more than a few examples as to how these caps exist for no other reason than the financial convenience of the insurance companies.

One example in particular is happening in Nevada right now. A doctor named Depak Disal runs an endoscopy clinic there, and it is alleged that his clinic caused a hepatitis outbreak which affected thousands of people all over Nevada. At issue is this question: Does the damage cap cover “people,” or “incidents?”

In other words, if it can be proven that Dr. Disal was responsible for “one” hepatitis outbreak, would this mean that his insurance company would be obliged to pay out the limit of the $350,000 damage cap only once? Would everyone who allegedly got hepatitis from Dr. Disal’s clinic be forced to share one capped judgment? Or would the cap apply to each individual person who contracted hepatitis? Would any of you like to take a guess as to which side of the argument Dr. Disal’s insurance company is on?

As strange as this argument seems, one court in Nevada actually agreed with the premise, but another judge ruled the exact opposite. So we expect the case to be ruled upon by the Nevada Supreme Court fairly soon. And if rulings in other states are any indication, it could be that damage caps in Nevada might be a thing of the past altogether.

Illinois and Georgia are two states where their respective Supreme Courts have ruled that caps on damages are unconstitutional, based on the grounds that they ignore the separation of powers that was written into the Constitution. In other words, damage caps lessen the ability of a judge or jury to rule effectively on a case. With damage caps, a judgment on a supposedly independent court case is essentially pre-determined by members of another branch, and that is absolutely against the premises laid out in Articles I, II and III.

While we most certainly agree with that on legal grounds, we also find it outrageous that state or federal legislators are allowed to assign market value to pain, suffering and emotional loss. We also can’t imagine that a hepatitis victim being eligible only for a “share” of a judgment rather than a separate judgment is in any way fair. Hopefully, the Nevada Supreme Court will do away with damage caps entirely, and the question of whether it was “one” incident or a few thousands separate incidents will be rendered moot.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to medical negligence, misdiagnosis, violation of standard of care, or surgical errors. If you or a loved one has been hurt due to a doctor’s mistake, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation today.

"The most disappointing . . . is when we issue recommendations and those issues do not get corrected. For us, that is a big concern about Metro," she said. Nine NTSB recommendations issued to Metro in July and September, in the aftermath of the accident, remain open, according to NTSB records.

We aren’t exactly sure why Metro is dragging its feet about making these corrections. It might be money. It might be politics. It might be a combination of the two. State politicians in Annapolis and Richmond might have a problem with paying state funds for a transit system that their immediate constituents never use. We can certainly imagine that a state delegate from Lynchburg, Virginia or Havre de Grace, Maryland would fail to see the urgency.

Whatever the reason, WMATA has continued on as if that horrible train accident never happened. We can absolutely assure them that it did. In fact, we have a few injured clients who can verify that on that day in June, there was a catastrophic system failure that resulted in 9 deaths and 76 injuries.

The second serious safety hazard doesn’t involve the trains, but instead involves escalators that allow passengers to safely get in and out of the stations. Specifically speaking, they don’t work, and the scope and size of both the number of breakdowns and the escalators themselves makes this state of affairs an accident waiting to happen.

The Washington, D.C. subway system has 570 escalators. This is more than any other subway system in the world. Due to the fact that this area was built on what was essentially marshland, our subway system has to go very deep underground. The escalator at Wheaton, for instance, goes down 230 feet. Believe it or not, this is actually the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere. The escalators at Bethesda, DuPont Circle and Woodley Park are also incredibly long. And while the escalators at Rosslyn and Clarendon don’t necessarily set records, they still are long enough to eat up over a full minute to get from the street to the station.

The way we see it, there are two potential dangers with broken escalators. The first would be the hazards involved with these escalators suddenly stopping. The stop wouldn’t even have to be a particularly jarring one for disaster to strike. One person falling down an escalator of that size and length would be catastrophic, not just for the person falling but also for anyone who happens to be on the escalator below the person falling. People can get badly hurt by falling off of a five inch curb on the side of the road, so the idea of someone falling down a crowded 230 foot escalator is so grim that it’s terrifying to think about.

The second danger is not going down, but going up. Metro might not have noticed, but not everyone who rides the subway is spry and athletic. Many of the passengers are elderly and infirm. Making them climb up 230 feet, particularly in heat that reaches upwards of 90 degrees, is something that could adversely affect their health. And if the elevators are broken (as they often are,) many passengers have no choice but to trudge up that enormous incline.

As of this writing, the escalator report for the entire WMATA system lists 62 escalators as being out of service, as well as 8 separate elevators. This reflects very poorly on WMATA. It is inconvenient, stressful, disrespectful of passengers and extremely dangerous. Among the many faults of the DC Metro system, this one is particularly galling.

Greenberg and Bederman is aninjury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We are currently offering legal help to anyone who has been injured due to negligence or poor management by the WMATA. This includes anyone who was injured while riding the subway, or anyone who was injured due to an escalator-related accident. If you or a loved one was injured on the Washington, D.C. subway system in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry suffered from a chronic brain injury that may have influenced his mental state and behavior before he died last winter, West Virginia University researchers said Monday.

The doctors had done a microscopic tissue analysis of Henry's brain that showed he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is caused by repeated hits to the head. It is a disease that essentially causes the brain to deteriorate, and as it progresses there are multiple symptoms that can affect the victim. Among these are dementia, irrational and violent behavior, memory loss and a lack of impulse control. As a receiver in the National Football League, Chris Henry would have spent the majority of the years of his life playing football. There was probably no shortage of incidents where he received major blows to the head. So all of a sudden, it becomes clear that Mr. Henry wasn’t necessarily “wild” and “immature,” but was instead sick, and his accident becomes that much more of a tragedy. It also raises a very troubling question. Why didn’t it occur to anyone in the NFL, or the Cincinnati Bengals or in Mr. Henry’s immediate circle that his behavior wasn’t natural? Why didn’t anyone recommend that he see a neurologist, or at the very least a therapist?

The story of Chris Henry underscores two things: First, it emphasizes how brain injuries can drastically alter the behavior of the victim. Secondly, it emphasizes how brain injury victims can go for years without being properly diagnosed.

The human brain is the most complex organ in the body. Modern medicine and modern science is still trying to figure out all the ways in which it works, or how one part of the brain connects to another, or how they all balance out and work together. When a part of the brain is damaged even slightly, the repercussions for the victim in terms of movement, the senses or emotional stability can be enormous.

For instance, what happens if you are an elementary school teacher who all of a sudden loses her ability to control her temper? What happens if you are an air traffic controller who all of a sudden loses his ability to remember the order of things? How are you supposed to continue on in your career? How are you supposed to earn a living? How are you supposed to live a normal life?

For that matter, how are you supposed to even know if you have a brain injury? It obviously never occurred to Mr. Henry that he had one, even as he was getting arrested, flying into rages, or, tragically, jumping on to the back of a moving truck.

If you have been in any kind of accident where you received a blow to the head, no matter how minor it might have seemed, it is crucial that you tell your doctor. Something as simple as an x-ray could be the difference between a proper diagnosis and having your entire life fall into ruin because of an undiagnosed brain injury.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C. Many of our clients are people who have suffered brain injuries in car accidents or due to falls. We understand the difficulties that traumatic brain injuries can cause people, and we also understand the difficulties in getting insurance companies to recognize those difficulties. Insurance companies have an unfortunate tendency to automatically assume that people who suffer from behavioral or other mental difficulties after an accident are just a number, the lowest number, they can try to pay out an injury claim on. We take pride in our ability to help our clients fight through the obstructionism of insurance companies and get the compensation that they deserve. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident and is suffering from the effects of a brain injury,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free brain injury legal consultation.

