Sometimes referred to as Greater Upper Marlboro, MD, this area is comprised of more than 18,000 residents and encompasses portions of the communities of Marlboro Meadows, Marlboro Village, Queenland, Croom and Brock Hall, as well as the town of Upper Marlboro itself, which is also the county seat of Prince George’s County. Greater Upper Marlboro represents an area of 77 square miles, extending from the Capital Beltway on its western edge across to the Patuxent River on the east side, with the southern portion stretching south to the rural area of rural Croom, Rosaryville, Naylor and Nottingham, MD.
More than half of the residents in this area are adults aged 18 to 44, many of whom drive passenger cars, minivans and light trucks to work or school. Traffic accidents occur on a fairly regular basis throughout Upper Marlboro, so it’s reasonable to expect that some roadway accident victims may wish to pursue a personal injury claim against the driver whose thoughtless or negligent actions resulted in their injuries and, as a consequence, related medical costs or physical rehabilitation, as well as possible lost wages.
Though less than 1,000 residents live in Upper Marlboro, the area has seen its share of fatal motor vehicle accidents. Over the past four-plus decades, roadways in and around Upper Marlboro have been the scene of more than 200 fatal auto accidents involving 300-plus vehicles with the loss of nearly 250 lives — this equates to approximately five deaths per year. Pedestrian accidents in the area have been much fewer, however, with only 10 people losing their lives over nearly a half-century of traffic accident reporting.
Representing Victims of Car and Motorcycle AccidentsAs personal injury lawyers representing victims of traffic wrecks in the Upper Marlboro area, the law firm of Lebowitz & Mzhen, LLC, provides legal services to bikers and other drivers who find themselves severely injured, maimed, paralyzed or burned in the wake of a bad highway accident.
Many personal injury lawsuits can find their way to the Circuit Court for Prince George's County in the town of Upper Marlboro. As part of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, it is the general jurisdiction trial Court and has full common law equity powers in both criminal, as well as civil court cases. The Court may from time to time also decide appeals cases from the District Court due to its very broad jurisdictional powers.
In cases of motorcycle injury accidents, it is important to remember that injuries associated with bike collisions and crashes with other motor vehicles can be quite severe, if not fatal. As motorcycle accident attorneys, our legal staff is all too aware of the protective limitations that bikes represent. The diminutive size and reduced mass of a motorcycle -- when compared to a 3,000-pound car or especially a much heavier commercial truck -- can make survival in a traffic collision problematic at best for motorcycle riders.
When it comes to surviving a motorcycle crash, it is important to note that average ambulance response time in the Upper Marlboro area — at just over seven minutes, based on local data — is slightly worse than Prince George's County as a whole, but better than the state average. Furthermore, and maybe good news for injured riders, average travel time to the nearest emergency room (about 22 minutes) is half that for the county average; and nearly half for the state in general.
One can hardly claim that any motorcycle, be it a cruiser, chopper, sport bike or café racer, is in any way crashworthy when placed up against a larger passenger car or commercial motor vehicle. Given any car-bike or truck-motorcycle collision, it is more than likely that the biker will sustain the worst injuries of any of those individuals involved in the accident.
Even with the use of a helmet, many motorcycle riders can still sustain serious and sometimes life-threatening head injuries following a bad traffic wreck. In addition to the typical severe skin abrasions (also known as “road rash”) and bone fractures, motorcyclists may sustain severe spinal cord damage or closed-head trauma, also referred to as traumatic brain injury. Certainly, from our point of view as personal injury specialists, when an individual has been injured in this kind of motorcycle-to-car or truck-to-bike collision, it is a wise idea to consult a qualified legal expert in motorcycle accident law.
Whether through a crash caused by a careless, distracted or otherwise negligent driver, victims of any traffic accident owe it to themselves to seek professional legal advice, especially in situations where the injured party is facing a possible lifetime of chronic pain, lost mobility, or severe and irreparable paralysis. In some instances, a victim can end up with a loss of sensation/reflex function in the areas below where the injury occurred. This can affect both bowel and bladder control, as well as that person’s ability to breathe on their own.
Dangerous Crossroads in Upper MarlboroMotorcyclists and passenger car drivers alike may be at risk when traveling the roadways of Greater Upper Marlboro. In particular, traffic collisions — including broadside, head-on and rear-end accidents — take place frequently at the intersection of Robert Crain Highway (U.S. 301) and South Osborne Road at the southwestern border of Greater Upper Marlboro.
Listed by AAA Mid-Atlantic as one of the top ten dangerous intersections in Maryland, this crossroads has been a hotspot for motor vehicle collisions for many years. The Maryland State Police have often focused additional traffic enforcement efforts in this area, as well as along many portions of the U.S. 301 corridor, to help reduce the number and frequency of serious automobile and motorcycle crashes.
