Aunt sues nephew, 12, for six figures over broken wrist

This happens pretty frequently in New York. A variation is that the insurance company feels like it gets nowhere so if files the lawsuit on that person's behalf. In my little area, it's come up with people being bit by neighbors' dogs or kids getting burned at someone's backyard barbecue.

 

Worse. She works in HR.

 

...And the semi-touching ending.

Aunt and nephew together go on the Today show to say they love each other, no hard feelings, that it was the only way to get the insurance company pay up.

'Worst aunt ever' speaks out: 'I was never comfortable' suing nephew

 

Like the McDonald's hot coffee case, there is usually much more to these lawsuits than what a simple headline implies. Not saying she's a great person or anything, but it's not some lady just suing an eight-year old. There's a reason. It might be a greedy, stupid reason. But there's a reason.

 

Why would the homeowners' insurance pay for something when there was nothing defective with the home, or a hazard in the home? They could argue that the kid doesn't constitute a hazard.

 

I'm not sure exactly. But I'm getting sued right now because a guy broke his ankle on my property. The insurance company tried to contact him two years ago when it first happened and said they would have paid medical had he returned the call, whether or not I was negligent. (They don't believe I was.)

 

Yeah, I was right, this was entirely a procedural step as part of an insurance claim. Makes a hell of a lot more sense now.

Still, it would have been nice had that been properly explained to save this woman a social media shitstorm. Poor form by the CT Post, which started this all by taking a purely superficial look at this instead of providing the context. You'd think an editor at the paper in Connecticut, the insurance capital of the world, would have thought of this.

 

I want to know how treating a broken wrist cost $127,000?

Does she not have health insurance at work that would cover at least some of the costs?

 

Her health insurance company might have been/likely was subrogating the claim. A couple of years ago my wife fell (in our living room) and broke both bones in her forearm. Emergency room, extensive surgery, therapy, etc., etc., took the sticker price to something like $70K. My health insurance covered it all, but the company was none too subtle about trying to see if it could pin the bill on someone else (i.e., was it at someone else's home?).

There's also this increasingly prevalent (as I understand it) dynamic called balance billing. Say the woman got treated in her network, which had a contractually arranged price with the providers she chose. Her insurance company might try to subrogate her claim to recover the amount it paid out, but the providers might sue whoever's responsible for the difference (between the contracted amount and the billed amount). Thus, her lawsuit (with its over-dramatization of the damages she suffered) had to be thus-and-such of a dollar amount to ensure she walked away financially whole.