So as a result of this act of irresponsibility, two completely innocent people were badly injured. They went through painful and expensive medical treatment, they were unable to go to work and earn a living for themselves, and they had to go through a prolonged and painful recuperation process. And all they did to deserve this ordeal was to simply get in their car.

If you take the numbers available for drunk driving related accidents in Virginia as a whole, you actually get somewhat of an encouraging scenario. The earliest numbers available at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles are from 1984, when the Old Dominion had a staggering 19,371 alcohol related vehicle accidents. This was 15.7% of all vehicle crashes. In other words, if you got into a car wreck in Virginia in 1984, there was just under a 16% chance that the other driver had been drinking.

Things have improved drastically over the following 26 years. In 2009, the total number of alcohol related crashes was 9,366, which is almost exactly 10,000 less alcohol related crashes in Virginia. We can take that to mean that raising awareness of the dangers of drunken driving and increasing the penalties for drunken driving have made a difference in Virginia. But sadly, the awareness in Virginia didn’t make enough a difference to stop Lisa Marie Schettler from getting behind the wheel of a car after nine drinks and a blood alcohol content of .44.

The definition of negligence is when one person or party does not live up to the reasonable expectations of keeping someone else from getting hurt. For instance, if you are in possession of a loaded gun, you would not fire it in public for no apparent reason. Similarly, if you have been drinking a large volume of alcohol, you would not get behind the wheel of a car. You can’t make the argument that you didn’t know that drinking and driving was illegal. You can’t make the argument that you didn’t plan on hurting anybody. A person who drinks and drives is a perfect example of someone engaging in negligent behavior.

As injury attorneys based in the Washington, D.C. area, Virginia is right in our back yard. In our twenty five years as an injury law firm, we have represented countless Virginians who were injured due to the negligence of another driver. So even though Virginia Beach is a few hours away from our offices in Silver Spring, the story of Ms. Schettler and Mr. and Mrs. Gay caught our attention.

We have dedicated a significant portion of our practice to helping car accident victims in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. get fair compensation when they get injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes people who have been injured due to drunk drivers. We help our clients get past the artificially low settlement offers and delaying tactics that insurance companies use to avoid paying injury victims what they deserve. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. and you feel that you need legal counsel, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident injury consultation.

To learn more about auto accidents and auto injury, please read our auto accident page, or our injury page, or watch our accident videos on Youtube.

According to Metro Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein, this motion to dismiss the case was “partial” and “routine:”

“Even if granted, this would not deprive anyone of their day in court or their right to a jury trial. Neither of our motions separately or together seeks dismissal of the suit against Metro in its entirety."

Why bother to file a motion to dismiss at all? What about this lawsuit does WMATA find unfair or excessive? There are nine people who are no longer living because WMATA had not bothered to do proper maintenance on their outdated sensor system. There are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who have lost someone due to utter negligence. Which “part” of that does WMATA not understand?

Judging by the progress that they have made in terms of making safety improvements, we suspect that there is a great deal that they don’t understand. They seem to be looking at this disaster not in terms of human life and human suffering, but rather in dollars and cents. It appears to be too expensive to make necessary safety improvements. It appears to be too expensive to compensate the families of the victims fairly. So put off the improvements and repairs. File those motions to dismiss. Just roll the dice and see if you can avoid responsibility altogether.

Call us crazy, but we’re pretty sure that’s not the attitude that a public transportation agency is supposed to take. We’re also pretty sure that anything that involves getting members of the public from one place to another should be as safe as humanly possible. Safety inspections and improvements should not be put off or deliberated. They should be done early and often. The consequences for not doing so became tragically evident exactly one year ago today.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We are currently representing injury victims from the Red Line Metro crash, and are also offering legal help to anyone who has been injured while riding any form of public transportation in the D.C. area. If you or a loved one has been injured on a bus, streetcar or subway in Maryland, Virginia or D.C, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

This area in Southwestern Louisiana has the misfortune to be virtually surrounded by a string of 20 industrial facilities, with many of them routinely emitting extremely dangerous pollution into the air, water and soil. These pollutions are known as dioxins, and they have been known to cause cancer, damage to the reproductive system, and can be harmful to fetal development. There is absolutely no minimum level of dioxin that is safe for human beings to come into contact with.

This area is home to the following industrial plants and facilities, which have released the following amounts of pollutants into the air, water and soil:

 LOUISIANA PIGMENT CO. 3,122,196 lbs.

CITGO PETROLEUM CORP. 2,242,249 lbs.

FIRESTONE SYNTHETIC RUBBER 2,144,458 lbs.

PPG INDUSTRIES, INC. 546,705 lbs.

CONDEA-VISTA CO. (now GEORGIA GULF) 449,449 lbs.

ARCO CHEMICAL CORP. 228,885 lbs.

CONOCO LAKE CHARLES REFINERY 199,996 lbs.

WESTLAKE POLYMERS CORP. 182,981 lbs.

OCCIDENTAL CHEMICAL CORP. 153,788 lbs.

W.R. GRACE AND CO. 137,400 lbs.

OLIN CORP. 55,828 lbs.

CALCASIEU REFINING CO. 44,341 lbs.

MONTELL USA INC. 32,686 lbs.

CARBOLINE CO. 22,538 lbs.

BIOLAB INC. 17,494 lbs.

WESTLAKE PETROCHEMICALS CORP. 16,932 lbs.

WESTLAKE STYRENE CORP. 12,168 lbs.

RESIN SYS. INC. 9,070 lbs.

INDUSTRIAL PIPE AND PLASTICS 7,000 lbs.

CERTAINTEED CORP. 4,500 lbs.

There is practically no way that being surrounded by so much pollution from industrial and chemical facilities could not have an adverse effect on nearby residents. Health surveys in Mossville have shown epidemic levels of sickness, from respiratory problems to extremely elevated cancer rates to a very high level of young and untimely deaths. It would take a legendary amount of obtuseness to not be able to link the numbers of illnesses and deaths in Mossville to the surrounding chemical plants polluting the air, water and ground water, yet it has taken decades for the Environmental Protection Agency to finally declare this area as hazardous to the health of the residents.

It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the residents of Mossville. They have been trying for a few decades to get someone in the government to realize that they are literally being polluted to death by the surrounding chemical plants. And while it is certainly a positive development that the EPA is taking action and is in the process of designating the area for a Superfund cleanup, we can’t help but think that this is too little, too late for the residents of this town who have already become sick or who have already died. In scrutinizing all of the reports, we can’t help but wonder a few things.

What level of responsibility is Citgo, Firestone, Arco et al. prepared to accept? Pollution doesn’t just pop out of nowhere, after all. Are the responsible parties making every effort to lower pollution levels? Are they at least admitting culpability and making every effort to make things right for the citizens of Mossville? Are they paying the medical bills of those who became ill? Are they offering restitution to the families of those who died of their illnesses?

