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

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 and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

 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 and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

• 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 and Bederman is a D.C. based law firm that helpsinjury 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 Faust, 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 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 and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

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 video.

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 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 and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

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.

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.