I Hate It When I Cry

But that's what I'm doing after spending the better part of an hour talking with my eldest brother, who I've never had that much of a re-pore with until recently. 

I'm the youngest child of a wonderful woman named Betty. Before I was born, yes before, she was in a car accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down. She has always been my role model. When she was being released from the hospital her doctor wanted to send her to rehab and she asked him, "Will this help me to be able to move again?" The doctor told her no that it was to teach her how to live with her new found disability. She told him, "Thank you, but I can do that at home." Like her, I've always kept a really positive attitude about the her circumstances and mine. However, the emotional flood gates came crashing down on me several weeks ago when we started discussing Damages in Torts. The case, Richardson v. Chapman, Supreme Court of Illinois, set me into a spiral of unmitigated sadness. In that case, the young woman Richardson was struck behind by a semi-trailer leaving her paralyzed. On appeal after an award of $22, 358, 814 the Appellate Court reduced this amount by 1.5 million. You may be asking at this point why this case got to me so much, it's because my mother who was struck from behind by a Lincoln that smashed in the rear end of her POS Izuzu was the one that was sued for injuries. My mother on Christmas Eve was leaving to run errands and on her way her car hit an ice patch running her into a telephone pole. The lovely couple of sued my mother's insurance company came in behind her, hit the same patch of ice, and crashed into her. While my mother was strapped into a Halo, the couple sued my mother's insurance company who assumed liability. My grandfather being the stout conservative farmer, told my mother that it was best to let it go and get on with her life.

As I read the Richardson case, I couldn't help but notice how many claims she could have had against the couple, against her insurance company, against Izuzu for a highly defective product. My mother never brought these claims, mostly at the advice of my grandfather, and her life has been much harder than it should have been because of it. She's had to worry about how she was going to afford a new wheelchair, she has had to take bankruptcy on medical bills, along with a host of other problems that are too many to list. So after reading that case, and talking with my brother, it's all a little too hard to stomach (and keep my tears in check) when I think about how my mother's life could have been very different with a fraction of the $21 million dollar award that Richardson received.