Most likely the polluters will deny responsibility. All of these polluters are in a unique position in that they can point the finger of blame at all the other polluters. It’s the equivalent of finding a burning house that is surrounded by fifteen guys who all have lighters in their pockets and empty gasoline cans at their feet. They all may look like they started the fire, but it might take some extra work to actually prove which one (or ones) actually did it. This task is made all that much tougher when each arsonist is simply pointing at the guy on his right.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. basedinjury law firm that is currently assisting those who have developed illnesses due to groundwater pollution. Americans have the right to live in areas that are free from the harmful effects of dioxins and other groundwater contaminants, and anyone who becomes ill as the result of irresponsible industrial practices should be fully compensated for medical bills, pain and suffering, and the loss of value of their homes and property. If you or a loved one has adversely affected by contaminated groundwater in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free water contamination legal consultation.

 In all probability, an entire way of life down in the Gulf Coast is gone. People who run fishing and shrimp boats and the crews who man them will be out of work. People who offer tours into our now ruined marshlands will have to find another line of business. Restaurants all over the country that specialize in that wonderful regional seafood will have to either drastically alter their menus or go out of business. So will the wholesalers who deliver the seafood to them. Those who specialize in the tourist trade will be taking a beating, too. We can’t imagine that anyone would want to take their families to beaches that are covered in crude oil. So you can say goodbye to beachfront resorts in Alabama and Texas, as well as the smaller hotels and motels. Plus the rental home market is probably going to be nonexistent for the next few years.

The Federal Government recently secured a promise of $20 billion dollars from British Petroleum in order to help expedite the claims process for workers, business owners and property owners who will be adversely affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But if the spill continues (and there is no indication that it will stop any time soon,) $20 billion could be a mere fraction of what the overall damages could be. And we have a sneaking suspicion that getting fair value for your damaged property or ruined business will require a lot of paperwork and legal acumen. It is because of this that Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance to people who live in the Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia areas who have legitimate claims of damages down in the Gulf Coast.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have helped injury victims and people who have suffered real financial damages due to the negligence or incompetence of others. Over the next few months, we will be reaching out to victims all over the country to see if we can help them receive the sort of compensation that they both deserve and are entitled to. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent oil blowout certainly qualifies as negligence and incompetence on the grandest scale imaginable.

If you or a loved one has suffered a serious financial loss due to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil leak, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

• You have an injury or illness that prevents you from doing the work that you used to do. In other words, if you used to have a job that required heavy physical labor and you severely injure yourself in a car accident, it is unlikely that you will be able to continue to work at your same job.
•  You can’t do other work because of your condition. Making a career change happens to many people at some point in their lives, but with severe injuries or debilitating illnesses a career switch simply isn’t an option. If you have an injury where simply sitting upright causes you pain, there aren’t many employment positions available.
•  Your disability is expected to last at least a year or to result in your death. It is important to realize that SSDI is generally for people who have been severely injured or are severely ill. Injuries that result in permanent impairment or injuries that will take extensive and lengthy recovery periods are generally the types that are considered for SSDI benefits.

If your condition meets these general criteria, then it falls to the Social Security Administration to determine whether or not you are actually disabled. They do this by asking five questions.

1.       Are you currently working? The idea here is that you can’t really be considered disabled if you are holding down a job and earning more than $1000 a month.  If you are currently working and making more than that, then as far as the SSA is concerned, you aren’t disabled.

2.       Is your condition Severe? In other words, does your condition directly affect your ability to work? Can you not work specifically because of your injury or illness?

3.       Is your condition on the list of disabling conditions? The Social Security Administration has a list of conditions which will automatically qualify you for SSDI. You can find that list here. If your condition is not on the automatically disabling list, that doesn’t mean you should give up. It just means that they take a longer time considering whether or not you will qualify.

4.       Can you go back to your old job or go back to similar work? If you get into a car accident, but are still able to do the job that you had before you were injured, then you will not qualify for SSDI. This has become more and more common in recent years, as a great deal of the work is more automated and less based on manual labor.

5.       Can you do any other type of work? The key here is that they want disabled to mean “severely disabled.” If your injury has you completely bed-ridden or has left you with brain injuries, then there is a high amount of probability that you would not be able to transfer your skills over to any other job, or really do any other job for that matter.

These are the basic qualifications for Social Security Disability benefits, but what has not been mentioned so far is that the process for applying for these benefits can be very long and quite complicated. There are rejections and appeals, many of which are decided by a presiding administrative law judge. This is not like waiting in line at the DMV to get a driver’s license. It’s more complicated than that.

This is why having experienced legal representation to assist you with your application is so important. It could be the difference between being provided with crucially needed income for you and your family and being left with nothing at all. With serious injuries, or a questionable disability problem, such as mental illness, the stakes are too high to attempt to do without legal counsel.

 Greenberg &  Bederman is a D.C. based law firm that helps injury victims get through the injury process, and that includes helping them with the applications forSocial Security Disability benefits. We serve clients in Silver Spring, Maryland and Baltimore, and have helped hundreds of people all over Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. If you or a loved one needs assistance in getting through the SSDI process, contact our social security lawyer Audrey Randall, for a free social security legal consultation.

As personal injury attorneys who serve the injured in the Washington, D.C. area, we can tell you from experience that accidents rarely “just happen.” In fact, we have found that most accidents are caused. And when people get severely hurt as the result of these caused accidents, the last thing anyone should be able to do is write them off as “just one of those things.”

Yet this is exactly the scenario that injury victims often face when they attempt to seek fair compensation for their injuries. They often have to deal with insurance companies who have no interest in treating injury victims fairly, but are instead concerned with paying out as little as possible. Car insurance companies often offer injury victims settlements that are far less than what would be needed to cover the medical costs and any lingering effects, and most of the time they don’t offer anything for pain and suffering. Medical malpractice insurance companies are notorious for not wanting to settle, but rather take the issue to court. And, quite often when they do settle, it is a paltry settlement offer.  Pharmaceutical companies have no qualms about not offering any compensation for injuries at all unless they are forced to by a court.

An injury victim who tries to deal directly with the insurance company is risking not having their individual situation monitored and protected by an injury lawyer. The insurance company has lawyers to protect their interests, so should an injury victim. Facing an insurance company on your own means you have to know all the legal angles, understand a myriad of laws that if you don’t understand could harm your injury case, leaving you potentially being treated un-fairly. Despite all of the advertising about being a good neighbor, the truth of the matter is that insurance companies are not in the business of sending out checks for the maximum value. They make money holding down costs and adding new members.

The law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has been protecting the rights of injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area since 1985, and all of our injury attorneys are dedicated to helping our clients get fair and realistic compensation for their injuries. We make it a point to address all of our clients injury needs when we deal with the insurance companies.

Our attorneys are currently offering legal counsel for the following areas:

Car Accidents:Our attorneys have decades of combined legal experience in helping victims of all types of car accidents, including accidents caused by drunk drivers, accidents due to reckless driving, rollover accidents, pedestrians who have been hit by cars, collisions, and accidents due to automotive malfunctions, and passengers in a car accident. 

Medical Malpractice:John Sellinger is known and respected throughout the country as a medical malpractice attorney who puts his clients’ interests first. In his thirty five years of legal experience, this former President of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association has helped hundreds of victims of medical malpractice, including victims of wrong diagnosis, surgical errors, wrongful death, delay of treatment and birth trauma.

Pharmaceutical Liability: For all the good things that modern pharmaceuticals have done for humanity, it cannot be denied that there is a dark side to the pharmaceutical industry. There have been several instances over the past few years where heavily marketed and prescribed pills have resulted in serious injuries among patients who used them in good faith. The most recent example is Yaz, which is a line of birth control pills that has caused strokes, heart attacks and gall bladder disease among women who use it. Our attorneys are currently representing women who were injured and hospitalized due to the use of these birth control pills.

