Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Early Addition
Image, left, of accident from WNBC; image, right, of Paul and Donna Smith from WABC
How much insurance goes to a woman left paralyzed and widowed after an out-of-control cab plowed into her and her husband last October? According to the Post, just $200,000.
Donna, a nurse, and Paul Smith, beloved helicopter pilot for news stations, were leaving Docks Restaurant on Third Avenue at 40th Street when a speeding cab jumped the curb, hit a sidewalk planter, and pinned Paul Smith underneath. He later died while his wife fractured her pelvis; she is now "unlikely" to leave a wheelchair. One witness said the cab was going 50-60 mph, but the cabbie, only on the job for a few weeks, was never charged.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission requires cab companies to pay just the minimum amount of insurance, and this cab had a $200,000 policy maximum. Smith's lawyer John Zaremba says the couple made more than that in a year, "There is no amount of money that can compensate the Smith family for what they have lost. You have family that was destroyed, and a financial situation where this woman's going to struggle to pay her bills for the rest of her life."
Zaremba says "the law should be changed" and believes the cabdriver is still on the road.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
The savage driver should have been charged; except for the FDR and WSH there is nowhere in Manhattan you can do 50-60mph safely. She should sue the TLC.
i'm not siding with the driver, but 50-60mph?
in the city 40mph seems fast so i'm skeptical with the 50-60mph witness. besides it doesn't take much to lose control of a car. at 30 you can look down and 2 seconds later be on the curb with someone dead.
$200,000 is a damn joke and this is why people sue for millions. insurance companies are the devil!
:*(
On that stretch of Third Ave, if the lights are with you, you can get some speed going. Also remember cabs tends to gun it out of a light so even if he was only going a couple blocks, he could have easily reached that speed if only for the moments before impact. What a tragic mess this is, I wish the family the best.
edEx- It's not the Insurers' fault. You can't sue for a million where the the pot of money is only $200,000. It's the law, which only requires minimal insurance, that needs to be changed. Higher policy limits (which often include higher premiums and deductibles) will make the TLC and cab drivers more cautious about the people getting behind the wheel. Perhaps we could then avoid tragedies like this.
I was under the assumption that insurance companies will pay "up to" a certain amount depending on your insurance plan. Everything ABOVE that falls back onto the insured driver and/or company.
you can sue the taxi driver for civil damages but since the taxi driver is poor you won't get much. Look, in the big picture, it was a freak one in a million accident. If people had to get ten million dollar insurance policies than their premiums would be absurdly high and nobody could afford to drive a cab. the cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that it's better to have cheapo insurance. In a perfect world, insurance would be subsidized to the right amount for everything but we don't live in that one.
The unanswered question: Who owns the Medallion? Thats worth a lot. Hit him. The insurance for taxis and black cars in NY is a mess, and it is tightly controlled by the state. Rates are surpressed, fraud is rampant, and all polices renew on one date.
Raise the min limit required (at least $500k), and put the often passive medallion owner on the hook, for all of his medallions.
does that even cover the medical bills? no
"Who owns the medallion?" Good question. I'd go after the medallion owner; since they are the ones who are licensed to operate a cab, they should be held liable.
I think JRod5417 @ 10:21 is correct; it is what it is.
I have a friend who was disabled for life in an accident, and the victim's father was in the insurance biz for 40 years. We thought he ought to be suing for millions, but the reality is, whatever the policy limit is, that is the theoretical max for a settlement.
Seems unjust, but that is the way the law is written.
agreed on getting the medallion owner. and if the driver owned it, they should auction that off with the proceeds going to the smith family.
All avenues are timed for green lights to turn sequentially, at a rate for vehicles of approximately 26 MPH (there are some anomalies: 9th Avenue below 57th, 3rd Avenue above 57th). The only way to get a full head of steam is to sit back on the lights, i.e., wait for a number of them to turn green ahead of you and then speed to catch up.
In addition, that stretch of 3rd has slowed considerably in the past year or so, due to the adding of a discrete left turn signal on 42nd Street as you head eastward (the signal is for cars heading up 3rd), the time for which has been taken from the northbound light sequence of 3rd, creating a short bottleneck. And traffic from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel exits tends to back up on 37th and 39th Streets, slowing things further.
As I recall the story, the traffic was heavy, so the only way the driver could have gotten to 50-60 MPH was either to step on the accelerator instead of the brake, or if the accelerator became stuck. Even then, it seems highly unlikely he could have hit that speed.
That said, and if we discount the driver's claim of being sideswiped, it seems most likely he was at severe fault in not having the taxi under control. Even pursuing the medallion owner civilly, though, is tough, as most garages break their fleet down into separate one or two cab corporations, meaning that at best the assets of that company are in play, and not the entire enterprise.
Smith's lawyer John Zaremba says the couple made more than that in a year
Meaning they should have been smart enough to have their OWN life insurance. That said, I agree, drivers, especially commercial drivers, should be required to have higher insurance coverage. $200k doesn't go that far in this city.
I'm just glad this wasn't called an accident.
While I have sympathy for these people, I don't think linking earnings potential to the value of a life is right. A wrongful death should be worth X amount whether the person was a CEO or a bum.
A freak one in a million accident??? We are talking about cabs here, they have accidents like this all the time, and considering how they drive, I'm amazed more people aren't killed. I feel much safer living under a crane than driving next to a cab.