Posted on 06/10/2005 10:14:20 PM PDT by neverdem
Denise Jack and other car owners thought they had it bad when a 75-foot retaining wall in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan collapsed on May 12, burying their parked vehicles beneath untold tons of debris. But their ordeal was actually just beginning.
Their cars remain buried there today, and none are expected to be unearthed until the rest of the wall is stabilized and the rubble removed - up to a year from now.
Until then, they are caught in the world of insurance limbo. Mrs. Jack's policy, for example, has liability coverage that does not cover landslides. For her and others whose insurance companies won't act until the presumably crushed cars are unearthed, lawsuits are being pursued against the wall's owner, the Castle Village apartments. But because they cannot prove that their cars are buried until the debris is cleared away - and the cars' vehicle identification numbers can be inspected - legal experts say that such legal challenges are likely to take a long time.
"These people have a bit of an uphill battle," said Anthony Michael Sabino, a law professor at St. John's University. "If an insurance company tells them they have to wait it out for a year to see that the cars are excavated, and to see their vehicle identification numbers, then technically speaking they have a decent argument."
No one is even sure how many cars are beneath the rubble. At least one car that was only partly submerged was removed, three days after the wall collapsed onto the northbound Henry Hudson Parkway near 183rd Street.
Paul J. Browne, a spokesman for the Police Department, said the police believed "three or four" cars remained buried. Others have suggested that as many as six cars are there.
Of three car owners contacted who say their...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Anthony Donovan is one of a handful of car owners in insurance limbo since a wall collapsed onto his new Nissan last month in Washington Heights. Insurance payments for a replacement rental car stopped last week.
This is one time when you have to say "S*** happens!"
Here's an update on the story.
In a story somewhat related about the function of a city, we, the city and the state, dodged a bullet last week, IMHO, with the help of none other than Sheldon Silver. Who'd a thunk it? Tierney has a good editorial that he called The Circus Maximus Syndrome.
read later
How can these "bastard insurance companies" be certain that the automobiles are under the landslide, as claimed? How can they be sure that they have not been moved to chop shops and parted out?
There is, as yet, no proof of loss. Hardly a "technicality"...
True. But for an Insurance Company to try and get out of fulfilling their end of a contract is as likely as night following day.
Just tell the insurance company the car is gone...
Maybe it was stolen...
They were confiscated by the city of Manhattan. Sue the city, it is their property covering the cars.
I'd go ahead and report the car stolen if the insurance company wants to play games like that. "Hey, I parked it right there and now you're telling me you don't know if that's my car? Fine, then it must be stolen. In a year if you can recover it you can keep it, mister insurance man."
<< Bastard insurance companies escaping their responsibilities on a technicality. >>
And, at that, escaping them in a city 40% of the population of which was born in the effectively-lawless third world and 70% of whose population suffer the Liberal Psychosis. [Whose definitive symptom is the belief that theft is Good] And that comprises one part or the other of those whose careers are based in lying to others too stupid to know they're being lied to or -- who are "the others."
"Others" including the many [Now returned home] stupendously rich Bangladeshis, Bolivians, Chinese and Chileans, Indians and Iranians et al who "died" on September 11 2001.
Nice take....and don't forget these third-worlders sucking auto insurance companies dry (which means law-abiding Amreicans must pay more).
Investigators Say Fraud Ring Staged Thousands of Crashes,
By PATRICK HEALY, New York Times, August 12, 2003
"Law-enforcement officials said today that they had cracked an insurance-fraud ring that staged thousands of car accidents and then employed its own network of doctors, acupuncture therapists and fake medical clinics to bilk an insurance company out of $48 million.
Prosecutors and insurance experts said the ring was the largest of its kind ever broken in New York State. A grand jury on Long Island has issued 567 indictments, 86 of which were made public at a news conference here today. Those indicted included doctors, psychiatrists, chiropractors, dentists and nearly 20 bogus health-care clinics that were set up as part of the scheme to defraud State Farm Insurance, the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas J. Spota, said.
"It's one of the biggest busts in the nation in terms of its breadth, its scope and the dollars involved," said Robert Hartwig, the chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. "We're talking about bringing down an entire network. It's analogous to bringing down a drug kingpin."
Mr. Spota said the ring used "runners" and "crash dummies" in cars that would cut in front of other cars, often driven by women with children or by elderly people, slam on the brakes, and cause a crash. The authorities said the investigation dates to 2001, when they received word from insurers who noticed the same names were popping up over and over on insurance claims. One runner was involved with about 1,000 accidents.
Although tales of insurance fraud are well known in New York, Suffolk County investigators and prosecutors said this network, which traces its roots to the heavily Russian Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, was especially large and complex.
Mr. Spota would not link the series of frauds to Russian organized crime, but an insurance-fraud lawyer familiar with the case said the fingerprints of organized crime appeared to be all over it. Some profits from the frauds were channeled to businesses in Russia, while others were funneled into a Swiss bank account and withdrawn by Russian citizens, the authorities said."
No, newspaper pushing an anti-business agenda. Note the statement: "Mrs. Jack's policy, for example, has liability coverage that does not cover landslides."
That's intentionally misleading. Liability insurance doesn't ever cover any damage. It covers only lawsuits against the owner.
That may or may not be the case. I vote "A." But I'll bet you this is a an area that is yellow-dogdemocratleftwingenvironmentalistwacko. So losing their cars for them would logically be a good thing, right?
I reckon you're safe in OK, but here we get thousands of NYC Woody Allen look-and-sound-alikes who spout environmentalist codswallop as they throw trash on our roads from their SUV's and Ooh and Ah over the Fall leaves at the same time.
Sure takes law enforcement a long time to notice!
Gotta read the fine print on those policies. Insurance isn't worth much until you try to make a claim.
Sheldon actually helped for once?
Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse?
<< Nice take .... and don't forget these third-worlders sucking auto insurance companies dry. [Which means law-abiding Amreicans must pay more] >>
A while ago when I was living in Westwood, then in the process of morphing from a desirable West Los Angeles suburb into the little Iran it has since become, my SUV was rear-ended by "a person" whose eyebrow pencil as a consequence stuck in "the person's" eye [Nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- say no more!] -- and during the three weeks or so I was driving it around in a damaged condition, seven Iranian "body-shop owners," one of them a member of my lodge, [Home to the Grand Lodge of Iran in Exile] approached me with get-rich schemes to fake the accident I had already had and to add claimable injuries to myself.
Lying, looting, thieving third-world gangster bastards!
On another thread, a FReeper posted how well immigrants have figured out that anyone from any foreign country can get a SS number, simply by taking their work record from their home country to their embassy.
They can then apply for Social Security and receive full benefits. And its all legal.
The FReeper posted of knowing an Iranian family and their "parents" who went to the embassy, filed, and had Social Security benefits waiting for them when they came to the US, to live here with their son.
The SS system is in trouble, and this is where SS is going---given to people who have not put a penny into the system.
They arrive on our soil and pocket our Social Security benefits, plus all the other benefits they can get their grubby hands on.
The sense of entitlement these people have is outrageous.
In effect, they have declared economic war on Americans.
Insurance limbo sucks. I had several high-value containers on a cargo ship that got stuck on a barrier off Brazil after a storm. The vessel owners just waited around, hoping it'd finally sink in the next storm. It'd cost too much to salvage and fix, so they were hoping for a total loss. All the insurance carriers, meanwhile, refused to pay, saying, heh, it's all still there, safe and sound...
Several hundred thousand bucks sitting in the Atlantic was no fun. The irony is that all the merchandise had survived Hurricane Andrew, which tore up nearby warehouses.
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