Posted on August 18, 2008 in Illegal Search And Seizure

Maryland Criminal Lawyer Maryland Criminal Attorney – Baltimore Criminal Lawyer – Baltimore Criminal Attorney. I had an interesting stop and frisk case today in the Baltimore City Circuit Court. I was prepared for trial today but unfortunately the case was postponed because the Assistant State’s Attorney was in trial on another case. In this case I will be moving to suppress the evidence because although I believe that the State has a reasonable argument that the police officer who stopped my client had reasonable articulable suspicion to do so, I do not believe that the officer had reasonable articulable suspicion to believe that my client was armed and dangerous and conduct a pat down of my client which led to the recovery of illegal narcotics.

The facts of the case are simple. The police allege that they observed my client drive up to an apartment complex in area of town with a high volume of drug activity. They claim that they watched as my client beeped his horn a few times signalling a women to come out of an apartment. The women then allegedly gets into my client’s car for just a few seconds and the police claim to see some sort of exchange take place. The women then exits the car and is allegedly examining small objects in her hand that the police claim are consistent in size and shape of controlled dangerous substances such as cocaine or heroin. Based solely on these observations the police pull my client over, order him out of the car and pat him down, supposedly looking for weapons to ensure officer safety, and recover 40 capsules containing cocaine.

As I said, I believe that if a court were to believe that the officer’s really saw what they claim to have seen (I find their claims rather dubious given that this incident occurred at night and my client has dark tinted windows) that a case could be made that they had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop my client for a short duration to investigate and ultimately confirm or dispel their suspicions. That type of stop would usually involve questioning the individual who is stopped and making observations about him and his vehicle to either raise their suspicions to the level of probable cause at which point they could search him and the vehicle, or dispel their suspicions and let the person be on his way.

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 Posted on August 17, 2008 in Surgery Malpractice

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving doctors (surgeons usually) injuring an artery or vein during a surgical procedure. For example, in one severe injury case, a spinal / orthopedic surgeon was installing hardware on the cervical spine of a woman who had cervical disk (disc) disease, when he hit an artery with a drill and caused the woman to have a severe stroke. The storke caused the woman to have a lifetime of medical and other care expenses as a result of the surgeon’s negligence.

In another case, a woman who had a long history of peripheral vascular disease underwent a bypass of the blood vessells of her lower leg, called a fem-pop (femoral to popliteal) bypass. After the surgery, the woman complained to her doctor of excessive bleeding from the surgical wound site. The surgeon negligently said not to worry about it, and told the woman that if she kept on bleeding she should put her finger on the wound to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, when the woman went to sleep that night, the wound really opened up and she bled profusely. She woke up covered in blood and screaming, causing her family to rush to her rescue. Unfortunately, she could not reach medical treatment in time and bled to death (exsanguinated).

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 Posted on August 17, 2008 in Infection Malpractice

A Tennessee man has obtained a $1.5 million verdict in a medical malpractice / medical negligence lawsuit against a doctor. The man lost his leg due to an infection after a bypass surgery in the leg. According to the man, “I’m just hoping that I can get the word out (so) that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Apparently, the doctor performed bypass surgery on the man’s left leg. The man subsequently went back to the doctor multiple times and reported that he was experiencing fevers and chills. The doctor said the man had the flu. It turned out that the man had a bacterial infection had spread into his left leg, which caused doctors to have to amputate the leg due to the infection.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases involving infection to arms and legs, some causing death and some causing amputation of limbs. These cases are tragic because the patient usually has a condition that can and is being treated with the expectation that the patient will resume a normal life. In cases involving Infections in arms and legs, it is always critical for the doctor or hospital to pay close attention to any signs or symptoms of infection (redness, swelling, warmth, unusual pain, etc.), and place the patient on antibiotics if there is any sign of infection, before the infection progresses from the limb to the body (sepsis). Doctors must err on the side of caution in treating these patients. Otherwise, loss of limb and even loss of life can occur.

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 Posted on August 14, 2008 in Repeat Offenders

Any Experienced, Aggressive Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney will tell you that courts in Maryland and throughout the nation are getting tougher and tougher on people convicted or even charged with multiple offenses for Driving Under the Influence or Driving While Impaired by Alcohol. People in this situation are increasingly being hit with significant bails and ultimately increasing long prison terms. No longer are the days that a person charged with his or her second or third offense can count on being released on their personal recognizance and receiving probation.

