From the Denver Post: Officials in Greenwich have launched a legal battle to recover benefits paid to the family of a librarian who died on a Denver highway in 2009, contending that the town is entitled to a slice of a pending lawsuit settlement.
The move comes on the eve of the second anniversary of the deaths of librarians Kathleen Krasniewicz, 54, and Kate McClelland, 71, following a collision involving a pickup driven by a drunken woman and the taxi van in which the librarians were passengers.
An attorney representing Greenwich has filed a motion in Denver District Court, seeking to stop the payment of a proposed settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Krasniewicz’s family against the pickup driver, her father, the man at the wheel of the taxi and Freedom Cabs Inc.
Instead, the town is seeking the money to offset benefits it has paid to Krasniewicz’s family and medical bills incurred as doctors fought to save her life.
“I couldn’t believe what they were doing to me and doing to my wife,” Krasniewicz’s husband, James, said Wednesday. “My reaction? How can I fight the town of Greenwich? There’s no way. They have a law that says they can do this. Some laws are not right, I would say.”
Biased and unfair reporting
I think that article is a perfect example of rampant imbalance in reporting. God bless those librarians and their families; but let’s have a little honesty and fair representation of the facts. The family receive a worker’s compensation benefit that is paid by the town of Greenwich, right? The family is also suing (the drunk driver, her father, the taxi driver, and the taxi company) for monetary damages, right?
The town has every right to recoup the worker’s comp. How is it fair (and moral) to the city that the family receives “double damages?” The town isn’t doing anything to the Krasniewicz family. The town is lawfully asking to be compensated from the settlement money.
It is sad and unfortunate that Erin Krasniewicz is correct: “The longer that this goes on, the longer that people remember my mom for the last 10 minutes of her life, as an accident victim, which is not what she was for 54 years.”