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

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.

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.

The writer of the Post article compares the settlement costs in D.C. to those of Montgomery County, which pays considerably less for lawsuit costs despite having a bigger population (and, it has to be assumed, more lawyers residing there.) The easy assumption would be that somehow lawsuits are easier to file in D.C, and as a result lawyers are flocking there to sue the city.

These lawsuits are not a reflection on the lawyers, or the victims that the lawyers represent. They are a reflection on how Washington, D.C. is maintained and administered. If a sidewalk is left in a state of disrepair for months at a time, are private citizens expected to fix it themselves? They would probably be fined if they tried. If someone injures himself as the result of those not responsible fixing the sidewalk, should he be expected to pay his own medical bills?

If a patient is neglected by the staff at a facility and is severely injured as a result, should he just shrug his shoulders and move on with his life?

If a family member dies while under the care of the state and the family is not told about it (or even given a body to bury) should they just write it off as “one of those things that happens?”

If someone is injured when a public worker is careless when performing his assigned tasks, should the injury victim shoulder the costs of that injury by himself?

If a group of people have their civil liberties violated by the police and are treated in ways that go directly against the United States Constitution, should they just forget about it?

Lawsuits aren’t filed for fun. They are filed because sometimes people get hurt due to actions that were careless and unnecessary. Sometimes bad things happen to people that are the fault of someone else. And when someone is injured, a simple apology won’t be enough. An apology from the sanitation worker who hit the bicyclist with the garbage can is all well and good, but it won’t pay the medical bills that the bicyclist faced. An apology from the orderlies and nurses who ignored the advice of the doctor doesn’t help pay for the mentally ill person who is now blind. So the question is this: Are all of these lawsuits happening because there are too many lawyers in D.C.?

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, one mile from the Washington DC line. We offer legal assistance to people who have been injured due to car, truck and motorcycleaccidents, pedestrian and bicycle accidents, premises liability cases, cases of medical malpractice, and people who have been injured due to the use of defective pharmaceutical drugs. We can help anyone who has been injured in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been injured due to no fault of your own,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free injury case legal consultation.

"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.

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.