Social Security Disability Denial: It is not uncommon to be denied for Social Security Disability Benefits.  If you are disabled by either disease or injury, and your disability is expected to last at least a year, you may be entitled to Social Security Disability Disability or SSI. To learn more about Social Security Disability law, please read our Social Security Disability FAQ page.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located one half block from the downtown metro in Silver Spring, Maryland, one mile from the Washington, DC line. We are perfectly situated to help injury victims all over the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

We aren’t sure what went wrong with Toyota. Every car manufacturer has safety recalls, some major and some minor, but we have never seen so many things go so drastically wrong on so many models from the same company at the same time. It wasn’t just that one model had problems with floor mats jamming the accelerator pedal in one model. Or it wasn’t that just one model had a few accelerator pedals stick in the down position. This was a systematic failure of multiple cars. It was as if the entire Toyota Corporation all took a vacation at the same time and missed some very important meetings.

It was a failure of the engineering developers to not notice that the accelerator pedal was sticking. It was a failure of the design team to not notice that the floor mats were causing the pedals in other models to stick. It was another failure of the engineering team to not notice that there was an inconsistency in braking and steering when the Prius shifted between the electric and gas motor.

It was a failure of the company to “negotiate” a lesser recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which might have saved Toyota millions in costs, but cost hundreds of people pain, money, time, and in some cases, their lives.

It was only a matter of time before all of these failures caught up with Toyota. There were too many bizarre and high profile accidents involving Toyota for the government to ignore. One recall came after another, and the Capitol Hill testimony of both crash victims and the President of Toyota itself did practically irreparable damage to the Toyota brand.

So you would think that after all of this, the Toyota Corporation has learned its lesson, right?

Apr 15, 2010: Toyota now says it will investigate its entire SUV lineup for safety problems uncovered by Consumer Reports earlier this week. 

The automaker announced Tuesday it would stop selling the 2010 Lexus GX 460 temporarily as it looks into handling problems that could make it unsafe.

Consumer Reports said the Lexus GX 460 slides around too much when drivers lift their foot off the gas pedal while negotiating around a tight curve. The vehicle can actually slide sideways, Consumer Reports says, which could result in the SUV hitting a curb or leaving the road.

Right on the heels of the worst year in Toyota’s history, yet another completely unsafe vehicle is put out on the market. It is a bad sign when the staff at Consumer Reports catches a potential major safety hazard before the engineering department at a major automobile manufacturer does. It appears that whatever overhauls that were promised by Toyota during the recalls and hearings on Capitol Hill have yet to take place.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area injury law firm that helps those who have been hurt due to no fault, or negligence,  of their own. The recent Toyota malfunctions have injured thousands of people all over the country, including people in Washington, Virginia and Maryland. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a Toyota that did not work as it should have, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free toyota injury legal consultation today.

To learn more about personal injury law, please read our personal injury lawyer page, or watch our personal injury lawyer videos.

Police are also under strict procedural standards. A “Dirty Harry” shoots first and asks questions later type of police officer would not be on the force for very long, and would probably end up in prison. The use of physical force by the police is tightly regulated. They aren’t supposed to beat people up for no reason, they aren’t supposed to use a taser or pepper spray on people who are not resisting arrest, and they most certainly aren’t supposed to use their clubs to pummel someone who is simply standing on the sidewalk.

It should be mentioned that for every instance of police brutality that occurs, there are tens of thousands of instances where police maintain their composure and do their jobs with professionalism, patience and restraint. What happened recently in College Park, Maryland is certainly NOT an example of this high professional standard.

For those of us who live in the Washington, D.C. region, we are familiar with how rowdy things can get after a Maryland Terrapins basketball game. The students in the area seem to create quite a ruckus whenever the Terps win (or sometimes when they lose) an important game. In 2002, College Park erupted in a riot after Maryland won the NCAA Basketball Tournament. And it does seem that burning mattresses in the streets seems to be the preferred method of celebration of victory or protest of defeat. It is a pointless way to celebrate, but the Prince Georges County Police certainly can’t say that they were unaware that such a thing was possible.

The celebrations after a victory against Duke got out of hand, and the police were called in, and there were some arrests, but the video footage of this beating (and really, there is no other word for what occurred) shows that the police reacted in exactly the wrong way. Without any apparent physical provocation, two officers slammed a student against a wall, threw him to the ground, and clubbed him repeatedly over the head until he was unconscious.

Was the student drunk? He might have been, but that alone is no reason to have beaten him senseless. Was he threatening? That seems doubtful. Literally seconds before the beating he was dancing a goofy celebratory jig with a friend. It didn’t even look like he knew the police were there. In fact, it seems like he danced down the street, looked up and found himself feet away from a mounted police officer. It certainly didn’t look like he made any threatening gestures.

Did he perhaps say something threatening? It is impossible to tell. But even if he had, surely four Prince Georges County police officers could have arrested one student without delivering such a brutal beating. You can’t hear anything that was said over the noise of the crowd, but what is significant is that on the audio of the tape (which was shot from some distance away,) you can hear the sound of a nightstick repeatedly smacking this student’s head and body.

This was a complete breakdown of officer discipline. And to make matters worse, it appears that the officers responsible for the beating trumped up charges and claimed that the student “..struck mounted officers and their horses, causing minor injuries.” They further claimed that the reason that the student was injured was because he had been kicked by the horse. The video proves all of these statements by the arresting officers to be completely false.

This is the sort of behavior that you would expect from the police force in a country living under a dictatorship. A brutal and unnecessary beating followed by trumped up charges is not something that is supposed to happen in America, and it certainly isn’t supposed to happen in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The student has obtained the services of an attorney, which is his right, and he is currently seeking financial damages against the Prince Georges County Police Department, which is something that he is completely justified in doing. He received an unnecessary and brutal beating, for which there was no warning or proper explanation given by the police. This is one of the most obvious cases of police brutality that we have ever seen.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm that helps people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to no fault ornegligence of their own. This includes those who have been unnecessarily injured while being arrested or while in custody of law enforcement. Being arrested by the police does not mean that you surrender your rights as an American citizen. There is no excuse for unwarranted force by law enforcement. If you or a loved one has sustained injuries from the police, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Second would be full disclosure. Toyota should be more forthcoming with their crash data and reports than they currently are. Allowing this data to be independently analyzed would go a long way in not just determining the problems, but would also help Toyota avoid making these mistakes in the future. It is sometimes much harder to see your own errors, especially when there is a financial incentive to not see them.

Toyota should be responsible financially for the injuries and damages that they’ve caused. If someone has been killed or injured in a Toyota, someone has to pay the medical bills. For a large corporation like Toyota, the only way for them to actually feel the weight of what they have done is to make them responsible for the injuries and damages they’ve caused.   If a spouse who is counting on income suddenly is left alone due to an acceleration defect car accident, how will that spouse be able to survive financially? Is it fair to the surviving spouse to have to figure it out alone? Toyota should be held accountable for that loss of income. Doing so would not only give Toyota every reason to clean up its act, but it would also serve as an example to other automakers who are  manufacturing cars that are shown to be unsafe.

With that principle in mind, we feel that the fine of $16 million that the NHTSA recently levied against Toyota to be a good start in the right direction but falls quite short for the injured and killed, especially considering that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood issued a statement saying that the release of these defective automobiles was no accident:

“We now have proof that Toyota failed to live up to its legal obligations,” said LaHood on Monday. “Worse yet, they knowingly hid a dangerous defect for months from U.S. officials and did not take action to protect millions of drivers and their families.”

