Want to get rich quick? Forget the lottery or Las Vegas. Just file a lawsuit in the United States, and you might hit the jackpot.
On November 28, a jury in Miami awarded a former waiter aboard a cruise ship US$102.7 million. The defendant: the owner of a parking lot.
Here's the story. Sami Barrak was in Miami on his day off in July 2002. Barrak and a friend decided to visit Tootsie's Cabaret, a strip club located in a now-defunct mall.
After a few hours of entertainment, the men departed. When Barrak 's friend returned to Tootsie's to retrieve cigarettes he had left there, a man approached Barrak's vehicle. After shooting Barrak in the neck in an apparent robbery attempt, the man fled.
Barrak survived the shooting, but was left a quadriplegic. He can breathe only with the assistance of a ventilator.
Whose fault was the shooting? Did Barrak have any responsibility for sitting alone in a parking lot in an area with a reputation for being unsafe? Of course not. The fault, he alleged, lay with the owner of the parking lot, which he alleged had the responsibility of keeping it safe.
A Miami jury agreed. It ordered the owner to pay Barrak US$1.4 million for past medical expenses, US$164,000 for past lost earnings, US$28 million for future medical expenses, US$650,000 for lost earning ability, US$2.5 million for past pain and suffering and a whopping US$70 million for future pain and suffering. The grand total: US$102.7 million.
A judgment of US$102.7 million is enough to bankrupt just about anyone, even a person with very deep pockets and extremely comprehensive liability insurance. Let's hope the owners of the parking lot had a comprehensive asset protection plan in place before the unfortunate Mr. Barrak was assaulted. And let's further hope that a substantial portion of the owner's assets are held outside the United States, in a jurisdiction less friendly to litigation than Florida.
Learn how you can protect your assets from litigation run amok—click here.
Copyright © 2007 by Mark Nestmann
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