During the holidays many of us consume catered party food, or eat out in malls and restaurants more often than usual. Who should you call if the food makes you sick?

First, consider calling the Maryland Poison Center at (800) 222-1222. The MPC provides poison treatment and prevention services to all Marylanders. It’s staffed round the clock by pharmacists and nurses with specialized training in toxicology, a specialty that includes food-borne illnesses.

In addition, in Baltimore City, dial 311, and report the occurrence to the Bureau of Food Control. This agency, run by the Baltimore Health Department, oversees more than 5,000 food facilities to ensure compliance with state and local food safety regulations. They inspect City restaurants, markets, bakeries, mobile food preparation vehicles, and caterers. Ask for a copy of your case report, and make note of the date, time, and substance of your initial phone call. You can even file a report online, using the Baltimore CitiTrack Service Request System. Make a printout of your report. Follow up with the Health Department to see what happens to your complaint. Most importantly, call to report your illness as soon as possible.

Lists of food establishments recently closed by the Baltimore City Health Department are available online, but unfortunately, these reports are several months out of date. Nevertheless, you can check through these postings to see whether your illness came from eating food sold to you by a previous “food safety offender.” 

In addition, you can click here for a map of facilities closed for food safety or other reasons by the Baltimore City Health Department. (See sample above.) 

A Google map connecting you to the full text of inspections conducted by the Howard County Health Department  is also available. Other counties have similar reporting services.

An overview of food poisoning, including the various types, their causes, symptoms and much more, is available in this University of Maryland article. Yes, these are the same folks who run the Maryland Poison Control Center, and they’ve also posted some seasonal poison prevention advice.

Finally, if your illness is severe enough to require medical intervention, consider legal representation. In general, a food poisoning case requires evidence of three things:

(1) The vendor failed to exercise due care with respect to the preparation or handling of the food item;

(2) This lack of due care caused the specific harm you suffered; and

(3) Real injuries resulted from eating the contaminated food.

In other words, if negligent food handling led you to eat contaminated food that made you physically ill from the specific contaminant that was present in this food, you probably have a case.

If you have suffered injuries as a result of eating contaminated food, the personal injury attorneys at Ingerman & Horwitz will evaluate your claim without cost to you. Just contact us.

Dear Personal Injury Client: There’s a fat envelope in your mail. The other side has sent us written questions for you to answer. They’re called interrogatories.

Please pay attention! How you respond to these questions is extremely important. You’ll sign your own name to the answers, verifying the accuracy of what’s been said. The other side can read them out loud in court. If you later testify to something different, it could sound like you are lying.

The answers to these questions require joint effort. Ultimately we’ll type up the answers in the proper format, but having your best information first is crucial. 

Interrogatories cover many of the things that are important to proving (and eventually resolving) your case. We’ll be providing not just your personal data, such as your date of birth, past addresses, education and employment history, but also the who-where-when-what-and-how's that support your complaint. Your medical history, including the treatment you’ve received for your injuries. The precise nature of the harm you’ve suffered and the monetary damages we’re claiming. The facts to support each and every legal claim we’ve made. Who our expert witnesses are and the opinions they have. Whether and how your injuries prevent you from working. What we know about the other side’s evidence.

A number of these questions are for us, your personal injury lawyers, to answer. There may even be some we don’t want to answer, and we’ll be in charge of getting any disagreements resolved. But we must act promptly.

So don’t just shove that fat envelope aside. Open it. Work hard to give us all of the information that’s requested. And call us if you need help. The sooner we send out the answers, the sooner we can get your case resolved. We both want that, right?

Generally, anything you say to someone else about your case can be repeated back to you -- on the record, in court. Perhaps they don't get it quite right. So please let us do the talking. 

If someone says they need to talk about the accident, tell them you are represented by Ingerman & Horwitz. Give them our phone number, and don’t say anything until you call us! Your own insurance company may need you to make a statement in order to process your claim. Or they may need you to talk about the damage to your car. That's fair. Just call us first.

