I was paralyzed at the age of 20 as a result of complications from emergency surgery necessitated by a ruptured aorta brought about by a car accident; a car accident in which I unlawfully had alcohol in my system (as I was under the legal drinking age). This terrible event happened on a night a bunch friends and I were together at a house party.
Me and the friend who was a passenger in the car were co-workers at the local newspaper at the time, and we both had to be up to work at 5am the next morning. Due to this fact, he and I left this get-together very early in the evening, so that we wouldn’t get trashed and hung-over for work the next day.
At this point in my life, I didn’t have very many cares in the world. I was making good money, I had no kids, no wife, no real responsibilities other than taking care of myself. So I had a pretty nice car, which I was driving that night of my accident. It was still brand new at the time of the accident (maybe two months old). When Tim (my friend’s name who was with me) and I left the party that night, neither of us were drunk. I had had maybe three beers over the more than three hours I was there.
My point in saying this is, I was in love with driving the car. On my way to taking Tim back to his car (which was parked just outside my house), in the quiet little residential neighborhood we were in, I drove my car a little too fast taking a corner. I lost control, ran up on the curb and the driver’s side of my car made impact with a tree on the side of the street. Because I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt (huge factor), my chest hit the steering wheel with enough force to rupture my aorta.
I wasn’t drunk; this I know. However, I cannot ever say with any certainty if those beers that I did drink influenced my decision-making and/or my hand-eye coordination enough to cause the accident. Or, whether it was simply youthful, new-car zeal-mixed with a little bit of teen-age era indestructability. What I do know, however, is that my accident, and the subsequent paralysis resulting, is a complicated moral story.
By no means do I shrug off any personal responsibility for putting myself in the position that I am in. I have never done so. But what I am sensing from some here is that once I became paralyzed, as a result of hospital/doctor error, because the injury that brought me to the hospital in the first place was caused by my poor-decision making, I have no right to collect on damages inflicted upon me by the mistakes of those treating my injury. That, to me, is a warped sense of morality.
So any and all of you who feel this way, let me ask you something: you, in all your life, have never been guilty of poor-decision making? Not even early in your life? And if so, if that poor-decision making ever led to a disasterous outcome, like an accident, wouldn’t you want every tool made available to you to make your life whole once again that is available to everyone else who experiences such tragedy? Or should I pay for the mistakes I made as a foolish 20year old (whose mistakes Im sure many many here have made themselves, if they are truthful) for the rest of my life? And be content?
If you were in my shoes, you would sue in a heartbeat.
*and just a side note-why are people suddenly accusing me of fraudently suing HHFC? How did my writing a desperate letter to the DOJ, as a last-ditch effort to bring justice to this situation, morph into litigation?? I don’t want any lawsuits brought on anyone. What I want is for HHFC to give me my membership back. That is the right thing to do.