Last week a Missouri man received a heavy sentence for his role in a tragic car accident that he allegedly caused in September of 2011. He received a sentence of 10 years in prison for his role in the DWI crash that killed two people and injured five. The defendant…
A father’s long legal battle over the 2001 death of his daughter in a car accident may have come to an end in November, when a jury ruled that the state of Maryland was not negligent in its maintenance of the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge, where the accident occurred.…
An accident on a Nebraska highway took the lives of a Maryland family. The resulting lawsuit, Baumann v. Slezak, et al, is reportedly the first to invoke that state’s law allowing causes of action for the wrongful death of unborn children. Nebraska’s law, enacted in 2003, differs from Maryland’s wrongful…
After obtaining a verdict in a car accident lawsuit, the plaintiff sought to enforce the judgment against the defendant’s insurer. The insurance company successfully argued that the “business use” exception barred coverage of the plaintiff’s claim, as the defendant was operating his vehicle in the course of his work at…
After pleading guilty to charges of drunk driving, a Vermont man received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence in late August. One passenger died in the automobile accident that led to the criminal charges, in which the man was allegedly driving with more than twice the legal blood alcohol level. The accident…
Interstate 97 stretches just under eighteen miles between Annapolis and Baltimore. Exit 10B on the northbound side of the highway feeds onto Veterans Highway in Millersville. It is also the point where a driver entered the wrong side of the highway in January 2012, resulting in a head-on collision that…
An interesting decision by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals addressed the applicability of an out-of-state jury verdict in a Maryland lawsuit concerning issue preclusion. In Bryan v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the court found that a New York verdict finding a driver negligent precluded the driver from…
The problem of distracted driving, or driving while also trying to use a cell phone or other mobile device, has gained significant attention in recent years. States and cities have passed laws restricting use of mobile devices in an effort to curb distracted driving and improve safety. Distracted driving continues…
A district judge in Baltimore convicted a man of three traffic violations over a June 2011 car accident that caused disabling injuries to a police officer. The man, 23 year-old Robert Vanderford, admitted to speeding and also failing to control his speed to prevent a collision, according to the Baltimore…
Distracted driving, defined as operating a motor vehicle with one’s attention split between the road and a mobile electronic communication device, is responsible for a significant number of accidents and fatalities on Maryland roads. The Maryland State Highway Administration identified 24,769 automobile accidents in 2008 that involved distracted driving. Those…