Even after the costs of issuing the recalls, Toyota still remains a wealthy corporation.  $16 million is not even a dent in their coffers. This is hardly the incentive needed to get them to improve its faulty vehicles, and compensate the injured or killed.

It appears that the only way to make this automotive giant accountable for its actions is for the victims to take their cases to the courts. If the NHTSA will not stand up and demand substantive penalties from Toyota, those who have been injured or have lost family members due to this act of negligence will have to do so themselves.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area personal injury law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to malfunctioning Toyotas. This includes drivers of faulty Toyotas, passengers who were riding in faulty Toyotas, drivers in other cars who were hit by faulty Toyotas, and cyclists, motorcyclists or pedestrians who were injured due to malfunctioning Toyotas. Our personal injury attorneys have decades of experience in both auto accidents and product liability, and accidents involving these malfunctioning Toyotas fall under both of those legal categories.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to an accident with a Toyota, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free Toyota Accident legal consultation today.

The vehicle that the astronauts were travelling in had to essentially break in half, and then one of the two sections had to do a 180 degree turn, and then gently thrust back towards the other section, where they re-attached. Bear in mind that this had to be done while they were travelling through the vacuum of space at thousands of miles an hour. Another stunning feat was the reattachment of the lunar module, which essentially launched itself from the surface of the moon (with two astronauts inside) and attached itself to the orbit module which was zooming along at thousands of feet above the surface. If you want a real life equivalent of how difficult that is, try hitting a bird flying overhead with a rock. If you also consider that these amazing things were done in the late sixties, which was practically the Stone Age in terms of computer technology, that gives you an idea as to how smart the NASA people are.

Any endeavor into outer space has to involve all manner of computers. All of the systems on any spacecraft are run by them, including steering, thrust, life support and navigation. Without the advent of computers, it would be impossible for us to imagine getting into space at all. If you consider that your average space craft is run by electronic systems that are often controlled from thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of miles away, you would have to assume that NASA knows what it is doing when it comes to computers.

This is why we consider it a good thing that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has brought in scientists from NASA to investigate the recent alleged unintended acceleration incidents that have occurred in so many Toyota vehicles. The NASA scientists are specialists in computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference, software integrity and hardware. In other words, they are the folks who you can expect to get to the bottom of what has been going wrong.

It might seem a little drastic, bringing in space shuttle mechanics to examine the inner workings of a Toyota Tercel, but one of the reasons that they have to be drastic is that Toyota itself isn’t talking. They are fiercely protective of their design and data, and are equally tight lipped when it comes to allowing crash data to be studied. Part of this might be because they are genuinely concerned about somebody making off with proprietary software or design, but we suspect it also has something to do with Toyota not wanting to directly provide any evidence of culpability on their parts. In other words, they want to make it as difficult as possible for any victims of random accelerations, brake failures or steering problems to be fairly compensated for their injuries and damaged property.

Toyota has shown a willingness to put profits over driver safety before. In what was probably one of the darkest moments in government consumer protection history, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allowed Toyota to “negotiate” a 2007 recall that was limited to defective floor mats rather than move forward with a more extensive recall that could have possibly saved quite a few lives. Internal documents from Toyota referred to this as a “win.”  

We aren’t sure what the outcome will be of this NASA investigation, but what we are sure of is that too many people have been injured or even killed due to defective Toyotas for this to be considered a random, freak occurrence. Based on the evidence that has been gathered and the incidents that have been reported, we believe that Toyota not only put out a defective product, but also were aware of these defects and the dangers that they posed to the general public.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. based injury law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to those who have been hurt due to Toyota malfunctions. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a Toyota accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Avandia works by making the cells more sensitive and responsive to insulin, which reduces the body’s need for the stringent blood sugar monitoring that diabetic patients require. If it works like it is supposed to, it allows diabetes patients to live their lives without going through the constant testing and monitoring that takes up so much of their time. But you have to think that if people had to choose between less blood testing and a massive heart attack, they would be willing to accept the inconvenience of the testing.

As important as the FDA’s actions are, they didn’t exactly come as a surprise to anyone. A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine had already suggested that users of Avandia had an increased risk (by as much as 43%) of heart failure as opposed to diabetics who were treating their condition with regular insulin. And the FDA has further issued a so-called “black box warning label” for the medication, which is a way for the FDA to let the general public know that there are some real concerns about the medication that patients are about to take.

GlaxoSmithKline, who designed, manufacture and market the drug, went into full damage control mode, which meant an onslaught of press releases, as well as “rejecting the conclusions” of the New England Journal of Medicine, the FDA, and anyone with any teeth who had anything negative to say about their type 2 diabetes drug. To give you an idea of GSK’s overall game plan (as well as give you an idea as to how nervous this drug was making people, all you have to do is look at the titles of the numerous press releases that they put out in the wake of all of these negative studies:

o    24 Feb 2010: GlaxoSmithKline responds to US Senate Committee on Finance report on Avandia

o    20 Feb 2010 - GSK rejects conclusions of Senate Committee on Finance Staff Report on Avandia

o    20 Feb 2010 - GSK rejects conclusions reported in The New York Times story on Avandia

o    6 February 2008 - GlaxoSmithKline responds to findings in ACCORD study

o    3 December 2007 - GSK response to Nature Medicine article on rosiglitazone and bone in mice

o    11 September 2007 - GlaxoSmithKline responds to JAMA articles

o    27 July 2007 - GlaxoSmithKline statement in diabetes care study thiazolidinediones and heart failure: a teleo-analysis

o    5 June 2007 - GSK response to New England Journal of Medicine editorials

o    21 May 2007 - GSK response to NEJM article

o    21 May 2007 - GSK response to US Senate Committee on Finance

In case you aren’t keeping count, that’s ten solid denials of studies and warnings by the official digest of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and the Senate Finance Committee.

One thing that GSK seems particularly adept at is refuting any studies that portray Avandia in a negative light and creating a more positive outlook on the side effects of Avandia. As personal injury attorneys who represent product liability injuries, this is certainly something familiar with. Quite often, when we present one expert witness, the attorneys for the defendant will provide two or three expert witnesses claiming the opposite.

Over two hundred studies were sent to the FDA by GSK. These all contradicted any negative reports of Avandia, whether it was articles in medical journals, independent studies, or even editorials in newspapers. Rather than just accept that both the NEJM and the FDA had been buried in an avalanche of contradictory news, the British Medical Journal not only took a look at the data in these positive studies, but also at who was responsible for writing and researching them.

What the BMJ found out was that of these, a full 45% of these studies were done by people who had authors with serious financial conflicts of interest. This means that they were essentially on the payroll of either GSK or other competing pharmaceutical companies, either through research grants or consulting fees. There was more:

“Moreover, in an era of “seemingly ubiquitous” requirements for disclosure of financial interests in medical journals, only 53% of the articles reviewed included a competing interest statement, noted the authors from the Mayo Clinical in Rochester, US.”

“…Of these 90 articles, only 69 (77%) included a statement disclosing the conflict of interest in the article itself, while three of the 21 articles that did not disclose the relationship published a statement declaring no conflicts of interest.”

This is hardly unbiased research. If your next grant or paycheck depends on positive reviews, what are the odds that your reports will be, if not skewed in favor, at least carefully neutral?