A particularly shocking example of this trend is the DUI/DWI case that I was hired for on Tuesday. The client was picked up for DUI/DWI on Sunday night. He allegedly made a right turn on red at an intersection where doing so was prohibited. He pulled over immediately and was totally cooperative and polite throughout the investigation. After not performing the field sobriety tests to the satisfaction of the officer he was arrested and taken to Central Booking. Sometime on Monday morning he saw a court commission who set his bail at $10,000.

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 Posted on August 13, 2008 in Controlled Dangerous Substances (CDS)

Maryland Criminal Attorney Last month I blogged about a Possession with Intent to Distribute Marijuana Case that I was handling in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City that involved a Confidential Informant. I wrote that in many cases involving the Possession with Intent to Distribute Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin or other controlled dangerous substances, the police have utilized a confidential informant known in the street vernacular as a snitch. In the case I was handling I believed that I could force the disclosure of the informant’s identity because I believed that the person may have been the brother of the person whom my client was with when he was arrested. I filed a written motion based on the facts as laid out in the statement of charges. Unfortunately, a Criminal Defense Attorney never really knows what the facts will be in their entirety until the police officers get on the stand and testify because they invariably add facts that were not in the charging document. This makes it somewhat difficult to prepare for these cases because, again the attorney doesn’t know the complete factual scenario until the court date when the motion has to be argued. As a reminder, the facts as laid out in the statement of charges is a follows:

Detectives allege that they were contacted by a registered confidential informant “during the month of February 8, March 8” and advised that “large sums of illegal narcotics were being transported and sold along the Northern Parkway corridor.” The registered informant allegedly further advised that a “2dr. Acura Legend bearing a Virginia #*#@$% was transporting illegal narcotics in this vehicle.” On March 4, 2008 Detectives allege that they spotted this vehicle traveling in the 5500 block of Laurelton Avenue. Acting solely on the tip of the Confidential Informant the detectives initiated a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle was identified as Lamont and the passenger was identified as the defendant, Troy. The detectives claim that upon approaching the vehicle they smelled an odor of “freshly burnt marijuana” coming from the vehicle. The detectives also claim to have seen a zip lock bag containing marijuana in plain view on the center console. Based on these observations the detectives ordered the occupants from the vehicle and allegedly advised them of their Miranda rights. The driver was asked if he had anything illegal on his person and the detectives allege that he stated “yes some weed”. He was then searched and recovered from his pocket was approximately 15 grams of marijuana. Troy was then allegedly asked the same question to which he allegedly responded “”I don’t have anything on me, you can check”. Troy denies making this statement. The detectives then searched Troy and allegedly recovered $1415.00 dollars in U.S. currency. The detectives then called in a K-9 Unit and allege that the K-9 alerted on the truck area of the automobile. Recovered from the trunk was approximately 3 pounds of marijuana. The detectives then allege that Troy made the unsolicited statement, “the 3 pounds of marijuana, belonged to me”. ” I get the marijuana from one person and sell it to another person for about $200 profit”. Troy denies making this statement. Troy was arrested. Lamont was not arrested.

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 Posted on August 12, 2008 in Assault

As a Maryland Criminal Lawyer/Attorney I frequently handle cases involving Domestic Violence Assaults. I was hired yesterday to represent an individual who is charged with a domestic violence second degree assault. He was arrested on Monday and then taken to the Court Commission who set the bail at $25,000. Unfortunately, his family did not get him bailed out prior to his bail review the next morning. Many people are not aware but a Judge can not only decrease a person’s bail at the bail review, the judge can also INCREASE THE BAIL.

This is exactly what happened in this particular case. The judge not only increased his bail, she ordered him to be held without bail. This is the second time that I have seen this happen in the last few weeks on relatively minor cases. I blogged about a client who was ordered to be held without bail by a judge in a DUI/DWI case last week in Baltimore City District Court. As in that case the client’s only option is to file a petition for habeas corpus bail review in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County and try to convince a Circuit Court Judge that holding a person who is charged with a misdemeanor assault without bail is unreasonable and amounted to an abuse of the District Court Judge’s discretion, which I certainly think is the case here.