Three. Get receipts whenever you spend money related to your case. Record what you’ve spent in a little notebook that always goes with you. Are you taking a taxi because your injury prevents you from driving? Is the kid up the street mowing your lawn? Hiring a babysitter to stay with the kids while you go to the doctor? Always get a receipt. If the person you are hiring does not have his own receipts, hand him one of yours to sign when you pay him for his services. You can buy a book of receipts in any office supply store.

By the way, keep track of your mileage when you drive anywhere that’s related to the medical care you need or other treatment. Again, use your little notebook to record the date, place and reason for the trip. Deduct mileage for side trips.

Four. Let us look over any claim forms you fill out that relate to your medical condition or disability. These, too are statements of yours that the defendant can review. If you are saying things about your condition in a disability claim or in some other forum that are inconsistent with what is going on in your case, it could hurt you.

We want your claim to be a success. You can find some more pointers here:

How to Present Your Case

Car wrecked? Personal Injuries? Remember 3 Things

Do our clients ask their doctors legal questions? Because they sure ask us a lot of medical ones. I wonder why that is.

Meeting a personal injury lawyer is a bit like going to the doctor. You report what’s bothering you, how it happened, and where it hurts. You explain what you used to do that you can’t do now. You may even feel a bit nervous. Your story is very personal; you sit across a desk and ask for help from a stranger who has expert knowledge and skill. Secretly you may wonder if they really care, or if they are too busy to help you.

Developing a relationship of trust is just as important in the law office as it is in the doctor’s office. It’s important to us, too. If we have a good rapport, we are better able to work with you and make good decisions together.  

But we’re personal injury lawyers, not doctors. While you are telling your story, we’re listening for a whole other set of reasons. You need to know what we’re listening for, and come to see us with that in mind. Here’s what to do:

Remember, we can’t give medical advice. But if you come to us prepared to discuss your legal claim, it might just put you on the road to recovery.

On November 2 at 2:00 a.m. we turn back our clocks.

Benjamin Franklin suggested Daylight Saving Time as a way to save on candles. Since then many studies have confirmed its usefulness as a way to save energy. It also saves lives.

According to a 2007 RAND Corporation study, Daylight Saving Time “significantly reduces automobile crashes in the long run with an 8-11% fall in crashes involving pedestrians, and a 6-10% fall in crashes for vehicular occupants in the weeks after the spring shift to DST." http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol7/iss1/art11.

If only we could turn back the clock on some of the events of our clients’ lives. Of course, we can’t. But if you are injured through no fault of our own, the law may provide a right of monetary compensation. That’s where we, as personal injury lawyers, come into the picture. We can obtain compensation for your economic losses, such as lost time from work, medical care, and other costs. We can also recover money damages for your non-economic losses, such as disfigurement, loss of function, and emotional distress.

Yet every day as personal injury lawyers we are reminded that we can’t work miracles. Particularly in death cases, but also in some of the other, more serious claims we handle, the hardest part is not the struggle to obtain a verdict or settlement for our personal injury clients, but knowing that, no matter how satisfied we may feel about a result, we can never turn back the clock on our clients’ lives.

As personal injury lawyers, we must remind ourselves, and also sometimes our clients, that the settlement funds they receive are not meant to replace the lives that have been lost or those injuries that will not heal. If that is the goal we will never succeed. But compensation is the only way we have to try to bring back some normalcy to our clients’ lives. We’ve all heard it said that “time is money.” Surely, time may be money in many ways, but settlement money cannot turn back time. We wish we could do more, but we can’t. 

For more about Daylight Savings Time, personal injury law and automobile accidents in Maryland, check our Resources Page.

It started as an automobile accident. Mr. Gourdine’s car was rear ended by Ms. Crews' car on the highway at midday. He careened off the roadway and crashed into a tractor trailer, suffering fatal head injuries. Investigation revealed Ms. Crews experienced a sudden attack of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, from taking a combination of two drugs made by Eli Lilly & Co., as prescribed by her doctor.

Mr. Gourdine died because Ms. Crews was impaired, but apparently it wasn't her fault--she was taking the drugs as ordered, but the drug company wasn’t warning doctors properly about possible adverse effects.

So Mrs. Gourdine sued the drug company. Would the mantle of responsibility be extended to provide compensation to the Gourdines?

