In March 1998, months before he was supposed to graduate high school and head off to Florida State University, then-18-year-old Eric Brody was driving home from his job at Sports Authority in the Sawgrass Mills Mall. Around the same time, a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy named Christopher Thieman left his girlfriend and headed for work. He was late. When Thieman's speeding cruiser slammed into Brody's 1982 AMC Concord, Brody's skull smashed into the passenger door, sending him into a six-week coma and leaving him disabled for life. Today, he lives mostly in a wheelchair and is cared for by his elderly parents.
The nasty legal maneuvering began shortly after the accident and has continued for 11 years.
According to Brody's Tallahassee attorney, Lance Block, there were six times between November 2002 and February 2003 that the Brody family offered to settle with BSO's insurance company for the policy limit of $3 million, but the company wouldn't agree to that, so Brody was forced to go to trial. Block says the insurance company finally came around and did offer to settle -- on the morning the trial got scheduled. But by then, Brody's medical bills were $1.5 million, so they proceeded to court, and in 2005, a jury awarded him a monster verdict of $30 million.
But Brody can't get that money. Why?
Because BSO is a government agency that enjoys protections of sovereign
immunity. Even if a jury awards a big settlement, the government won't
pay it unless the state Legislature votes on a claims bill to go ahead
and pay it out. The sovereign immunity mechanism is in place to protect
taxpayers' money, so the state doesn't go broke from lawsuits
it loses.
Block says the insurance company knew this would
happen all along -- that's why it didn't settle in the first place. He
says company representatives were blatant about it: "The company
repeatedly told us that the reason it wouldn't offer the money was
because it believed we would never get a claims bill passed."
Now,
state legislators have introduced bills in both the House and Senate to
help get Brody his judgment money. The House Special Master (who
reviews cases and advises legislators how to vote) has said Brody
deserves it, irrespective of this being a tight budget year.
Here's where lobbying comes into play. Financial disclosure records
show that both the company handling the insurance claim (RiverStone
Claims Management) and the BSO have hired the high-powered firm of
Greenberg Traurig for lobbying in the past year. In a committee meeting
March 30, Greenberg Traurig lawyer Barry Richard told legislators that
if they passed the bill and gave Brody his money, it would come out of
the BSO budget and the sheriff would in turn have to make huge cuts in
services, either laying off 300 deputies, closing five fire stations,
or shutting down the county jail. He argued that sovereign immunity was
in place precisely for cases like this, to put "a reasonable limit upon
the public treasury."
Brody's lawyer argues that that's fearmongering. Block says BSO shouldn't be on the same
side as the insurance company -- in fact, BSO should be going after the
insurance company on a bad faith claim because the insurance company,
by not settling the case early on, forced the case to go to trial and
forced BSO to incur the $30 million judgment. BSO, he says, shouldn't
have to pay one dime.
In Block's own words: "The lobbyists
are roaming the halls of the Capitol telling legislators that they
represent the BSO even though they are being paid by the insurance
company, and they are claiming that deputies would be removed from the
streets of Broward County if the Brody bill passes. What they aren't
telling the legislators is the BSO's insurance company is guilty of bad
faith claims handling practices and will be responsible for paying the
entire claim. So now the insurance company is trying to conceal the
truth about its responsibility to pay the claim while painting a false
picture that if the Legislature passes the Brody bill, it would
devastate the sheriff's budget."
But Richard, the BSO lobbyist, says that the BSO is not
interested in going after the insurance company for bad faith and that delays early in the case were Block's fault. He also
says it's no conflict of interest for his firm to represent both the BSO and RiverStone. (He
personally lobbies only for the BSO, he says.) "It's tragic whenever
anyone gets in an accident," Richards says, but suggests that $30 million is an unreasonable sum. He points out that had it
been an accident between two private drivers, the insurance payout
would most likely be just $50,000, which is what most people carry as
policy limits. Brody, he said, could have taken the $3 million, which
"remained on the table." In fact, the company has since upped the
offer to $4.1 million.
Block counters that their bigger offer is proof that they did wrong and they know it.
In
the March 30 committee meeting, legislators discussed transfering the
right to sue -- and letting Block go after the insurance
company himself. That would require an amendment being added to the
bill. Whatever happens, it looks like it will still be a long time
before Eric Brody sees any payouts.
In the years since the
accident, Christopher Thieman was fired from BSO for falsifying police
records in the infamous Powertrac scandal. Block says Thieman was never
even cited for excessive speed.
