That maybe true where you live. But I suggest you visit some of the very swanky bars in Boston. My wife and I each make 6 figures…and we can’t afford to set foot in those bars. Some are private…and others are just way too expensive.
No offense intended. ‘Insurance, The White Man’s Burden’ is a vintage comedy skit from BBC’s ‘The Goon Show’ which was based on a famous Rudyard Kipling poem. My Paternal Grandmother was 1/8th Algonquin which makes me not enough to bother claiming.
Any bar that charges enough that dual-6-figure earners can’t afford one drink there is a bar not worth going to.
I agree. But I rarely go to bars for drinks anymore.
I went to a bar once in '74, just after I got out of the Air Force. I found it a very depressing place. Nothing but a dark room full of lonely depressed drunks hoping to get lucky. I never went to another.
Drinking at bars is fun when you are on vacation. Also after hiking in the mountains we do dinner at an Irish pub. Other than that, I’ve not been in a bar for 30 years or so. Most bars are way too noisy anyways.
I love pubs. I wish we had them here in the states.
“Pubs”, for those who think they’re bars, are “Public Houses”, places where families can get a meal and a drink and relax. There are some small, very old pubs like the one I went to in Maidstone that was founded in 1106 (yup, eleven oh-six) that are small, but that’s mainly because there weren’t that many people there in 1106. It was a place to get a bite to eat and a drink. It was the middle of the day, and it was filled with business men having lunch and a beer. Pubs don’t resemble our bars.
It does not matter how much insurance and assets you have, the plaintiff’s lawyers always go for ALL the insurance and ALL of your assets plus. The more assets and insurance you have, the better the lawyer the plaintiff will attract. No insurance, no assets, no case.
Mike, you still don’t have enough. My mother had a similar acquisition of assets and about as much insurance as you have. A jogger ran out into the road and into the SIDE of my mothers car, which was moving at about 25mph (in a 35 zone) at the time. After three lawyers dropper her when they read the police report, she found a 4th lawyer that sued for $9mil.
The advantage of more insurance is that the insurance company lawyers put better people on the case. They settled for a few thousand.
I want to add one comment on the DUI BAC limit. But first I want it understood that I do not condone drunk driving and I am not advocating raising the limits.
But, (I know that is not correct to start a sentence with But) I have had a number of friends killed by drunk drivers over the years and not one of them was killed by a drunk driver with a BAC of 0.08 or 0.05. The BAC in each case was in the 0.16 to 0.24 range.
Maybe a BAC over 0.12 (or some predetermined limit) should have higher consequences than a 0.08. Not to lower the consequences of 0.08 but raise them for the higher BAC levels.
This is where I believe the laws need to change. Operating a piece of machinery that can cause significant injury to another should require minimum insurance that reflects the potential for the damage they can inflict. Protecting your own assets is only one aspect of insurance. The other is being responsible for your own actions. If you are negligent and cause more damage (personal or property) than you can afford to replace with your own assets, then you should be required to carry enough insurance to compensate them- period! The idea that “I have nothing so I don’t need insurance” is fundamentally wrong. You should have insurance primarily to compensate someone you injure as a result of operating your car.
Responsibility goes beyond owning and caring for the car. If you want to drive a vehicle on public streets, then the part that goes along with that is being sufficiently insured against any damage you may do. By and large, the state minimums are ridiculously low and in NH, you don’t even need proof of insurance at all…
Maybe when someone is killed. But surely not for someone injured. The courts in most states have fairly well defined guidelines for liability lawsuits.
There’s also a huge difference when someone causes an accident and someone who willfully caused an accident.
Lawyers may sue for outrageous amounts and only receive a fraction of it.
There are pubs in the US. Several where I live, in fact. And with the dual-force of the craft beer craze and all the restaurant shows on TV making people want to go out to good restaurants, pubs and pub-like places are cropping up all over the place.
The old image of the bar as a seedy, dark place full of drunks and people who have failed at life can still be found, but I’d assert that they’re not as common as modern pubs/lounges which emphasize interesting beers and liquors, and where you go to have a good meal and a couple of drinks, not to get bombed and “forget about life for awhile.”
I know you’re not speaking from experience because I have actual experience with personal injury lawsuits and they most certainly can easily exceed both the insurance and assets. Heck, there was even a fairly recent situation where some guy ran over a kid he was towing behind his boat. Cut off her arm with the prop. The medical bills were one thing. Then they went for pain and suffering and all the future losses they could think of. That makes your $2M umbrella policy look like a starter kit. You think a jury looking at an injured child with a tough life ahead is going to go lightly on the guy with the boat?
They WILL go after everything. If you have insurance, they may try to insulate you as their insured by offering to quickly settle for the limits of the policy if they sign away rights to go after their insured as well. Many people will settle rather than duke it out for a decade in court but that depends on what you have lost and how tenacious you are at wanting to be made whole…
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The last time I was in a bar (I was there to play pool and be a DD) I got a pool stick broken over me and a car chase ensued. I stay out of bars.
As I said, going after and achieving are two things.
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I’ve consulted with several insurance reps and lawyers… None recommended any more then 2million umbrella policy. And the all said with that much insurance they won’t be going after assets.
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When you buy an umbrella policy the agent works with you to determine best coverage to insulate your assets.
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As for experience. I don’t. But brother does. It’s highly unlikely to get these Hugh settlements from individuals. Corporations is something else. State where incident occurred ha a lo to do with it also.
Most people do not see the value in insuring against worst case. How often does that happen? You’re more likely to get sued for something well under your policy limit. That’s why they recommend that limit, it’s a decent balance of risk.
There are many impediments that can be thrown at you to try and thwart a judgement. Even then, collecting is still another thing as well. But if you’re negligent and the injured party is bent on justice, the lawyers are essentially free for them. Yours are not. Once your insurance company agrees to pay policy limits and walk away, you better have a good team backing you up (on your dime)…
However, in both cases someone gets punished before a court can decide. In number one, I might be out of a car for several weeks or likely months and in number 2 example a person that , in good faith, loans a car to someone gets punished.
I do agree with you not to loan a car to someone I know has been previously convicted of DWI/DUI and if a parent gives a car to a son or daughter they should be held responsible for it.
In either case, our laws are not sufficient to handle DWI cases. What is more disturbing to me is the person convicted multiple times of DWI and keeps getting away with it…until someone gets killed.
Had a drunken friend killed when he hit a power pole, estate had to pay for damage to the power pole as insurance would not cover it because of post mortem alcohol test.
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That’s the real problem. Cops are actually pretty good at catching drunk drivers, but once they catch them and get a conviction, the penalties aren’t all that severe. There are people in my state running around with double-digit DWI conviction records.
Personally I believe you should lose your license after the first DWI, and you can’t get it back for at least a year, and not before going through mandatory alcohol treatment and having a psychological evaluation that says you’re unlikely to do it again.
2nd conviction? License revoked for life. Drive drunk after that without a license? Off to jail for a very long time with you. We can make room in the prison by letting out all the poor schmucks who are in for buying dope or patronizing prostitutes.
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