Sometimes The U.S. Justice System Does Work — The Jennifer Connell Story
It’s not just the African-American population that’s highly skeptical about their ability to get a fair shake in the U.S. justice system. I don’t know a single person who believes that the system works the way it should.
In Massachusetts, it’s common knowledge that if you drink and drive and get caught, there are a whole cadre of lawyers who specialize in setting the guilty free. But only if you’ve got money.
The Jennifer Connell story is one that seemed almost unbelievable to me when I first read it, especially since I have a niece the same age as her nephew (i.e. the defendant in the case), and so I know how wonderful it is to have such a loving familial relationship with someone from the next generation.
For those of you who don’t know about Jennifer Connell, she lives in New York City and went to her then-8-year-old nephew’s home in Westport, Connecticut. When she first saw her nephew, he jumped into her arms from sheer happiness while shouting, “Auntie Jen, I love you.”
In the process, Ms. Connell broke her wrist.
According to Ms. Connell, she suffered lingering nerve damage as a result of the injury, and she decided to look for $127,000 wherever she could get it.
She wanted to get the money through the homeowners insurance of her nephew’s parents, but she was offered $1 by that insurance company. Plan B was to find another way, so she chose to file a lawsuit. However, according to Connecticut law, she had to sue an individual. So, she chose to sue her now-12-year-old nephew for $127,000.
The obvious question is this: why didn’t Ms. Connell have medical insurance? If she has enough money to live in Manhattan, surely she has enough to get government-mandated health insurance.
The next question is why sue in this situation?
The answer seems to be that it’s always someone else’s fault. The answer seems to be that whenever an accident happens, we’ve become trained that someone else must always pay for our misfortune(s).
We’ve become so numb to the idea of personal responsibility and freak accidents because we’ve been inundated with all the big headlines and social media about huge sums of money not just being won in court but being bandied about in corporate mergers and takeovers. Those multi-million and mult-billion dollar numbers make it seem okay to ask for the relatively small sum of $127,000.
That’s the problem. $127,000 is still a lot of money.
I’m sure that Ms. Connell has had to deal with lingering effects of her wrist injury. Sometimes these injuries don’t heal properly, especially since Ms. Connell was in her early 50’s when it happened.
But again, I return to the question of why she sued. According to the court, her medical bills totaled $113,221.30. Since she works as a human resources manager in Manhattan and she lives in the Upper East Side, I find it incredible that she either didn’t have health insurance and/or her insurance company didn’t cover that much of the bill. What is also unclear is how this medical bill total was calculated.
I know people who have done all sorts of unconventional treatments for fairly standard injuries. If Ms. Connell chose that route to the tune of approximately $113,000, then that’s her own choice and not one that a homeowners insurance policy — or even a health insurance provider — is obligated to cover.
What makes the story even worse is that her nephew’s mother, Lisa Tarala, died last year.
Hasn’t this poor kid been through enough without having his aunt sue him?
I’m going to assume that since she just appeared on the Today Show with her nephew, Ms. Connell talked with her nephew and his father about the lawsuit before it was filed. That conversation probably started with something like, “No hard feelings, but…”
The final result is that the jury rejected Ms. Connell’s lawsuit. Which means now she’s not only endured the wrath of Internet denizens, and not only has she exposed her 12-year-old nephew to having his name forever linked on the Internet to one of the youngest Americans ever sued for $100,000+, but she’s also going to compound her wrist pain with that nice fat lawyer’s bill she will surely have to pay.
Cases like this should be curated and kept in a very public place as a warning for people trying to file frivolous lawsuits and sacrificing others to get what they don’t deserve.
It’s terrible that she broke her wrist. But it’s even more terrible that we live in a society where people can’t say, “I just have to accept this as being a freak accident and no one is responsible.”
However, the moment she filed the lawsuit, she made the decision that she’s somehow entitled to a big chunk of money.
It’s almost impossible to side with any insurance company, but this is one of those rare cases where I’m 100% glad that the insurance company prevailed. The point of our justice system is to maintain order, and in this case it worked. We can only hope that this will carry over into a lot of other areas where the justice system seems unfairly slanted in favor of those with significant means.