No, said Maryland’s highest court. The Court of Appeals said a drug company owes no duty to the general public for its drugs to carry proper warnings, and that the connection between the allegedly bad labeling and the death of Mr. Gourdine was too remote to permit recovery.

Yet the Court recognized there are cases where “foreseeability alone may give rise to liability to a third party because of policy reasons.” So, one door may have been closed, but at the same time, one or more important windows were propped open.

At Ingerman & Horwitz, LLP, we review complex cases like this one in detail, and we are happy to share our analysis with those who might benefit from it. On the Resources page of our website you will soon find a more thorough analysis of Gourdine v. Crews. If you or someone you know has been injured in a similar situation, call us and we'll be happy to talk about it.

Most people think they know the answer, but when they guess, they’re wrong. The facts will surprise you.

Lost time from work as a result of illness or injury is compensable, whether or not your employer offers sick pay. Sick pay is a benefit you’ve earned. It doesn’t belong to the wrongdoer and he doesn’t get any credit for it when he injures you. In our example the wrongdoer is liable to compensate you for all 30 of your lost days. If you are someone who typically earns overtime, you are entitled to that as well. The exact results in each case will differ, depending on the facts. For an answer specific to you, ask your personal injury lawyer.  

On the other hand, it seems as though a shortened life would be an injury for which damages would be awarded. It is not. Maryland, like other states, does not permit recovery for the foreshortening of life expectancy. If you lose your life as a result of injury, your loved ones can make a statutory claim. If you survive, but are worried about your future as a result of compensable physical injuries, these emotional worries may be included as part of your pain and suffering damages. But the shortened life expectancy itself does not earn you an award. After all, you’re not going to be around to experience it. Or so the argument goes.

It seems unfair that a wrongdoer can steal years from your life and not be made to pay you for it, and perhaps it is. At least the wrongdoer does not get to claim that he should pay less because you’re not going to live so long now. Believe it or not, some defendants have tested this argument. Typically it doesn’t work. The bad guy doesn’t get extra credit for shortening your life.  

The moral? Don’t guess at these kinds of answers. Your personal injury case is not an amusing pop quiz. Your family’s future depends on getting it right. Consult a qualified personal injury lawyer. (You knew I was going to say that, didn't you?)

You’re coming home late from work one night, and your neighbor’s cat, a mean old thing who lives outdoors, leaps from the bushes and attacks you. You suffer bite wounds and scratches to your ankle, which unfortunately become infected and require you to visit the doctor, take antibiotics, and miss quite a bit of time from work. In addition, you must stay home from work for several more days, in order to keep your leg elevated. How would you be compensated?

You’ve suffered significantly, and have real economic losses, but can’t imagine suing your neighbor. Still, he owes you a duty of care, namely, not to let his cat roam wild, enter your property, and bite you. He’s breached this duty, and you’ve been injured as a result. The solution? Make a claim against his homeowners’ insurance. In all likelihood, he’s got coverage.

A common potential source of recovery for personal injuries–as well as protection against the personal injuries claims of others–is homeowners insurance. Take a look at your own policy. If you are a renter, take a look at your renter’s policy. See what it covers. Talk to your agent. Make sure you’ve got proper coverage for all of the sorts of mishaps that can happen as a result of defective conditions in or around your home, or as a result of your pets behaving badly.

Responsible neighbors don’t let their pets run wild. It’s risky for others, and bad for the pets’ health, too. Most jurisdictions have leash laws, which can be cited in support of a personal injuries claim based on a bite from a domestic pet. These days, there is simply no excuse for letting an animal run wild, day or night. Even cats. But if you should find yourself attacked by a neighbor’s pet, a qualified personal injury lawyer can help you investigate and pursue the right sort of claim.

After contacting a qualified personal injury lawyer, you must continue to look after three things: your car repairs, your medical care, and your job. There’s more, but these three things are the biggies on your own To Do list.

First, take care of the car as soon as you can, and don’t overspend. Move your car where you can store it for free. Don’t have the car repaired until an adjuster comes to makes an appraisal, because the shop will probably agree to fix your car for this lesser, appraised amount. Your jaw may drop once you learn how much the shop will cut from the estimate. Also, if you already have car insurance, don’t buy extra insurance on your rental car, because you won’t recover this amount.