Avoid Becoming a Motorcycle Accident StatisticUnlike traffic accidents involving other types of motor vehicles, motorcycle-related crashes are most frequent during the warmer time of the year — April through October — with the months of June, August and September representing the peak months for bike accidents. In fact, more than two in three motorcycle crashes that involved injury or death took place between May and September, with the autumn and winter seasons seeing a gradual decline in accidents overall.
Not surprisingly, in Upper Marlboro, as with other cities and towns across the state, weekends can be particularly hazardous for any motorcyclist; with over half of all biker-related accidents taking place between Friday and Sunday. In fact, based on traffic accident data, 50 percent of all fatal motorcycle-related collisions take place on either a Saturday or Sunday, and most especially during the early evening hours.
Middle-aged bikers — those between the ages of 25 and 49 — tend to make up the lion's share of motorcycle accidents; this age group accounted for just over 50 percent of all motorcyclist-related crashes between 2013 and 2017, according to police traffic statistics. It's important to note that motorcycle riders in the age group of 25- to 29-year-old male riders were represented in every type of motorcycle crash — male riders account for more than 90 percent of the injury-related bike crashes and 97 percent of fatal motorbike accidents.
Stay Safer by Riding SmarterTo avoid joining these tragic accident statistics, motorcyclists should always remember to ride alert and defensively, especially in dense traffic. Always wear an approved motorcycle helmet — both the operator and the passenger are required by Maryland law to use a helmet that meets U.S. DOT safety standards. Doing so can help reduce the likelihood of a head or brain injury and possibly safe your life in a crash; helmet use has been shown to prevent more than a third of fatal injuries in the event of a motorcycle-related collision.
Eye protection for riders and passengers should always be used, not only to protect eyes from injury in a crash, but also to reduce the chance that debris thrown up by a vehicle ahead of the motorcycle doesn't impair, even briefly, the operator's vision, which itself can lead to a serious accident. The law states that a person not wearing approved eye protection may only operate a motorcycle equipped with a windscreen; or in cases where the motorcycle does not have a windscreen, the operator must wear an approved eye-protective device (Maryland Statute TR§21-1306).
Locating an Upper Marlboro, MD, Police Accident ReportAs the victim of a motorcycle accident seeking recovery of damages from a negligent party, you will not only need to show the court that the other motorist was at fault, but you must be prepared to prove that your own actions in no way contributed to the collision. Because determining fault is an important part of any personal injury claim, securing the police report detailing your particular accident should be a primary concern from a legal point of view.
Significant monetary damages can often hinge on whether the police officer’s traffic accident report shows that the other driver was at fault. This is a key piece of evidence in any auto or motorcycle injury accident case which can mean the difference winning and losing your traffic injury lawsuit.
Although Upper Marlboro maintains its own town police department, due to the size of the municipality, the local police work with both the Prince George’s County Police and the county's Sheriff’s Department. Officers responding to traffic accidents in the local community will usually be dispatched by the Prince George’s County Public Safety Communications Center.
Since responding officers will often be county police or sheriff officers, an incident report will often be filed by one of those two departments. (Please not that the process of filing an incident/accident report usually takes at least a week; this is due to the internal review and approval process before the report is available to the public.) The following will help accident victims to obtain a police report from Prince George's County PD or Sheriff's departments:
In-Person RequestsIncident reports can be requested at the county's Police Records department in Hyattsville, MD, during regular business hours (9am-4pm) by filling out and submitting a Report Request form. A government issued photo ID is needed to obtain a report, and the fee is $10 for each copy — fees are payable by money order, business check or credit card (using a Visa, Master Card or Discover credit card will result in a $1.50 service charge for each transaction.
Mail-In RequestsReports can also be obtained through the mail using the Report Request form. Typically, you will need to supply the police report number when mailing in your request; however, if you do not know the report number, you should include important details pertaining to the accident as part of your request — be sure to include specifics such as incident date and location, the type of incident, plus the names of the persons involved.
Although the Prince George's Police Records department cannot guarantee that requests without a police report number will result in a report being found, providing as much information as possible will go a long way to helping them find it. To avoid delays, mail-in police report requests should include a self-addressed stamped envelope, a copy of your government-issued photo ID plus the required $10 fee (method of payment is the same as in-person requests, with an additional fee of $1.50 per transaction for credit cards). Mail your police report request to the following address:
Prince George’s County Police Records
4923 43rd Avenue, 3rd floor
Hyattsville, Maryland 20781
In addition to in-person and mail-in requests, traffic accident reports are also available online by visiting BuyCrash.com or Crashdocs.org for a fee of ten dollars. After selecting “Prince George's County Police Department” from the drop-down menu, applicants will be asked to provide the police report number, date on which the accident occurred and name of the involved party.
