and forty nine thousand dollars in some change for medical funeral bills this is all spelled out on the verdict form the  we have an interesting issue here concerning double recovery and as far as we could tell in the research both parties we could find a case right on  point basically when you deal with a dram shop act as your honour's know if i step out on the sidewalk after oral argument here in a drunk driver struck me i would have a case for support of the seventy one thousand dollars over if i passed away my wife would have a claim for loss of society like it was in this case she would have a claim for our bodily injury through death now what do we have in this case on those outlines we have a fifty thousand dollars settlement which was paid by a progressive insurance company to the administrator mr klock and the this was approved by the court of kalam county on a petition requesting the authorization of settlement for wrongful death and order  last side of the release in their release there are two interesting things not only does it point out of it's for medical bills and funeral bills but at the bottom it uk to the time of patent when it became what i call black letter law because it was decided by the supreme court that was new skete court mention that even though driver they were sorry but they couldn't do anything about the supreme court in deciding the patent case specifically for wrong lungful death now where else can you apply a set up the judge in this case applied to to judge the story  supplied to the loss of society that but if we look at these actions that are available under the dram shop back and i'm talking about the violin injury th flashing death that we have in this case the only place that you can apply the medical bills in the funeral bills are to the bodily injury claim because in an instruction should the jury if he there i was alive or dead my wife would be able to put that element either in the bodily injury section or on the property damage section but in this case it could not be put into the property damage exception because the young girl is nineteen and therefore the family spends doctrine would not apply it or like it would if she were eighteen  should something different have happened before the probate court there are you know to in order to have accomplished not look your client might well but rather probably what or what the other side night hope to have happened in terms of the process of approving the cell i don't think anything could be done other than what it was done was done the way the release and based on a pat possible damage recoveries are available to her the first is for forty nine thousand dollars for medical bills and a helicopter right here back to springfield she had no pain and suffering this was the only thing that was available to her for her injuries forty one thousand and secondly was whatever was available for her loss of society to a family which in this case when we tried the case it was limited to seventy one thousand by the  reason to ask for a million or five million because whatever it was just going to be reduced but the amount it was requested was five hundred thousand the curie gave five hundred thousand but part of the argument as you know anything for the loss of a daughter and a sibling is with a group of workers so as a plaintiff's lawyer you're thinking how can i maximize the recovery for my client when the motorcycle driver offers fifty thousand dollars before the case ever gets off the ground and the case american national bank stands for the proposition that and i'm quoting from them we see nothing wrong with the probate courts allocation to permit maximum recovery under the dram shop action the fact remains that there is no double recovery in this particular case you got ask yourself is there a double recovery she could have only received either under the dram shop act or under the personally injury case against the motorcycle driver the two exact remedies medical bills of forty nine thousand and loss of society so if we would have said to the court let's accept this is fifty thousand dollars for injuries for the medical bills i'm sorry we would immediately wiped out our right to obtain that during the draft chop case the seventy one thousand dollars would have been available the other thing is if you accept it as medical bills only you immediately become subject to liens from all of those medical bills from i think it's memorial medical center and the helicopter ride and all of her creditors and everybody else could have that money so what you do is you settle it on the wrongful death end of things which in her case was only loss of society she was one thousand years old she things approved and instead of just signing a general release that just says anything and everything is released we went into a different county into the probate court and we filed what is done in these cases is a petition to settle fo wrongful that it never once mentioned medical bills helicopter bill didn't mention any of that the only thing it mentioned is here's mom and dad and three siblings and the judge needs to decide the percentage of dependency which is exactly in this case what the jury did to apportion loss of society i think they gave each parent thirty five percent and each kid ten percent only with loss of society it's not done with medical bills so the trial judge looked and said what did you do with that fifty and the probate court to allocate proceeds there was an order authorizing the settlement for the wrongful death proceeds  lastly we filed a motion in limine a before the trial ever occurred that asked the judge to apply the set off to the loss of society because that's naturally what anybody would do that was representing this family and the judge said it was not right for hearing that time because it was not a verdict and if there was a zero verdict you would be wasting all of our time so if you waited until afterwards to determine the set off that's when you heard all the evidence and the same evidence that you're hearing today and so you could ask ask yoursel is there a double recovery here the jury gave forty nine thousand for bills and five hundred thousand for a loss of society and what we got close what we're asking for was the forty nine thousand in the bills the fifty thousand from the statutory limit of seventy one thousand which means the five hundred thousand dollars verdict we only received one hundred twenty one thousand dollars so the families under compensated primarily because of insurance limitations and also the gr there is definitely no double recovery all the medical bills and everybody else so you know you can anticipate what's going to happen at trial and you know that if there is a verdict in dreamtime faces or a different type of case but if there is a verdict it was going to be very significant for this young lady so the best thing we can do for them to say look at this fifty thousand has to go to society because if there's a verdict it's going to be something significant for that and we made that effort and one of the only arguments is that the release is a general release but patton it says it just common sense you can't get any defense lawyer to say ok i'm just going to release you for loss of society they require a release for everything and anything no matter what but but the release is not outcome determin they what they were aware of the court hearing they were aware of everything that was going on and american national bank the theory that they said it again is there is nothing wrong with the probate courts allocation to permit maximum recovery under the dram shop action and in this case was not settled with that motorcycle driver and it did go to court we would have been paid everything it was just so happened that motorcycle it's paid us before the trial and said without any hesitation without my involvement to the family we're very sorry there's our fifty thousand as there was no need for trial and it was young and didn't have anything so it wasn't going to be an excess verdict or anything but if there was a trial and he was a defendant the damages would have been five hundred thousand forty nine thousand and they were tendered their their money for the loss of society portion mr constance's client paid for the loss of society and for that amount so the only wrinkle here is that they pay their money in advance but i by law here we do said the seventy one thousand dollars this wide fifty thousand dollars set off to the so be one thousand dollars is sort of to the fictional five hundred thousand yes i just believe that because of the double recovery situation we have a we have a motorcycle driver that has no limits that could be held responsible for a significant amount and he was the one that paid that and so the set off goes from the total amount of the money so  that you can get a full recovery if that was the case then there then the plaintiff would not be compensated fully for the incident and i don't think that was an issue i don't believe that you know it was really just something that as i looked at this but right now i don't lease logically it makes more sense to set the fifty thousand dollars off against a real liability being seventy one thousand shades rather that of fictional shelves but in without citing any law to you that doing it is not near as much friendship practice as mr constance but definitely a healthy amount it's very common that that set off does you can have ten dream shops but there you can only get one limit from all the dram shops so that would have been the case and if both grant shapps were in this particular case and we were arguing that both of them should have been the law says  has to cost the intoxication not not proximate cause so in this case we had a toxicologist who was saying he had both to contribute drink here and drink beer and if the jury would have given us five hundred thousand dollars from both of them  we were even laughing at times saying that the guy that's nice or the guy that offers me more before trial is the guy that he's going to we're going to let off completely and collect entirely from the other side because you can only play any of the grant shapps that you get  missed the property damage claim to be honest with you but back to where we are here logically and i believe in three property damage which she can't qualify for we have  there's not one word when you look at the petition and the order saying it was a society so why should we the only place where you can put the fifty thousand dollars is against the wouldn't be here if the document said loss of society the second place the boss of society that's not ever contain one thing about medical bills are beautiful bills the only place you can get those are under bodily injury or property damage under their grandchild back it is an animal unto itself