Harry Dunn Case: Next Hearing December 1, and the Damages $ May Be Severely Disappointing

As we last heard, a settlement of some kind was agreed to between the main parties, but the closure of the legal case has been delayed by a lien brought by the Dunn family's first set of U.S. lawyers, who would like to be compensated for their work on the case before the family gets anything. 

Exactly how much money are we talking about, you may wonder? According to unreliable and unsourced UK Twitter gossip - but which nonetheless comes from a qualified UK lawyer - the judge hearing the case in the Eastern District U.S. Federal Court, Alexandria, said during the last hearing that he will strictly apply UK law to set the amount of the monetary settlement. That is very, very, bad news for the plaintiffs, since UK law on damages in such cases is as clear as it is parsimonious. 

Under that law, the Fatal Injuries Act of 1976, families of fatal accident victims get only "reasonable funeral expenses" and a small cash payment, usually capped at £2,500. Damages for bereavement are capped at £15,000 pounds - and may be out of bounds anyway since Harry Dunn was not a minor, meaning that his parents are not permitted to make a claim - and there is no such thing as punitive damages. 

Also according to that unreliable and unsourced - but nevertheless generally accurate - UK Twitter gossip, the Dunn family is trying to pry potential lifetime earnings for their deceased son out of the U.S. driver's insurance company. That does not appear to be an option under UK law, however, it's probably the only remaining possible source for the multi-million-dollar payday that the family's horrendously bad advisor has been promising them for over two years now. 

Bear in mind that the deceased was 19, unemployed, and not in school. What kind of lifetime earnings might he have had? A UK resident has an average annual income of barely £30,000 pounds and a UK male has a life expectancy of about 82 years. You do the math. In the best case scenario, that would still fall short of the family's McDonalds-coffee-spill-lawsuit dreams. 

After all that activity in a U.S. court, will it come down to the same paltry settlement that the family could have gotten by suing in a UK court two years ago, minus whatever cut their two sets of lawyers will get? That could be the case.

 

If it is, the bright spot might be the long-overdue disenchantment of the Dunn family with that pied piper they have followed every day and every step of the way to this point.