Baltimore Personal Injury Law Blog

After having a few drinks, most Americans thankfully choose not to drive. Over 17 million of them do, however, even when they have a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent, which renders them legally drunk.

The implications of that are manifestly clear for car accidents and roadway fatalities. Noteworthy are the statistics showing that the number of motorists who choose to drive inebriated is increasing. "It's going up slightly, which is the wrong trend," says David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA").

Maryland will feature prominently going forward in the product defect claims against Toyota Motor Corporation that allege accidents caused by sudden accelerations attributed to both system flaws and floor-mat issues.

The state's public pension fund - the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System - is claiming an estimated $18 million in damages from the automaker, based on its investment in Toyota's American depositary receipts and the company's common stock. The mutual fund, which has been designated as the lead plaintiff in a consolidated shareholder lawsuit brought in federal court in Los Angeles, states that it would not have invested in Toyota if the corporation had timely disclosed the acceleration defects, which it failed to do.

Reducing car accidents throughout Maryland is the explicit goal of Checkpoint Strikeforce, a DWI/DUI enforcement campaign officially launched on August 24 by Lt. Governor Anthony G. Brown, safety advocates and law enforcement officials. The program is a six-month initiative that combines dissemination of safe-driving information to the public with increased use of saturation patrols and sobriety checkpoints aimed at identifying and prosecuting drunk drivers.

The program, which is coordinated through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, especially targets geographical areas within and in close proximity to Maryland where statistics indicate an increased risk of impaired driving and crash fatalities. These include the Central Maryland/Baltimore area, the state's Eastern Shore and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Tragically reminiscent of a race accident in February 2008 that killed eight people and injured five others in Accokeek, Maryland, a government-sanctioned off-road race for truckers in the Mojave Desert resulted in the truck accident deaths and injuries of even more people on August 14.

Despite the sadly similar outcomes between the desert and Maryland incidents, the differences were equally stark. The deaths at Accokeek occurred during an illegal drag race on a suburban road; the Mojave race was a sanctioned event that had the blessing of the federal Bureau of Land Management ("BLM"), which owns the public land and is tasked by Congress to make it accessible to reasonable requests. Off-road racing in the desert is deemed reasonable use.

Members of Maryland's Board of Physicians met with Dr. Mark G. Midei in a closed-door "case resolution conference" August 4 in Baltimore to address allegations that he placed stents unnecessarily into potentially many hundreds of patients during the period he supervised the St. Joseph Medical Center cardiac catheterization lab in Towson. The hospital revoked his hospital privileges last year.

The results of the meeting are not known. A case resolution conference often serves as a vehicle to work out details of a settlement, although that it not clear in this case. Midei could eventually settle the medical malpractice allegations with the board, which licenses physicians in Maryland, or the matter could subsequently proceed to a formal hearing before an administrative law judge.

A major medical malpractice award recently issued from a Montgomery County Circuit Court jury, with the plaintiff's attorney stating that the jury "understood this case" and "absolutely did the right thing."

On August 1, 2006, Yesenia Rivera, then a 24-year-old Silver Springs resident, went to the Shady Grove Adventist Hospital emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a kidney stone and sent home with pain medication. Two days later, she returned in more pain and told doctors she had just been in the same emergency room for a kidney stone.

The doctors, though, decided that the pain was being caused by either a gallbladder problem or ruptured pregnancy. For several hours, a septic infection went unnoticed, and 12 hours passed before a proper diagnosis was made and a surgeon brought in to remove the kidney blockage.

Commercial truckers ply Maryland highways non-stop and with loads ranging from produce and retail goods to animals and hazardous materials. The sheer volume of commercial trucks on state roads results, predictably, in a large number of truck accidents, many of them rollovers with fatal consequences.

The National Highways Traffic Safety Administration "(NHTSA") has been taking a hard look at that sobering reality, and agency officials think they might have a solution to mitigate it.

Namely, the NHTSA points to stability control systems that have already been operating for more than five years with measurable success on tractor trailer vehicles. These systems are not yet required for use in commercial trucks, but the NHTSA hopes that after some additional testing, they will be.

A prominent state leader cites medical malpractice as an issue that Maryland needs to closely examine and potentially make changes to as the state implements federal health care reform.

Sen. Thomas "Mac" Middleton, a Charles County Democrat and chair of the state's Senate Finance Committee, addressed malpractice and attendant issues while speaking at a conference for health professionals last week. He appeared as part of a panel that featured Health Department Secretary John Colmers and executives from the health insurance industry. Middleton could have a big say in any new changes to state law going forward if he wins re-election as a senator.