Let’s say you’re a 33-year-old immigrant (we don’t know if you’re illegal or not because it’s politically incorrect to say so) woman mother of two. Your foot gets run over by a bus. You have a low IQ. You work for $20,000 a year as a clerk in a convenience store.
After your foot is runover by the bus, you do what any red-blooded american in the year 2005 would do. You sue.
How much would you win?
How about $16,000,000?
I kid you not.
A former clerk in a discount store who made about $20,000 a year, de la Cruz speaks little English, has a very low IQ and very limited job prospects, said her lawyer, Joshua Pollack.
Still, TA lawyers told jurors that the injury was not that bad and that de la Cruz could get a job as a ticket seller at a movie theater or a parking lot attendant.
“They were minimizing the injury,” Pollack said. “I think the jury was insulted by that.”
Before the two-week trial in June, the TA offered $150,000 to settle the case, Pollack said. His counteroffer of $1.5 million was rejected by the agency.
Good Lord.
One of the things that go into a jury award for injury is earning potential. Judging by her $20,000 a year salary, she’d only have to work 800 years to earn that settlement.
What I don’t get is why this woman can’t work as a clerk in a store? Because her foot got hurt? I mean really. I’m not saying the MTA was right here. In fact, the woman was struck in the crosswalk. But are there no one-legged people working in the world? And it doesn’t say her foot will or won’t heal. Basically she’s going to earn $16,000,000 now; never have to work another day in her life, all because her foot got run over by a bus?
There’s a word for a story like this.
Jackpot.
So much for her “limited earning potential.” Looks like her lawyer managed to increase that exponentially.
Source: NY Daily News