A Manhattan woman found out the worst way imaginable that city taxis have to carry only a minimal amount of insurance.
Donna Smith was crippled and her husband Paul killed when a taxi jumped the curb and hit them in 2006 – and the cab’s insurer has now agreed to pay out the maximum on the policy, which is all of $200,000.
“There is no amount of money that can compensate the Smith family for what they have lost,” said their lawyer, John Zaremba.
“You have family that was destroyed, and a financial situation where this woman’s going to struggle to pay her bills for the rest of her life.”
He noted the insurance is less than what the couple earned in a typical year of work.
Smith and her husband, Paul, had just dinner with friends and were standing on a sidewalk at 40th Street and Third Avenue when the cab mounted the curb, hitting hit them both and pinning Paul to a tree.
Donna’s pelvis was fractured; the registered nurse is confined to a wheelchair and unlikely to regain use of her lower extremities, Zaremba said. Paul, 60, a Vietnam vet who was a helicopter pilot for WABC-TV, was pronounced dead at the scene of the October 2006 accident. The couple had been married for 30 years.
No charges were filed against the driver, Mohammed Chowdhury, 23, who had only been on the job for a few weeks. The lawyer said he believes he’s still driving a cab.
Smith, whose two adult kids are a paralegal and a police officer, is struggling to get by, and the insurance money won’t last long, Zaremba said.
The lawyer noted that if a tractor trailer had been responsible for the accident, the insurance payouts there would have been millions of dollars and ensured the family wouldn’t have had to worry about money.
The cab had the minimum insurance required by the Taxi and Limousine Commission and it covered both the owner and driver.
Zaremba said neither had any other assets that would make a suit worthwhile.
“The law has to be changed,” he said. “The family doesn’t want this happen to anyone else.”