MTLA President’s Message:
Under Attack by J. Mitchell Lambros
J. Mitchell Lambros (Lambros & Lambros, Baltimore County) received his J.D. from Duke University School of Law and serves as President of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association for 2003-2004. His is a member of the MTLA President’s Club as an Eagle and serves as a trustee of MTLA PAC. He is a past Chair of the MTLA Legislative Committee and former editor-in-chief of the Trial Reporter (1997-1999) His practice concentrates in personal injury, medical malpractice, workers’ compensation and social security disability.
This is my first column as MTLA
President, and I am humbled and hon- ored to serve in this position. Like you, I am proud to be a trial lawyer and to do the work that we all do. We work to keep families safe by holding to account those whose unsafe behavior harm others. We also work to keep families safe by helping people who have been harmed, deal with the aftermath - people like Gilford Tyler who a Prince George’s County jury found needlessly lost a leg at the hip due to medi- cal error. Our values, however, are not shared by
all.
For more than two decades now, trial lawyers have been attacked by politicians at the behest of insurance companies, businesses and other moneyed interests. These interests attack us because we stand for accountability and safety.
If we are
out of the way, manufacturers can unleash dangerous products on an unsuspecting public, automobiles can explode on im- pact with impunity, sloppy drivers can rule the roads, insurance companies can deny homeowners and auto policyholders their just recovery after a tragedy or loss, fac- tory owners can skimp on safety measures and doctors can injure patients and main- tain a conspiracy of silence about their less skilled colleagues. We all have a stake in the political de- bates going on in Maryland and in Congress— no matter what kind of law we practice. On the federal level, attacks on claims by patients killed and harmed by medical malpractice are the current fashion, but attacks on auto liability, prod- uct liability and workers’ compensation are in the wings. We must be at the van- guard of a jury system that has vitality, and a court system where a single citizen can take on America’s most powerful com- panies or citizens on something approaching a level playing field. It is against this background that the latest attack on the Maryland legal sys- tem has begun in earnest. In January, Medical Mutual, the State’s largest malpractice carrier, handed out a
Summer 2003
21% premium credit to all of its renew- ing policyholders while touting Maryland’s “favorable” tort environment. Then, six months later, in an abrupt change in tone, Medical Mutual an- nounced a planned 28% increase in its rates and claimed that such an increase was needed because of an increase in amounts paid out for claims. This an- nouncement followed visits by the insurer’s lobbyists to state legislative lead- ers telling them of the planned rate increase and urging the need to adopt even more restrictions on patients’ legal rights than we already had. The executive director of Med Chi, the
state’s medical society, sits on Medical Mutual’s board. At about the same time Medical Mutual was making its pitch to legislators, Med Chi announced publicly that it was launching a legislative push for even more tort “reform.” Shortly after- wards, Med Chi took the position that it would actively support the rate increase. What a coincidence. A 28% rate increase five months after
a 21% premium credit did not pass the smell test, so we hired an expert, Jay Angoff (Mr. Angoff’s report will be posted to our website soon). He is a former Mis- souri Insurance Commissioner and was the lead consultant for former Maryland Insurance Commissioner Steve Larsen in his investigation of CareFirst. Mr. Angoff did a thorough review of Medical Mutual’s background, financial ratings, and rate
filings, and consulted with actuary Rob- ert Hunter. He found that Medical Mutual was entitled to a 3.7% rate in- crease. He testified that Medical Mutual is in extremely good financial condition, has deliberately over-reserved for years, has not accounted for all of its investment income, has failed to account for its his- tory of premium refunds, is charging obstetricians an unacceptably high ratio of 13 times what the lowest premium doctors are being charged and makes it almost as easy for doctors with multiple claims history to obtain insurance as those doctors with a history of no claims filed against them. ␣ The new insurance commissioner de- clined to consider any of these points and approved, without much review, the 28% rate increase. Medical Mutual and Med Chi have indicated that they will be seeking, among other changes, not only a reduction in our State’s noneconomic damage cap from the current $620,000 to $250,000 but also severe limits on what injured patients can pay their attorneys. (Of course, there would be no corresponding proposal lim- iting what insurance companies, hospitals, HMOs and nursing homes can pay their attorneys.) If these proposals sound familiar, they
are. They are the same proposals that the White House and the American Medical
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Member’s Can Contact MTLA to obtain their Member ID number to gain access to the Member’s Page of the Web Site
Trial Reporter 3
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