Maryland Pedestrian Accident Claims Process

Below, a Maryland pedestrian accident lawyer answers questions concerning the claims process for pedestrian accident and injury claims in the state of Maryland.

How Long Will a Pedestrian Accident Case Take in Maryland?

It really depends on what kind of case they’re going to have at stake. If it’s a case where they just have a short amount of treatment and they’re able to settle quickly because it is a minimal injury, then it should be a short case that could be resolved within six months following the end of their treatment.

However, if it’s a case where they want to file a law suit and they go to the District court, which is the lower court in Maryland, once you file a lawsuit they typically issue a trial date of 60-90 days after that.

If there are significant injuries and they file a lawsuit in the circuit court then they’d have to run through the full gamut of discovery including exchanging paper discovery like medical records and photographs and reports, then conducting depositions, and then being examined by the defendants’ physician and then getting ready for trial so that could be a lengthy process of one or two more years.

What were the processes of their case, what will it be like?

Well, depending on when they come to us after the accident hopefully they’ll seek medical treatment right away and then we would contact the offending party’s  insurance company and to let them know that we represent an injured person who was injured at the hands of their insured.

Then we would go and monitor the clients medical treatment. When they’d reached a point where their medical treatment was completed either because their injuries had healed or they’d reached some sort of plateau—typically something known as Maximum Medical Improvement—meaning that this is about as good as they’re going to get, we collect their records and put what’s called the demand package together or a settlement demand package.

That is where we argue the merits of our case based on the liability aspects and combine that with the damages aspect as proven by the client’s injuries—documented in the medical records—and whether or not they had any other expenses such as time loss from work or a retirement benefits or lost pension benefits or things of that nature. Then we give the insurance company 15 or 30 days to respond to that, and then we enter into negotiations to hopefully settle the case.

If that breaks down and we’re too far apart—we’re demanding higher number in the insurance company offers a lower number— and it doesn’t seem like we’ll meet somewhere in the middle then we have the option of starting a lawsuit in either the district court or the circuit court. The district court is for cases under $15,000 or $30,000 in value and the circuit court is for everything above that. At that point we proceed with either discovery in the circuit court or just a trial in the district court.

At the district court they’ll have the chance to plead their case to a judge through their testimony and their medical records and the defendant has an opportunity to cross examine them as to their records and to their pain and suffering and to how the accident happened.