This isn’t the first time such conflicts have been brought to light. In the wake of the Vioxx scandal, the New York Times discovered that the FDA’s independent advisory committee (which essentially makes or breaks controversial drugs) was populated with scientists and researchers who had similar conflicts of interest. This is profoundly interesting to us, especially if you take a look at the following press release from GSK:

July 30, 2007 — Philadelphia, PA

GlaxoSmithKline [NYSE: GSK] today welcomed the nearly unanimous recommendation of a US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory committee to support Avandia’s (rosiglitazone maleate) continued availability to patients in the US. The company said it will continue to provide information to the FDA to assist in the Agency’s final decision-making.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering free legal consultations to people in the Washington, D.C. area who have been injured and/or hospitalized due to heart complications from taking Avandia.  For a free legal review of your Avandia bad drug injury, please fill out a free legal Avandia form, or call Andrew Bederman at (301) 589-2200 for a free legal consultation.

While there were minor differences in the chemical make up of each of these drugs, they were all marketed as “bisphospenates,” which, in a general sense, meant that they were drugs that were supposed to increase bone density.

Just as with many other drugs, things apparently did not go according to plan. Some of the first noticeable problems occurred when some people who were taking Fosamax began to suffer from what is known as “osteonecrosis of the jaw,” or “bone death.” This is as bad and as painful as it sounds. Most of the Fosamax users who suffered from bone death in the jaw had undergone dental surgery, which means that it is possible that Fosamax could strengthen the bones in the legs, arms, hips and ribs at the expense of the strength of the bones in the jaw.

Or maybe it’s simply bad for both. According to an article in USA Today, two recent studies have shown that women who take these bisphosphonates over a long period risk having the medications stop working, which means that the bones would be just as brittle as they were before the women started taking the pills in the first place. According to the study done by Columbia University:

"In the early treatment period, patients using bisphosphonates experienced improvements in all parameters, including decreased buckling ratio and increased cross-sectional area," Melvin Rosenwasser, an orthopaedic surgeon for Columbia University Medical Center, said in a statement. "However, after four years of use, these trends reversed, revealing an association between prolonged therapies and declining cortical bone structural integrity."

The problem here is that these pills are essentially made to be taken for long periods of time. Osteoporosis is the sort of condition that isn’t cured, but is managed. People who take these pills fully expect to take them for the rest of their lives. If the shelf life of effective treatment with this medication is only a few years, then the makers of these drugs have a responsibility to tell their customers that this is the case.

As of right now the Food and Drug Administration is currently running a safety review of Fosamax, Boniva and other bone building drugs in order to see if there is an increase of femur fractures among people who have been taking the drug over extended periods of time. But thousands of people who have been hurt as the result of using Fosamax for years have already filed lawsuits against Merck and other pharmaceutical companies.

A jury trial in New Jersey will be held on July 12, 2010, and this case is meant to be a “bell-weather trial,” for victims of Fosamax and other bisphosphonates all over the country. Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to people who have suffered from osteonecrosis of the jaw or other bone fractures due to the use of Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, or any of the generic versions of these drugs.

Greenberg and Bederman have offices in Silver Spring, Maryland and Baltimore, and are capable of representing injury victims in the entire Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. That includes Northern Virginia.

Our attorneys have decades of legal experience, and have helped thousands of injury victims in the D.C. area receive fair compensation for their injuries. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the use of Fosamax or any other bisphosphonate, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free Fosamax legal consultation today.

To learn more about fosamax injury, please see our fosamax page on our website.

As predicted, Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella became Bayer’s top selling products. And this is exactly why the casualty rate is so high. It turns out that drospirenone does other things besides acne and PMDD prevention. It also dramatically raises the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of the women who use it. This condition (called hyperkalimia) does not lead to positive health benefits. High potassium levels in the bloodstream can and do lead to blood clots in the arteries or veins in the legs, which is called deep vein thrombosis. These clots then break apart and the pieces start to travel through the bloodstream, where they then block the regular flow of blood. This leads to pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks. This is not to mention gall bladder disease, which has also been linked to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

As of right now, Bayer’s public defense has been presented in two ways. The first is to say that since they have a warning label on the box, and since they mentioned the possible side effects on both the warning labels and the commercials, then it couldn’t possibly be their fault if nobody read it. The second public defense is to release statements that say things like, “When taken properly, Yaz or Yasmin are effective and safe birth control pills,” which implies that it is somehow the fault of the person who was taking the drug rather than the drug manufacturers themselves.

We find a great deal wrong with both of these methods of defense. In the first place, considering that the only way you can get birth control pills in this country is through a prescription from a doctor, most patients are already assuming that the pills are safe. If your doctor prescribes you a medication, wouldn’t you assume without thinking about it that it won’t be harmful to your health? With that being the case, we have to make the assumption that Bayer did not tell the medical community everything that it needed to know.

Secondly, how can you possibly blame the patient for any illnesses or adverse medical conditions that develop? Birth control pills are relatively easy to deal with. It’s one pill a day. We find it hard to believe that any of the women who have been taking these pills have somehow stumbled across a magic formula to make an otherwise benign working birth control pill deadly.

If Bayer had come right out and said “This pill contains an ingredient that increases the likelihood of deep vein thrombosis, strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease,” then it could be said that their bases were covered. But they did not. They did not say such things on the labeling, they did not say such things in their multi-million dollar advertising campaign, and they certainly aren’t admitting it now that the casualty numbers are starting to come in.

The women filing the yaz lawsuit in Indianapolis are only a fraction of the number of women all over the world who have suffered real and provable damage from the use of these birth control pills. Women who, in good faith, took birth control pills that were dangerous to their health, and these women were hospitalized with painful or even fatal injuries.

Here in the Washington, D.C. area, Greenberg and Bederman has been leading the way in both informing women of the dangers of Bayer’s line of birth control pills and providing legal assistance for women who have been harmed by using these pills. We are currently representing several women who have been injured and hospitalized due to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

If you or a loved one has been similarly injured, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read about Andy Bederman, or watch his yaz video onYoutube.

But every so often, even staunch advocates of tort reform find themselves in instances where they need the aid of the courts, and that makes them rethink their whole outlook, especially when they discover that the tort restrictions that they supported have prevented them from receiving fair compensation for their damages. Former senator Trent Lott (R-MS) serves as a perfect example of this.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of people in Louisiana and Mississippi found themselves with their homes ruined by the devastation of a category three storm. Katrina lasted almost a week, and at its peak the wind speed was moving at 175 miles an hour. The preliminary damage estimates in terms of property was $100 billion.

Among those who found themselves with lost property was Senator Lott. He owned a beach house in Mississippi that was deemed a total loss as a result of the hurricane. Like thousands of people all over the Gulf Coast, he filed a damage claim with State Farm. And, like thousands of people all over the Gulf Coast, he had his claim promptly and utterly rejected by State Farm.

It’s important to note that prior to this rejection, Senator Lott was one of the biggest advocates of tort reform in the Senate. Here are just a few of his quotes and press releases on the subject.

"The Democrats seem to think that the answer is a lawsuit. Sue everybody."
- Sen. Trent Lott, 7/20/01

"I'm among many Mississippi citizens who believe tort reform is needed."
- Sen. Trent Lott, 5/8/02

"You know, obviously we should [enact tort reform]...Someday it will happen, and the sooner the better."
- Sen. Trent Lott, 1/24/01

"Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi today credited the agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and tort reform initiatives passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Bush with the overall upturn in the national economy."
- Sen. Trent Lott press release, 12/2/05

"If their answer to everything is more lawsuits, then yes, that's a problem, because I certainly don't support that."
- Sen. Trent Lott, 8/2/02

"It's sue, sue, sue... That's not the answer."
- Sen. Trent Lott, 8/4/01

But once Senator Lott got a taste of how the very industry that he backed through speeches, votes on the Senate floor and legislation actually operates, he didn’t much like it. So he filed a lawsuit against State Farm, in which he hoped to force the insurance company to pay for his damages.

