Here’s a Jury you just might PAY to be on!

April 8th, 2015. By LucyC

How weird is this? A woman in Utah sued herself for killing—accidentally—her husband. Got it? Yeah? No? Ok.

So here’s the skinny. Barbara Bagley wanted the insurance money payable upon her hubby’s death. Problem is the insurance company didn’t want to pay.

How did she accidentally kill her husband? (Heads up, this could be useful). One night in November, 2011, Bagley was driving with her husband, Bradley Vom Baur, the passenger, when she lost control of the vehicle. The car subsequently rolled over, and her husband later died in hospital from his injuries.

Now, Bagley is the executor of her late husband’s estate (plaintiff) and the person responsible for his death (defendant). In order to get the insurance company to play ball, she was forced to bring a wrongful death and survival action against the driver (defendant) owing to the driver’s negligence causing her husband’s death. She has one very savvy lawyer.

Theoretically, by bringing a successful lawsuit against herself as the defendant, the insurance carrier would have to cover the cost for her negligence while driving. According to CBS Money Watch, the insurance company would then pay plaintiff Bagley as the personal representative and heir of her husband’s estate.

Still with me?

Not surprisingly, I suppose, the district court dismissed Bagley’s action. BUT—you knew there was a but—the court of appeals reversed the district court’s ruling. The whole thing boiled down to language, and not just language—punctuation marks!!! (Yes!)

The court of appeals determined that the “absence of punctuation marks separating” the words “death of a person” from “of another” in the language is read to mean that the two are connected, and “another” only refers to a person other than the decedent, according to the opinion. (Think “Eats Shoots,and Leaves“—not ”Eats, Shoots and Leaves”—an excellent read by the way.)

The wrongful death statute reads:

When the death of a person is caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another, his heirs…may maintain an action for damages against the person causing the death. The same separating punctuation is also missing from the survival action statute, which is interpreted by the court as meaning that the “another” is anyone other than the decedent, even if the “another” is both the defendant tortfeasor and the heir and personal representative of the estate, according to an article on this by the National Trial Lawyers.

Believe me, I couldn’t make this up. There’s more, but I’m betting you have the gist of it by now.

Moving on from the grammar and punctuation (do I hear a sigh of relief?) the attorneys provided by Bagley’s insurance company to defend Bagley argued that the reading of the statute to allow for her to file an action against herself, was “’contrary to…basic notions of fairness and decency’ and contrary to public policy.”

However, this was rejected by the court of appeals because the defendant did not define the public policy nor make reference to any policy in Utah regarding the notions of fairness and decency. Instead, the defense only cited cases outside of the state of Utah. Not so bright, in retrospect. But maybe there weren’t any other cases in Utah. I’m betting.

The court said that its proper role was to interpret the “meaning and application” of a statute’s text and avoid “judicial mischief” which they would do by allowing the Legislature to correct any statutory language that may be contrary to public policy.

Ready…Payday!

Just in case you’re interested, the case is Bagley and the Estate of Vom Baur v. Bagley, Case No. 20131077-CA in the Utah Court of Appeals, Third District. And if this baby winds up before a jury, you bet you’d be paying to be on that one—they don’t even have to give you the brown bag lunch! Wonder if there’d at least be costume changes…

This was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2015 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.