Results tagged “payout”

A man who was wrongly jailed on Rikers Island for 17 months has accepted a $145,000 settlement with the city because a detective misidentified his fingerprints. Dwight Gomas was residing in Atlanta in 2004 when he was suddenly arrested by U.S. marshals for an armed robbery at a Howard Beach jewelry store. Detective Eileen Barrett had matched a partial finger print from the crime scene to Gomas, whose prints were on file after his only prior arrest as an adult: driving with a suspended license in Brooklyn. Gomas maintained his innocence before a grand jury, but was indicted and couldn't make bail. Languishing on Rikers, his Legal Aid lawyer urged him to accept a plea offer of five years in prison, but he refused. Luckily, veteran detective Daniel Perruzzaa finally conducted a routine review of the fingerprints. He tells the Daily News, "When I looked at it, I said, 'You know what? This is a screwup; this is not his fingerprints." Oopsy! Gomas was released after 523 days in jail, but by then his girlfriend and their child moved in with another man. On the plus side, he pulled in $145K in less than two years on Rikers, so we're sure there's no hard feelings.

Sure, little Damien Sosa was on the cover of People with Flight 1549 Captain Chesley Sullenberger—but his mom and 4-year-old sister are supposed to pay for their own therapy after the scary though miraculous flight. At least that's what U.S. Airways' insurer, AIG, tells the Sosa family, according to the NY Times. While the family has health insurance, Tess Sosa thinks AIG should help foot the bill, "It’s like telling me, ‘We aren’t responsible for this. This is your trauma. You deal with it.'" And when Sosa mentioned the taxpayer bailout, the AIG claims person said "their division didn’t get a cent from the bailout." AIG has offered others passengers $10,000 if they release them further liability. Airline insurance expert Bruce Chadbourne isn't surprised AIG is playing "hardball" but adds, "Even though they’re giving the passengers a hard time, eventually they will be compensated to some extent. There’s no big pot because there’s no death. But there’s still mental distress, and it is a compensatable illness which, eventually, in my opinion, they deserve. They went through hell."