Category: Personal Injury

On June 10, 2015, Partners Michael P. Smith and Ryan S. Perlin obtained a Plaintiffs’ verdict on behalf of their clients in a negligence case tried in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County in Rockville, Maryland. Smith and Perlin represented a young man with emotional and behavioral disabilities, who was a resident at a residential treatment center which specialized in providing psychiatric treatment for adolescents.  When the plaintiff was fifteen years old, staff members improperly physically restrained him in violation of applicable deescalation and restraint guidelines.  . . . Continue Reading

The Court of Special Appeals, Maryland’s intermediate appellate court, today upheld a $1.3 million verdict in a case tried by SCBMA partners, Michael Smith and Ryan Perlin , in an unreported opinion.  The medical malpractice case was originally tried in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County for one week in April 2014.  After two days of deliberations, the jury issued a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs for $2.13 million, which was automatically reduced because of Maryland’s statutory cap on noneconomic damages. Mr. Smith and Mr. . . . Continue Reading

Today, on behalf of over 750 victims and family members, SCBMA filed a lawsuit against The Rockefeller Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Johns Hopkins University, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins Health System Corporation, alleging that they were the primary driving force behind illegal and immoral human experiments in which vulnerable populations of Guatemalans were deceived, and intentionally exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea and other venereal diseases . . . Continue Reading

Bekman, Marder, Hopper, Malarkey & Perlin, L.L.C. is proud to announce that it has been named to the U.S. News and World Report “Best Law Firms” list.  Nationally, SCBMA was named to the Third Tier of the Best Law Firms in the are of Admiralty and Maritime Law.  In Maryland, SCBMA was named to the First Tier in the areas of Admiralty & Maritime Law , Arbitration, Mediation, Plaintiffs’ Medical Malpractice , Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury , and Plaintiffs’ Product Liability Litigation . For the 2015 “Best Law Firms” list, U.S. News and World Report uses a . . . Continue Reading

Following up on a previous post regarding the reporting of preventable adverse events and transparency for patients choosing medical and hospital care, USA Today has today reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will resume reporting data on eight different “hospital acquired conditions,” including air embolism, blood incompatibility, catheter-associated infections, falls and trauma, retained foreign objects, pressure ulcers (bedsores), uncontrolled blood sugar levels, and urinary tract infections. CMS had stopped publicly reporting this data in early August of 2014, . . . Continue Reading

Here’s a link to Oklahoma Senator (and physician) Tom Coburn’s recent report on his investigation of Veterans’ Administration hospitals.  According to Senator Coburn, “Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of the VA’s misconduct and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice.” Here at SCBMA we are often asked to investigate, and do pursue cases against our local Baltimore VA Hospital, as well as at area military medical . . . Continue Reading

An exculpatory clause is a contractual provision that relieves a party from liability for any future negligent or wrongful act.  Maryland has long recognized that these clauses are valid and that two adults may contractually agree that one or more parties will not be liable for their own negligence.  Recently, however, the Court of Appeals of Maryland has taken this principle one step further and held that parents may sign an exculpatory clause on behalf of their minor children—in essence—agreeing . . . Continue Reading

In addition to our beloved, if not stylish, yellow taxi cabs, road travelers in Baltimore now have several other options for getting from Point A to Point B locally: smartphone “taxi” companies Lyft and Uber .  Both started in San Francisco, Lyft and Uber are internet-based car companies that allow users to view nearby vehicles on a map on their smartphone, request one — and pay for it via credit card.  Lyft technically does not even charge for rides, but rather, accepts . . . Continue Reading