Experienced Maryland personal injury and auto accident lawyers know that Maryland's District Courts are subject to consistent patterns and outcomes which can provide useful guidance.
The guidance is particularly useful given the proclivity for insurance companies and their adjusters suggesting that they have "reduced" the injured victims medical bills and/or lost income as part of their analysis of the claim and in arriving at their typically highly insufficient offer.
This blog is the subject matter of a lengthier article on this website which is well worth reading. Nonetheless, the patterns are the following:
- Judges don't reduce medical bills
- Judges don't substitute their medical judgement for doctors.
- Judge grant lost wages where there is solid written support from the doctor that the injured victim couldn't work for a specific period of time and
- The lost wage period of time is supported by sworn testimony from the plaintiff of what time they missed and the amount lost.
- Judges care little for the extent of the damage to the vehicles involved in the crash as a correlating indicator of physical injury.
- The boulevard rule prevails not withstanding allegations of excessive speed.