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 Posted on August 11, 2008 in Trucking Accidents

The driver of a tractor trailer was tragically killed on Sunday morning when his 18-wheeler plunged into the Chesapeake Bay. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, the accident occurred on the east bridge when a Camaro and the truck collided. The tractor trailer spun out of control, hit the jersey wall and plunged into the Chesapeake Bay. The driver of the tractor trailer was killed and two passengers in the Camaro were flown to University of Maryland, Shock Trauma.

The accident occurred during a time of two-way traffic. In this case, the west bridge was closed for repair so traffic traveling in opposite directions were using the west bridge. Authorities are still investigating the accident and the cause is still undetermined.

Lawyers in our law firm who regularly handle trucking accidents advise me that the investigation may take weeks. The driving and cargo logs of the truck must be reviewed. In addition, the investigation will also look into whether the tractor trailer was in compliance with numerous Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations.

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 Posted on August 11, 2008 in Topics In The News

A new study has found that most personal injury plaintiffs who decided to pass up a settlement offer and went to trial ended up getting less money then if they settled their injury case prior to trial. A copy of an article regarding the study can be found here.

While the results of that study may hold true for many lawyers, my experience as a medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland and the District of Columbia has been the opposite. For almost 20 years, I have been a civil trial lawyer handling complex litigation. Most of the matters I work on are catastrophic injury (medical malpractice, wrongful death, product liability, major collisions) and business litigation matters. I handle approximately a dozen such litigation matters a year. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, I have been successful for my clients. During my entire career, a few clients’ cases have been thrown out of court and have lost a few trials (I can recall approximately three defense verdicts), but I have been successful in more than 90% of the cases that I have pursued. This includes many trials where the defense offered either nothing prior to trial or a minimal settlement offer, resulting in my taking the case to trial and getting a million dollar plus verdict. A list of some of my verdicts can be found here.

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 Posted on August 11, 2008 in Hospital Malpractice

A California jury has awarded $8.5 million to the widow of a man who died on the day a surgeon was going to discharge him from the hospital. Because of limits on medical malpractice cases, the woman probably will receive only $1.6 million of that amount.

The 49-year-old man broke six ribs in a motorcycle accident in 2002. At the trial, his wife’s attorneys argued that a doctor should have more closely monitored him after x-rays showed he had one gallon of liquid backed up in his stomach four hours before he died, and he had previously been resuscitated. The man died after choking on his own vomit.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland involving premature hospital discharge / improper discharge from a hospital. These cases have ranged from failure to properly diagnose and treat infections / sepsis, failure to diagnose and treat pulmonary embolisms, failure to properly diagnose and treat surgical complications, failure to diagnose and treat heart attacks, failure to diagnose and properly treat brain injuries, etc. Sometimes these cases arise soon before discharge or right after. These cases are always tragic because the patient and family trust the doctor and hospital to do the right thing and, as a result, they are usually given a false sense of security in the planning of the discharge or the actual discharge itself. Many times, the patient and/or family’s concerns are dismissed and they are reassured that everything will be fine and the patient will get better. A death within days of a planned or actual discharge should always be carefully investigated.

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 Posted on August 11, 2008 in Medical Malpractice Law in Maryland

A New York trial judge has ordered a new trial on damages in the malpractice case of a businessman left permanently paralyzed after a stroke. The plaintiff was awarded $5 million in April after a jury trial. The judge, however, set aside the verdict last week with respect to damages, finding that the award was too low. The judge then entered judgment for approximately $18.4 million. Specifically, the judge found that the jury’s award of $1 million each for past and future pain and suffering to the plaintiff and his family deviated materially from what would be fair compensation, and thus increased the award to $5 million each. The plaintiff contended in the case that doctors at a hospital failed to diagnose what they called “classic symptoms” of a brain aneurysm that led to the stroke.

In Maryland, whether in medical malpractice cases or otherwise, it is possible for judges to increase or decrease a jury verdict, but it is very rare that judges increase such verdicts. It is practically unheard of for judges to increase a verdict so much.

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