A more recent and even more high profile defection from the tort reform movement occurred on June 6, 2006, when Judge Robert Bork fell and injured himself while getting ready to deliver a speech at the Yale Club in New York City. According to the Wall Street Journal:

“Bork was at the Yale Club last June to speak at an event sponsored by The New Criterion, a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life. According to the suit filed in federal court in Manhattan, the club failed to provide steps and a handrail to climb onto the dais. Bork fell backward as he was attempting to climb the dais, striking his leg on the stage and his head on a heat register, the suit says.”

The physical damages involved a massive bruise to his leg that, according to the complaint, required surgery and months of physical therapy to heal properly. Judge Bork believed that the Yale Club was negligent in that it didn’t provide a suitable railing or staircase on the way up to the speaking dais, thus directly contributing to his injuries.

Prior to his accident, Judge Bork was very much for tort reform. In fact, one of his more famous quotes on the subject compared the United States civil justice system to piracy on the high seas:

“Courts are now meccas for every conceivable unanswered grievance or perceived injury. Juries dispense lottery-like windfalls, attracting and rewarding imaginative claims and far-fetched legal theories. Today's merchant enters the marketplace with trepidation - anticipating from the civil justice system the treatment that his ancestors experienced with the Barbary pirates.”

This quote was from 1995, but it basically encapsulates Judge Bork’s entire judicial career. He held the tort system in very low regard, and actually lost his chance to be a Supreme Court Justice in part due to his extreme views on tort law and punitive damages. Yet there he was in 2006, filing not only a lawsuit to cover his damages but also seeking punitive damages in his complaint.

In the space of three years, two major proponents of tort reform have learned a very valuable lesson, which is that perhaps our tort system isn’t nearly as “broken” as it seems to be. The initial reaction would be to call Senator Lott and Judge Bork hypocrites, but we actually view it as an example of how ideology doesn’t always line up perfectly with reality. They believed something, and real life proved their beliefs wrong. They believed that our court system was broken right up until the point where they discovered that they would need it.

To learn more about personal injury in Maryland, please read our maryland personal injury page.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please read about Jason Fernandez, Andrew Bederman, or Roger Greenberg, or view our personal injury videos on Youtube.

Serious Car Accidents:Any accident that involves a complete loss of your car and/or a stay in the hospital should not be handled without legal counsel. When medical treatment is involved, insurance companies will often try to deny liability outright or offer an artificially low settlement in order to minimize the payout. Handling a car accident injury claim without an injury lawyer is practically a guarantee that your needs will not be realistically met.

Accidents with Trucks or other Commercial Vehicles:Tractor trailers and other commercial vehicles are on the road for no other reason than to make money, and as a result the laws regarding commercial insurance coverage are different. A commercial vehicle might have multiple policies, with the driver having one policy and the freight company having another. What often happens in the event of a commercial vehicle accident is a game of “pass the buck,” where one insurer will claim that the other insurer is more liable than the other and vice versa. Commercial insurance companies are also notorious for being closed mouthed and difficult during investigations. An experienced personal injury attorney can help you sort out the liability issues, determine who was at fault, and help you receive fair compensation for your injuries and property damage. And considering the harm that a truck or tractor trailer can do, it is a safe bet that there will be both serious injuries and major property damage. The stakes are too high in a situation like that to go it alone.

Medical Malpractice: Doctors make mistakes all the time, but not all medical mistakes are necessarily a medical malpractice. If a medical provider deviates from the standard of care, and causes harm to the patient, with damages, there may be a negligence claim against the medical provider. Even if the doctors are upfront about the mistake and the insurance company offers you a settlement, there could be elements of that settlement that are inadequate. An experienced personal injury attorney should be able to tell fairly quickly whether or not your settlement offer is a decent one.

Falls:On the surface, slipping and falling might seem to be more comical that damaging, but the reality is that falls are a major cause of serious injuries and deaths. Because slipping and falling can be embarrassing, even people who are severely injured are sometimes hesitant to consult with an attorney. But businesses, hotels and rental properties are required to maintain safe premises for customers, guests and tenants. Unmarked wet floors, poorly lit staircases or cracked flooring are only some of the examples as to how negligent maintenance by an owner or manager has resulted in serious injury. A fall might be embarrassing, but if you were seriously injured due to circumstances that were not your fault, you have every right to seek compensation for your damages. An injury attorney can conduct an investigation and help determine whether or not your injury happened due to negligence.

Despite the sunny advertising about being a “good neighbor,” the average insurance adjuster is not in the business of writing big checks. In fact, most insurance adjusters, whether they work for auto insurance, commercial vehicle insurance, medical malpractice insurance or property insurance, are actually financially rewarded for paying out less in claims. It is therefore in their best interest to pay you as little as possible. To that end, they routinely offer artificially low settlements, and engage in manipulative tactics to get you to accept them. A good rule of thumb for dealing with insurance adjusters is that if there is any element of your injury that goes beyond the concrete arithmetic in front of you, then any settlement that is offered to you should be thoroughly scrutinized by a personal injury attorney. For instance, if the injury was particularly painful, then that pain and suffering should be compensated. If you are unable to return to work because of your injury, then you should be compensated for your lost income. If you will have to go through rehabilitation to recover from your injuries, the rehabilitation costs should be covered.

If your adjuster offers excuses for not providing for these costs in the settlement, or if it seems that he is trying to steer the blame for the accident over to you, or if he says things like “We don’t want to make mountains out of molehills,” you can be absolutely sure that this means you aren’t being treated fairly.

Any experienced personal injury attorney should be able to take a look at your settlement offer and determine whether or not it is adequate to cover your damages, both present and future damages. If insurance companies would simply be forthcoming and generous from the beginning, we injury lawyers may go out of business. An experienced injury lawyer can judge what any settlement is lacking and the  best way to proceed.

In any accident requiring medical treatment, it is simply better to be safe than sorry. Consulting an injury attorney after a serious accident can keep you from becoming victimized a second time. You shouldn’t find out that your settlement is inadequate after you’ve already signed it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our attorneys have provided legal counsel for the injured of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. since 1985. We have helped secure high settlements and judgments for those who have been injured due to car accidents, medical malpractice, or other types of personal injury. If you or a loved one in the greater Washington, D.C. area has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about personal injury law, please read our personal injury page on our website.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please see our personal injury videos on Youtube.

Suppose the juror has no preconceived notions about either the claim or the parties to the case, yet once he or she leaves the courtroom at the end of each day, the juror is surrounded by people or the media offering opinions and information on the matter that is being adjudicated. Once the juror leaves the courthouse, he is not supposed to communicate with others about the case, nor acquire or attempt to find any extraneous information.  But, with free access to internet sources such as Google,Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook, many jurors cannot withstand the temptation to dig deeper, to get more information, or to share the experience with their friends. Some jurors post updates on cases while the cases are still ongoing. As recently as last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, despite the judge’s instructions. After 8 weeks of trial, the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial, because it turned out that many of the other jurors were doing the same thing. 

