a number of years ago Barbara Mandrell was pilloried for a lawsuit following a traffic accident. It turned out that the law required the suit in order for the insurance to pay. Nasty.

wonder how many of them will admit that they were far too quick to rush to judgment

Typical.

How've you been?

For instance, many people were convinced in the original threads that there would be 2 insurance companies involved - her own health insurance company, who they said would be forcing her to sue her nephew, and his father's homeowner's insurance company. But in this explanation, there is only 'the' insurance company, which is responsible for 'the homeowner's insurance policy', and so it would seem they won (they would have paid out if she had won).

So it looks like she went to court with a case most of us thought was hopeless. She certainly lost quickly, so that seems a reasonable assessment. So she put her nephew, whose mother died recently, through a stressful case with little or no hope of winning. I don't see that this shows her as free of criticism.

On edit: it depends on which report you read, which is even more confusing.

Fox CT and the NYT don't mention health insurance at all: http://foxct.com/2015/10/14/aunt-who-sued-nephew-speaks-out-says-she-was-forced-to-go-to-trial/ http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/10/16/woman-who-sued-nephew-for-wrist-breaking-hug-says-insurance-only-offered-her-1/ ("this was a case… about one thing: getting medical bills paid by homeowner’s insurance. &quot

QZ says liability insurance would have covered the cost if she won, but has someone assume she had bad/no health insurance: http://qz.com/526941/if-you-sensed-something-off-about-the-story-of-the-woman-who-sued-her-nephew-you-were-right/?utm_source=atlfb ("it seems likely that she needed to bring a lawsuit because her health insurance didn’t cover the cost of her medical care&quot

that's how.

or no health insurance at all.

i also remember people getting all worked up that she must be wealthy, a woman who has crappy health insurance and lives in a walk up, is not wealthy. she needs someone to pay for this, and that's all she is trying to do.

an ounce of empathy sometimes helps.

(that being exactly the kind of thing that human resources deals with), and the "hard to hold my hors d'oeuvre plate" remark didn't help her. Or comments from her lawyer like:

Putting him through what, exactly?

Explain how traumatized he was to go on the Today show and explain that he's not bothered by it in the least.



That's him... getting to miss another day of school.

You are inventing a story that doesn't exist about "putting the nephew through" some ordeal:

"She would never do anything to hurt the family or myself," he told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie.

Many in the media and on social media speculated that the boy would never want anything to do with the relative who took him to court, but that's clearly not the case.

"I love her and she loves me," he said.

That's the original reporting of the case. I'm not inventing it.

He's on the Today show because people are saying "WTF?" about the court case being brought.

And we're still stuck not knowing what the hell happened, and yet qz.com and some DUers are saying "see? there was nothing to this" when they are all just guessing still.

and there's your different opinion. So, yeah, guesses.

The law professor did think it would be about crappy insurance. But you think she was made to do this by an insurance company who will now pay up, if I remember rightly. But we have a quote from her lawyer that "we are disappointed in the outcome", so it doesn't sound like this was just going through the motions to get one insurance company to pay up.

and criticises "the insurance industry". That sounds like he's her lawyer, and if it's allowed, he could be on a no-win no-fee basis.

If they paint her as their client, when in fact they're acting for an insurance company, and she is their catspaw, then they are to blame for the hatred she has endured. If they'd said "we represent one insurance company which is getting the court to decide if they, or another insurance company, should pay", no-one would have batted an eyelid.

Notice the following information absent from every story:

Where is the kid's lawyer? (Hint, I posted the docket of this case previously)

She is an HR manager - for what company? Does she have health insurance and from whom?

You will not find those answers in any media version of this story. It's almost as if there is an agreement not to answer those questions.

Negotiation doesn't end with a trial verdict. Whether or not to take an appeal is still grist for the settlement mill.

And, no, it's not about lack of being "honest". How his client paid for his services is not anyone's business.

bills out if they can figure out someone- anyone- who can be somehow blamed for the injuries.
My friend slipped on ice- same thing, had to sue the commercial property where the ice was.
Another friend was goofing around with her boyfriend, they wanted her to sue him- would not pay her medical bills unless she did.

to cover her medical bills for an accident at someone else's house. That made no sense.

It turned out that the article misreported that fact, and other sources repeated the mistake.

(On FB, I don't think here), then I posted a mea culpa about it when I realized it was an insurance issue.

I had said anger was the right emotion, but totally misplaced. It proves that our system of insurance is FUCKED UP that an aunt would have to sue her nephew for hugging her.

So many people go with their knee jerk reactions. People are getting stupider.

there were several people on that thread who raised the issue of healthcare and yet people went on deriding this poor woman. the really shitty journalists who covered her story in the first place should take much of the blame too.

I kinda thought that to be the case. In the original thread, someone was posting that hypothesis, but to no avail-- as much as we on DU like to think we're more media-savvy, cynical and rational, we get rooked into sensationalism as much as anyone else does.

But, it certainly allowed a wonderful opportunity for the Moral Musketeers to tell us how bad of a person she is and how much better they are than she...

Thanks for the update.

Put the greedy health insurance companies out of business. Your premiums are their profit.

