Anniversaries and Arbitration

I am jumping forward again.  When I first started this blog I hoped to move through my time in two hospitals and rehabilitation in some semblance of chronologic order.  But, as with the last posting, this is not happening.  Today again I wish to share events that were most recent.

I had my anniversary on December 11.  It has been three years.  I will always tell everyone that I am happy to be here, but then one can pretty much figure that out, after all, if I was not here I wouldn’t be here.  Three years since the truck ran me over and I was airlifted to the trauma center.  I like to spend this anniversary low key.  My wife and I took the dog for a long walk along the tow path near Frenchtown NJ.  We held hands and strolled along with the dog leading the way.  We visited the bookbinder there to get some estimates on some in need of repair and then we stopped in at the Book Garden, my last book signing was there way back in July.  Then it was home and dinner and holding hands some more as we watched television.  My kind of evening.

Of course we could have gone out for dinner and celebrated, but that falls way outside our budget.  We couldn’t bring ourselves to do that actually, Reality had hit home. 

A few days earlier on December 9 we had sat in on our arbitration hearing.  From day one we had an idea of what the outcome would be, and since outcomes are multi layered, only one layer really counted.  It wasn’t; will they pay?  It was; can they pay?

The lawyer heard from us, and the defendant stayed quiet.  This part of our situation was obvious, the truck ran the red light and I was the one in the hospital.  When the decision was read one hundred percent of the fault was on the truck driver and the company he worked for.  Then the numbers rolled in and included damages, future loss, lost wages, wife’s efforts and lost wages, the list went on and the total to be awarded to our family would have been in excess of 3.5 million dollars.  This was in fact more than we anticipated.  On paper arbitration looks so nice. 

In practice the legal system doesn’t work.  The trucking company did not insure their truck.  Therefore there was no money to be paid by the insurance company.  The driver was very young and had no possessions.  There was no money to be paid by him.  The trucking company was in hoc up to their ears.  They have no money.  They would declare bankruptcy and we would have access to nothing since their current creditors would reap first reward.  Three years have gone by and still I have no work to speak of.  One daughter is in college and a son is on his way.  All of our life savings will go into paying my bills and college tuition.  And then, of course, my wife has to support me as well.  We will have nothing to retire on.

Our insurance company would have paid my family a lot of money if I had died in the crash. 

With our legal system in play we got nothing.  The state of NJ and Hunterdon County prosecutors in particular spent over a year with a case on their desk which they did nothing with but defer to traffic court (apparently it is not a crime in NJ to run a red light, I know this for a fact because I went in and asked the prosecutor in person) so the company that didn’t carry insurance on its trucks could pay a small fine.  The company owning the truck which ran me over was able to recommenced business immediately; in fact it never stopped business operations at all while I struggled to regain my sense of balance for over a year. 

Today is one of those days (they are few and far between) where I have to wonder if the family would have been better off if there was a different outcome three years ago.