Jurors are not supposed to see the evidence that was excluded by the judge or have access to prejudicial information, but what’s to stop them from doing so. Although judges have long since revised their jury instructions to include warnings about using internet sources, some jurors just don’t follow them. 

Jurors have always been on their honor not to look up the facts of the case. The difference now is that, with Facebook and Twitter, it’s easier to find out when a juror has broken the rule. Cell phones and BlackBerrys are here to stay so we need to develop new mechanisms to ensure that jurors do not access them, before justice is decided by the vote of “twitterers”.

To learn more about personal injury law please read our personal injury law page.  To learn more about our personal injury trial lawyer, please read about Jason Fernandez, or watch Jason's personal injury video, or contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free case review.

While this might be a great thing for the insurance companies, it most assuredly isn’t a positive development for accident victims.

According to the website, the purpose of Colossus is to:

“…interpret medical reports and look up definitions of injuries, treatments, complications and permanent impairments using AMA 5th edition data. Through a series of interactive questions, Colossus guides the adjuster through an objective evaluation of medical treatment options, degree of pain and suffering, degree of permanent impairment to the claimant’s body, and the impact of the injury on the claimant’s lifestyle.”

What this means is that Colossus uses data from the American Medical Association to lump your injury into a specific injury category, whether that category is accurate to your circumstances or not. As far as Colossus is concerned, a broken leg is a broken leg, no matter if the victim is an office worker or a construction worker or a fire fighter.  Obviously, no two injuries are exactly the same. There is no such thing as an “average” broken leg, or an “average” rib fracture, or an “average” head injury.  Lumping them all together as if they were identical is disingenuous at best.

Another problem is that Colossus uses pricing data to determine exactly how much your injury should cost, regardless of how much it actually costs. For instance, if you receive a broken leg in an accident, Colossus determines the amount of money that an average broken leg settlement costs in your state, and that is the amount of money that is put towards your settlement. Where they happen to be getting this pricing data is anyone’s guess, as many insurers who use Colossus consider that information a “trade secret,” and have even taken former employees to court over allowing that information to be made public. 

Aside from all of these serious shortcomings, there are two aspects of this software that we find even more disturbing. The first is that Colossus makes no allowances for physical pain and suffering or emotional damage. The pain that your injury caused you or the possible detrimental mental effects of the accident is, as far as Colossus is concerned, worth absolutely nothing.

The second shortcoming goes back to the idea of simply automating injury claims. As we mentioned earlier, insurance adjusters used to be experienced human beings who could hear arguments from injury victims and could be made to see reason. Now, insurance adjusters are shackled to the results that are given to them by a computer program, which often leads many injury victims with the choice of either accepting an artificially low settlement or taking their case to court.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have spent the past few decades fighting for fair treatment for injury victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. A significant part of that process is helping those who have been hurt due to no fault of their own get past the disingenuous practices of insurance companies, including the use of software that automatically stacks the deck against the injured.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident anywhere in the D.C. metropolitan area, contact the law offices of Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

If you want to learn more about personal injury please read our personal injury page. 

“First, the company evaluates claims with a computer program designed to reduce payouts by as much as 20 percent of what the company once paid for the same injuries.

Second, Allstate pushes policyholders to accept quick settlements without the help of lawyers. Policyholders who try to fight for more money face Allstate attorneys coached to refuse to negotiate and to drag out litigation.

The approach often forces car accident victims to take what Allstate offers right away or spend years in court while their bills go unpaid -- a strategy Allstate spelled out in guidelines for claims adjusters that ‘forces the claimant and attorney to think about the obstacles they must overcome’ ..."

Some insurers aren’t even that clever. In some cases they will simply deny the claim, often referring to fine print in the contract, and sometimes not even offering an explanation at all.

A perfect example of a high profile claim denial would be State Farm’s blanket refusal to help any of their policyholders in the wake of Hurricane Katrina:

“Thousands of families who lost everything to Katrina's fury last August are now facing a second disaster: their insurers won't pay them a dime. The homeowners say they were led to believe they'd be covered when they signed up for their policies. The companies insist they're off the hook because of exclusionary clauses that distinguish between damage caused by wind (covered) and water (not covered). The courts will decide who's right: hundreds of homeowners have sued their insurers, among them U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, who lost a house in Pascagoula, Miss., and Congressman Gene Taylor, whose home in Bay St. Louis was destroyed.

While it's hardly unusual for homeowners and insurers to find themselves at loggerheads after a disaster, the wind vs. water debate has been especially rancorous. Earlier this month, 669 plaintiffs sued State Farm for allegedly denying their claims without properly investigating the cause of the damage to their homes. And last year, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood launched a suit against five big insurers--State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide, United Services Automobile Association and Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance--for allegedly tricking Katrina victims into signing forms stating that their homes sustained flood damage, which isn't covered. ‘The robber barons of our time,’ Hood calls the insurers.”

These abhorrent and unfair practices fall quite neatly under the heading of what is called “bad faith insurance,” and quite often the best way past them is to acquire the services of an attorney. These insurers are banking on what you do not know about the law, and having a lawyer who knows how insurance companies work as well as what your rights are as an injury victim can put you back on equal ground.

By contacting Greenberg and Bederman, thousands of residents of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area were able to get past these abhorrent insurance company practices, and were also able to receive the compensation that they needed to get their lives back on track.

We have law offices in Silver Spring, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, and as long as insurance companies believe more in their profit margins than their obligations to policy holders, we’ll be here to help.

Contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

 To learn more about personal injury law, please read Greenberg & Bederman's personal injury page..

To learn more about our social security lawyers please read about Dory Sutker, or Suja Varghese.

When is the earliest date that SSI can be paid?

The earliest date that SSI can be paid is the date that the application was filed, however, if the child’s impairment or combination of impairments didn’t reach the severity level as determined by Social Security Administration (SSA) regulations, the claim may be granted well after the date of the application.

What happens if the SSI claim is paid from a date other than the application date?

If the SSI claim is paid from a date other than the application date, you may appeal the time period that hasn’t been awarded, but if you do so, the review will be “de novo”, which means that the entire claim can be reversed and you will be forced to pay SSA back for the money they have already paid, if any.

If your child is receiving medical treatment for a condition that is not expected to resolve in twelve (12) months, we encourage you to apply for benefits immediately.

For example, a woman contacted us about her eight year old child, who had been receiving treatment for a combination of physical and mental conditions. The mother described the problems she had had with her son's behavior, both in school and at home, and it sounded rather severe. These problems had persisted despite appropriate medical treatment. So after a few years of dealing with her son's impairments, she finally decided to file for benefits.

Wouldn't you know it, the medical records describing her son's symptoms showed that although he had experienced problems that SSA would find disabling and grant benefits for, the medical records of the current time period --- from the date of the application --- showed that his symptoms had become more manageable, for whatever reason.

Ultimately, his claim was denied.

If you have a child who has been diagnosed with medical condition(s) that limit or prevent them from behaving either physically or mentally like other children of their age, you may want to consider discussing with their treating physician whether these symptoms will last for the next twelve months. If the physician says yes, then you should file a claim for SSI on your child's behalf. If your child's symptoms getting better while the claim is pending, then you can decide to withdraw the application.

As always, we atGreenberg & Bederman are available to answer an questions you may have regarding this or any other Social Security or personal injury question, including medical malpractice issues involving nursing home abuse or neglect, and accident injury cases.  If you want to learn more about social security law, please read our social security disability FAQ page.  If you want to learn more about our social security disability lawyers, please read about Suja Varghese, or Dory Sutker.