Put the greedy health insurance companies out of business. Take profit out of health care.

... but in thinking about it, I can sympathize. If I was at a party, and couldn't hold a cigar in one hand and a cold beer in the other, it would be a social nightmare.

when you file a lawsuit, you do have to mention how you have been inconvenienced, and then your lawyers write that up. not being able to hold a plate, indicate that there are simple things in life you cannot do. its not like she said, i can no longer bungee jump. if you cant hold a small plate in your hand for a while, that's kind of a giant inconvenience.

because, post-accident, he couldn't hold a tray. Had to have dozens of operations on his right hand, and it's still not right, and never will be.

So you know, it really is something the non-disabled take for granted, I think.

... that she was passing around the guests at a party she was working or catering, then my sympathy level goes way up. I "assumed" (and I shouldn't do that) that she was a well-heeled invitee trying to hold a tiny dish for personal consumption.

Any accident that interferes with making a living is very serious indeed.

someone to lack the ability to hold onto a tiny plate.

a plate is really light, if you can't hold that up, how many other things are you unable to do

If she DIDN'T want her nephew's family to have to pay her medical expenses (and thereby force her own insurance company to rightfully honor her claim) she might well say something ridiculous to help sabotage the case against her nephew.

I'm still not going to exonerate Auntie. There's too much that doesn't add up. And the asked judgement was far in excess of what the injury would have cost. A broken wrist doesn't cost $175,000 for treatment.

is if the nephew had been determined to be negligent (failed to exercise reasonable care). It's very hard to prove that an 8-year-old was negligent. Homeowner's insurance isn't no-fault.

I've had a fractured skull, broken leg, broken arm, broken foot (every bone), and a broken wrist.

and accused of not willing to admit you're wrong. All while they crow about how wrong it is to jump on people on the internet.

but I did....

in the previous thread to explain how these cases usually work, but it seemed like hardly anybody was interested in that - just how incredibly awful this person was and how they would never, ever sue a family member, nope, because they are decent people and this woman was just greedy.



Except that her health insurer stiffed her - as we tried to explain - and as a result her only recourse was to try to collect on the nephew's family's homeowner's insurance. Yes, the comment about the hors d'oeuvres plate was a bit cringe-inducing, but it's likely she was trying to make the point (very clumsily) that she could not hold even light objects.

In any event, you can be pretty certain that any media report on any civil lawsuit is probably wrong in the particulars, but they do love throwing people to the wolves when they have no clue what really happened.

I hate when DUers fall for sensationalism, despite other DUers trying to educate them.

Seemed pretty obvious to me. Her health insurance company wanted to sue his homeowners insurance company.

But then the internet outrage machine had to crank up, in order to sell advertising. And people fell for it, because outrage leads to an adrenaline rush, which makes one more susceptible to the wiles of the advertisers.

Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, "Liberals" are just as big suckers as anyone else, and a lot of suckers right here on this website fell for the click-bait outrage.

Yay! Capitalism!!

which is what other people should have done, before jumping on the 'aunt is a monster' bandwagon

and were told that couldn't possibly be the case. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027255637#post19

All you need to do is get a lawyer, sue everyone in sight, wait a few months, and maybe you'll get to see a doctor. Not your own, necessarily, but one that's in the right network. And this stimulates the economy with lawyer fees, court fees, and the associated administrative costs. We can't afford single payer!

and as I wrote earlier, insurance companies need to FOAD.
Her health insurance should simply pay up.

More jaded, I think.

I haven't followed the details of this, but what would be typical of a personal injury case is that the plaintiff is deposed and asked a LOT of questions about her life has been affected by the injury -- ah, pardon me, by the alleged injury. My guess is that, in her deposition transcript and/or in documents filed to provide defense counsel with more specific information, there was a detailed catalog of her impairments. The inability to hold the hors d'oeuvres plate sounds like one item out of a much more complete description, but it was the one item that the media seized on, because they could use it to support their preferred narrative that she was the villainess.

The media would love to convey the impression that the ONLY thing different in her life is that now she can't hold an hors d'oeuvres plate. If you just stop and think about it, though, it's simply not credible to assume that she is otherwise completely unaffected.

the media were really irresponsible assholes about this too. they could have used to this story to show what lengths families have to go to, to get reimbursed for healthcare, instead they decided to start a public shaming campaign.

I don't know if I made a comment on DU or not. I think it is pure crap that the insurance company made her sue her nephew. The suit only proves how fucked up the insurance industry is.

It also is a good reminder to people that they need to sit down and read all the fine print of their policies before the sign on the dotted line. Know what your policy covers.

truly people are doing the best they can.

What can an individual do - you say "know what your policy covers". Do you honestly believe if everyone just "does do diligence" they will wind up with a policy in which everything is covered? No, the industry does not work that way. The insurance companies are in business to make profit and they spend most of their time denying claims.

I'm saying cover your ass because insurance companies will try to screw you. I'm also saying from the first reports that didn't have the full information that I had no idea about the insurance company's involvement and from that standpoint it certainly changes how I feel about the case.

I figured there had to be more than what it sounded like, but honestly, it sounded awful.