Second, make and keep all necessary medical appointments. Call ahead and reschedule if needed, but don’t miss recommended tests, doctor visits or therapy dates. Don’t create the impression you don’t want to get better, or, that you weren’t hurt as bad as you say you were. Also, tell the doctor all of your complaints, because your personal injury lawyer can’t do much with a claim that lacks medical support. And follow your doctor’s advice. Don’t be seen engaging in activities your doctors have warned you to avoid.

By the way, follow your health insurer's rules. If your referral has expired, get a new one. And pay your co pays! While we can advise you, we can’t pay your bills. Even if you can’t pay everything, you can call health care providers and try to work something out. Ignoring them is the worst thing you can do.

Third, and finally, follow your employer’s rules about sick leave and disability. If you need a doctor’s report or other proof to obtain leave, or to recover private disability insurance benefits, take care of it. If you now have a disability that requires an accommodation, follow your employer’s rules to show them you are entitled to that accommodation. Confused about all of this? Ask us for advice. We can talk to you about Social Security Disability, too.

Your personal injury lawyer is dedicated to helping you resolve your claim, but you must be a responsible member of your own recovery team. Don’t just sit back doing nothing, expecting your personal injury lawyer to produce a windfall. Miracle awards? That happens only on television. Personal injury claims involve a lot of hard work, and, ahem, much of it is yours.  

We teach our clients how to protect themselves. We explain how to maximize their ability to recover costs and to obtain appropriate compensation. Sometimes there are several avenues of recovery that need to be pursued. We will discuss them with you.

Finally, don’t accept this blog as a substitute for legal advice. It isn’t. Pick up the phone!  

 

Our clients may wonder: in light of our nation’s evolving financial crisis, will the insurance companies still have money to pay personal injury claims? In short, the answer is yes.

Individuals seeking compensation for personal injuries need to know what will happen to insurance coverage in these challenging times. At risk are companies who invested heavily in subprime mortgages and in derivative investments whose worth depended on them.

Large insurance company AIG survived for nearly a century before imploding over investments on a derivative security called a “credit default swap.” A CDS itself is a bit like an insurance policy, but a CDS can also be highly speculative. Recently, AIG took $85 billion from the U.S. government to keep it afloat. Meanwhile, it had this to say to reassure its insureds:

“AIG's Commercial Insurance business (AIGCI) has ample resources to underwrite business and to pay the claims of our policyholders. We continue to pay $73 million in claims every single day.”

By law, insurance companies must maintain a surplus to ensure money is available when it is needed to pay claims. Despite its difficulties, says AIG, the commercial insurer’s statutory surplus exceeds the total shareholders’ equity of all domestic commercial insurance holding companies. Says AIGCI, “Our Net Written Premium to Surplus Ratio, a key indicator of the amount of leverage of a property casualty organization, is less than 1.0 with total NWP of $12.7 billion in the first half of 2008 compared to policy holder surplus of $26.7 billion.”

AIGCI companies include the Lexington Insurance Company, National Union and American Home Assurance Company. At present,  according to AIG, its invested assets exceed $70 billion.

Rest assured, Ingerman & Horwitz LLP pays close attention to facts like these. The insurance company capital needed to pay claims remains protected by regulators. When it comes to the claims of our clients, we will not let these companies cry wolf. AIG must repay this $85 billion government loan. Meanwhile, we shall continue to demand and obtain compensation for our clients’ injuries based on the fair value of their claims, and nothing else. In these uncertain economic times, we won’t bail out on you.

Timing is everything in personal injury cases.

Well, not everything, unless you’ve filed too late. Then it’s the only thing that matters. When you consult a personal injury lawyer, he or she may stop you before you get too far along in your story, and ask, “Now, when exactly did this happen?” 

They’ll listen a little more, but regardless how good your case may seem to be, you’ll be interrupted.

“I’m sorry Mrs. ___. You’ve missed the statute of limitations.”

“I thought I had three years!”

“Not in this case. That hole you fell in belongs to the town. You only had 180 days to put them on notice, and you’ve missed it. Unless you’ve got good cause for not doing that, we’re out of luck.”

