Hey My Lawyerly BWWers.. 'Splain this to me

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 7:05pm

Last October, one of the joys of my life died in a car accident. She was 18 years old and away at college. There were three other girls in the car. One received a pretty massive leg injury, but with surgery, is walking again. One girl had a head trauma and seems to have slight cognitive damage. She's back in school, but things aren't as easy for her as they used to be. The third girl died as well. They were all 18 or 19. The driver, an amazing kid I had known since birth, pulled out in front of a semi. We don't know the reason. It was 6 am and they were on their way to practice. The girl who remembers the wreck said that she (the driver) wasn't on the phone. Maybe the car in front of her, which she was following, confused her by turning the wrong way. Maybe the rising sun was in her eyes. We just don't know. 

So now, a year later, the lawsuits have emerged. The two who are injured are suing for 500k and 5 mil. The parents of the girl who was killed are suing the driver's parents for 18 million for funeral costs, pain and anguish. Of course they don't have anything near these amounts. She was a great kid and we all mourne her every day. My question is, Why can they sue her parents when she was a legal adult away at college. Is it because she was on their insurance plan? At what age is a parent no longer responsible for their adult children? Both parents are named in the suit. It will bankrupt them. They also have a 16 yearold son who will need college tuition in two years. A bankruptcy could wipe that out. And from a moral pov, WHY sue the family that also lost their child for such an outrageous amount? Funeral costs? Sure. What are they(apparently a well off family) going to do with 18 million that will ease their pain and mental anguish?  Do they think it's revenge of some kind? Is a lawyer seeing those dollar signs and calculating his 40%? I know this is how it is done, but why?

Any thoughts?

Updated On: 10/25/10 at 07:05 PM

[jasonf]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 7:13pm

JerseyGirl - so sorry about your loss, that has to be incredibly hard. I can't answer the legal questions, but from a moral point of view, the simple sad fact is so many people in this world are just sad moochers, seeking an opportunity. That seems to be what's going on here -- sounds like some despicable people to me...

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 7:25pm

Whose car was it? If the car was in the parents name, there could be a negligent entrustment argument.

Or, they could just be grasping at straws trying to get some money.

People can be pigs.
Updated On: 10/25/10 at 07:25 PM

[StockardFan]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 8:19pm

That's just terrible jg2.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 8:20pm

The car was in her father's name, but it was a gift. No one was making payments on it. Could this kind of thing be thrown out? It's a pretty big no win for everyone.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 8:29pm

The sad thing is that anyone can sue anyone, for anything.

It's up to the courts to throw it out.

The situation is very sad, and I'm sorry that some people can't see through their grief enough to know what they are doing is morally wrong.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 10/25/10 at 8:36pm

Pain is pain and people do stupid stuff to try to make that go away and make "someone" pay. It seldom has much to do with the money at all.

[Plum]

Posted: 10/27/10 at 6:29am

In cases involving medical bills, a sad number of lawsuits happen simply as a means of raising money to pay what insurance doesn't cover.

Negligent entrustment is (I believe) usually something you see with people giving cars to people who are intoxicated, though, so it seems like kind of a stretch here. Torts obviously vary massively by state, though, and I'm not an expert on these things by any stretch of the imagination. Has this case even gotten to trial? If there's really nothing to it, it should get dismissed before the trial stage - even before discovery, if it's shoddy enough.

And the amount sued for can have very little to do with what, if anything, the plaintiffs end up winning. A judge or jury can adjust the amount to anything within statutory limitations. The reason plaintiffs try for what seem like insanely high damages is simple psychology - paying $2 million seems like a relief when you've been sued for $100 million, even though said $2 million is a lot in absolute terms. Look up cognitive framing some time. Our brains are weird things.

Posted: 10/27/10 at 11:33am

They are suing the parents because they have the insurance. The insurance company will almost certainly pay them something (and the lawyer (who no doubt contacted them and told them they had to sue) will get a third of it or more.

I'm sorry for your loss.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 10/27/10 at 11:42am

Their policy pays out a maximum of $300,000. Anything beyond that will fall to the parents, the school and the trucking company in percentages based on fault, which has yet to be determined. They are suing the school for not providing transportation for the students to and from athletic practice. The truck driver may have been speeding, based on the accident reconstruction, but the car did pull out in front of him. It's a big mess that the parents shouldn't have to live through again. Hell, the poor truck driver shouldn't have to relive it.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 10/27/10 at 11:52am

I am so sorry that this has happened. I feel for everyone involved.

How has the school behaved throughout all of this? I know, at times, when a large organization holds up their hands in a "not my problem" sort of way it usually leads to lawsuits. Now that I'm suggesting that the school should pay for all the medical bills but they have ways of fundraising that you and I may not have. I do agree that there is some degree of fault with the school. When I was in college we always had transportation for sporting.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 10/27/10 at 12:49pm

These students were going to a lake for practice, I think just a few miles away. The school has been wonderful, actually. They have embraced the families and invited them to come back for things since the accident. They've done several memorial type things. It's a bad situation all around.