Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog

I arrived at the office this morning only to find that we had no power. So then I walked the ten flights up to our office suite. Once I could breathe without feeling like I was going to throw up, I made some notes that became this blog post.

It has been awhile since my last post, so I will bring you up to date.

The week before last I was out with Laura Zois mediating a serious injury product liability case. Our client was crushed by an unsafe product, leading to bilateral skull fractures and emergency brain surgery. Our efforts at settlement did not work out, so we are getting ready for a long trial that should start in six weeks. It is a lot of work, but that is what we do here, and it is the fun part!

Then last week I had a four day trial in an auto accident case in the Circuit Court for Charles County. It involved a low property damage collision, where my client’s doctors concluded that she had developed a chronic pain syndrome secondary to a minor cervical spinal cord contusion. This is a tricky case to try, because juries typically put a lot of stock in vehicle photos, and because the injury sustained was of a type that often does not appear on diagnostic studies like MRI’s, and did not in this case. Ultimately, this was a tough case that resulted in an unfortunate defense verdict. The jury just was not persuaded that the car accident caused the client’s injuries.

You cannot imagine how much I just hated writing that. Perhaps like most trial lawyers, I am very competitive. I can’t help but believe that if I am smart enough and work hard enough, I can control the uncontrollable. I think I am supposed to win every time. But nobody wins every time. OK, nobody but Gerry Spence wins every time. Our saying around the office is that if you never lose, you aren’t trying enough cases. That is another way of saying we try to be aggressive- just because the odds are against something is no reason not to try. Plus, from a client’s perspective, a personal injury lawyer who is afraid to fight is of very little value.

As I write, I am looking at a print of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston after knocking him out to defend the championship Ali won in his first fight with Liston, a fight Ali was picked to lose. If you never fight, you never win.

Then I spent Friday and Saturday with all of the other lawyers in our office attending a trial skills seminar taught by jury consultant David Ball and noted trial lawyer Don Keenan. I learned trial techniques based on groundbreaking new research, and left excited and ready for the next fight. A great way to stay motivated and to share ideas with a group of talented lawyers, including the five M&Z lawyers I work with every day.

So that brings you current on what I have been up to the last two weeks. Did you miss me? I knew you did.