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i was in a car accident. passenger in a cab, engine trouble, cabbie decides to stop in the middle lane of i78 around 1130 at night. guess what? rear-ended at highway speeds, surprise, surprise.
i talked to several lawyers, they all said that getting a major award out of cab companies is almost impossible. sure, you can win the trial, but by the time the cab company is forced to pay, they will have no money left. you see, the cab company owners simply pay themselves raises and fail to repair the cars. they privately open a new cab company and hire away the same people. so by the time they're made to pay, all the assets left are some old cabs in disrepair. technically illegal? sure, but just try doing anything about it.
so i got the maximum on their insurance policy, a whopping $50,000. and i got the maximum on the car behind's policy, a whopping $100,000.
so, now, $150,000 sounds like winning the lottery, right?
well, now, first, both policies paid their policy holders first. that's right, the cab company got paid for the their cab getting totalled. the cab company was made whole and didn't lose a penny. second, lawyers take their cut. third, and most people don't know this, medical insurance is subrogated to personal injury lawsuits. what that means is that i had to pay back all the money my medical insurance paid for my treatments. so, in effect, while i got $150,000, i had to pay full price for all the medical bills.
by the time it was all said and done, i wound up with around $40,000 cash. i was working on wall street at the time, and the bonus i got was that much lower than what i had been PROMISED by my boss at the time. of course, i was less valuable to them spending so much time in physical therapy and so on.
my point is, i'm financially worse off because of the accident despite "hitting the lottery". nevermind what i went through. nose surgery, shoulder surgery, years of back pain, 2 slipped neck disks, years of next pain, severe migraines lasting litterally entire seasons, and not being able to chew solid food for over a year. not to mention physical therapy and psychtherapy for post-traumatic stress.
awards always seem so large because the DAMAGES are so large. no one ever reports on how large the actual damages are. if reporters ever gave a fair accounting of how much the victim lost and how much actually winds up in the victims pockets after a "huge" award, the people would be angry at how SMALL awards usually are.
nevermind the fact that the press only covers the rare large award. furthermore, they never cover how much the defendant actually paid. usually, when a jury awards $1,000,000 or whatever, it gets knocked down on appeals. even if not, the parties often settle for far less just to keep it from getting dragged out indefinitely.
having family in the business, i'd say that at least 99% of the time, the victim is NOT made whole.
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