A variety of limitations periods govern personal injury claims. Two-year periods apply in a number of situations. PIP claims – those no-fault payments you may be entitled to when injured in an automobile collision, must be brought in one year. Some claims must be submitted as early as 60 days from the date of injury. It is foolish to assume you’ve always got three years.

On the other hand, you may have longer than the typical period. Like when you need to sue an out-of-state corporation that has failed to register or qualify to do business in Maryland. Or when you don’t discover until much later that your injuries weren’t just bad luck, but caused by a defective product. In each instance, it is important to contact a personal injury lawyer as soon as possible. It costs nothing to have a lawyer listen to your story. Pick up the phone early and learn exactly where you stand!

For information about different kinds of claims (it’s not exhaustive, and it does not substitute for legal advice), take a look at our resources page.

If you’re injured and seeking compensation, an adjuster might say you’re partly to blame and deny the claim. He’ll say you had a headlight out, or stopped too fast. Perhaps you’re not like J.D. (whose story is told in Part I and Part II), who wouldn’t take no for an answer. It’s so easy to get talked out of your rights. After all, they are the experts. They handle personal injury claims like yours every day. 

But J.D. hired a personal injury lawyer–someone who was really on her side. It didn’t take long for the lawyer to gather evidence the insurance company didn’t bother to collect. Once a capable personal injury lawyer put the case together, the insurance company paid the claim. J.D. got a new wheelchair, and was able to get the therapy she needed. She regained her independence.

Insurance companies are expert at many things. One is selling insurance. Another is not paying claims if they can possibly find a way not to. They are not like your doctor or your personal injury lawyer, for whom the duty to help you is what comes first.

Contributory negligence (we sometimes call it contrib) deprives people of legitimate compensation. It’s an un-lottery for plaintiffs. One percent inattention on your own part, and no matter how good your case is against the other guy, no matter how drunk or sleepy he was, or how fast he was driving that tractor trailer in the dark, you and your family could lose out—that’s the law.

Plus, it’s a win for all insurers, regardless of whether the defendant holds a winning ticket. It’s always looming, affecting offers and settlements of perfectly legitimate claims. Contrib puts a stranglehold on the entire system.

Maryland is one of only five American jurisdictions* where nearly every wrongdoer holds this free un-lottery ticket. For insurers, it's always payday. The best way to undo the Maryland un-lottery is to hire a reputable personal injury lawyer. That’s what J.D. did. For more, check our resources page. 

*The others are D.C., Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.

Here’s a real case:

J.D., a woman in a motorized wheelchair, tried to cross Cold Spring Lane at the eastern side of its intersection with Loch Raven Boulevard, in Baltimore City. It was dusk. She was within a marked crosswalk and the light was in her favor. A southbound car on Loch Raven turned left on a yellow light, straight into her path, leaving her on the ground and shoving the chair some 8 or 10 feet. Miraculously her personal injuries were not serious. She had managed to throw herself out of the chair moments before being struck.

More important to J.D. was that the wheelchair was destroyed. With the loss of this wheelchair, she lost her independence. She couldn’t afford a new wheelchair, and Medicaid was not going to give her another one anytime soon, except maybe a manual one which was of little use to her.

But J.D. was a self-starter. Despite having an illness that required her to use a motorized chair, she did everything she could to obtain personal injury compensation on her own. After all, she’d fought housing authorities over inaccessible public housing, pursued her Social Security Disability claim, qualified for Medical Assistance, and obtained food stamps.

J.D. hounded the driver’s insurer, but it refused to pay. The wheelchair wasn’t found in the crosswalk, they said, so she must have been jaywalking. She patiently explained why the wheelchair wasn’t found in the crosswalk. Then they said the chair was missing the reflectors required by Maryland law. They rattled off a statute, but wouldn’t make her a copy. Without a motorized wheelchair, J.D. couldn’t go to the library and look up this law. Refusing to pay the claim, the insurer sent her a letter saying it was "a clear case of contributory negligence.” 

For the rest of the story, where you’ll learn more about contributory negligence in personal injury cases, check back here in a few days. I’ll be posting Part II. There could even be a Part III. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for our new article on “contrib” that we’re working on for our online resources page.