As part of the process, the system will require the applicant to verify that they are an involved party in the incident. Although citizens can receive copies of police reports, according to the Maryland Public Information Act, certain information on the report will necessarily be redacted from the report before it is issued.
Non-Traffic-Related Personal InjuriesPersonal injury claims in the Greater Upper Marlboro area are typically represented by a wide range of accidents and injury-related incidents — often resulting from the plaintiff receiving injuries due to the negligence or wrongful actions of another individual. One of the more serious kinds of personal injury claim arises from mistreatment of individuals in elder care facilities, such as nursing homes and assisted living operations.
Intentional physical injury, emotional and psychological abuse, patient neglect, as well as other forms of mistreatment are all grounds for a personal injury lawsuit against a nursing home or assisted living facility in Maryland. Not unlike malpractice claims against hospitals and doctors, nursing homes and other elder care facilities are frequently named as defendants in personal injury lawsuits. But, while nursing homes are not strictly liable for every accident or injury befalling their patients, many claims never make it to trial and are settled out of court.
For any Maryland nursing home abuse or neglect lawsuit to have a hope of success, two essential elements must be proven by the plaintiff(s). First, the elder care facility must be shown to have provided negligent care; and second, the alleged negligent care must have resulted in serious injury or death to the nursing home or assisted living resident. The nursing home abuse specialists at Lebowitz & Mzhen, LLC, are experienced in bringing these types of cases to court.
Proving negligence is an important part of any claim, and the law provides the necessary guidelines for determining if negligence took place. Negligent care at a nursing home or elder care facility is generally defined as any level of elderly care that fails to reach the level of what is reasonably expected of any elder care facilities under similar circumstances. In fact, Federal regulations include a definition of neglect as a “failure to provide goods and services necessary to avoid physical harm, mental anguish or mental illness” (Refer to 42 C.F.R. § 488.301).
Neglect and abuse in a nursing home environment can often be interrelated, though there are general categories that are used to describe the type of harm that a nursing home resident may have experienced:
Mental abuse can also be grounds for a lawsuit, with instances of browbeating a resident verbally, using threatening language or gestures to make a patient more compliant, and bullying a resident are all examples of mental or psychological abuse. Keep in mind that personal injury cases claiming mental abuse by itself may be more difficult to win unless accompanied by some kind of physical abuse by the elder care staff.
Sexual abuse is another kind of elder abuse that occurs in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Often difficult to discover, even for a victim's loved ones, but if the plaintiffs are able to present evidence of sexual abuse in an elder care environment, the odds of a successful case may increase significantly
One of the more common claims when it comes to filing a claim against a nursing home involves whether the victim received the proper nutrition at the facility. Malnutrition is a serious problem for elderly individuals, which is why every nursing home has an obligation to ensure that patients take in sufficient sustenance to stay healthy. When it comes to eating and drinking proper quantities of food and liquids, some patients require more than just the delivery of food on a tray several times a day. If a patient has trouble eating/drinking, an elder care facility should be attentive to this and provide assistance; if not, there may be grounds for a nursing home neglect lawsuit.
Of course, there are additional areas where a nursing home or assisted living facility may fail in its obligation to patients or residents. When considering filing a legal claim against a nursing facility, victims and their families would be advised to consult a qualified personal injury attorney with experience in nursing home abuse and neglect cases.
The good news is that, when comparing the success rate of claims against nursing homes versus other kinds of civil suits involving personal injury — for instance, medical malpractice — nursing home lawsuits have more favorable outcomes; many nursing home lawsuits never go to trial, but instead are settled out of court.
If you or a loved one has been the victim of elder care abuse or nursing home neglect, the legal team at Lebowitz & Mzhen, LLC, is ready to help. In and around Greater Upper Marlboro, there are a number of elder care facilities, including the following:
The law firm of Lebowitz & Mzhen is experienced in assisting injured victims seeking representation in traffic accident, medical malpractice and nursing home neglect cases. For a free initial consultation, please contact us to learn your rights when it comes to personal injuries sustained through the negligence of another individual, institution or corporation.
We handle many kinds of personal injury claims including motorcycle and car accidents, trucking-related injuries, medical malpractice, elder care abuse, erroneous medical diagnosis, pharmacy misfills, injuries during child birth or wrongful death. Our legal experts are available by phone (800-654-1949), by e-mail, or by appointment.