Letters : Award to Woman for Accident

When I was a kid my mother used to sigh and exclaim, “What is this world coming to?” She didn’t really expect an answer . . . but I do!

David Wharton’s article “Car Crash Award Is $2.16 million” (March 8) should have been titled “Lawyers and Lack of Personal Responsibility Triumph Again.”

Our fair city is being plundered. Our lovely Los Angeles, which proudly hosted the Olympic Summer Games with the help of thousands of unpaid volunteers . . . whose law enforcement officers work tirelessly and are underpaid . . . whose universities teach students from around the globe . . . and whose film and technological industries have earned us acclaim and recognition throughout the world.

Who is bilking Los Angeles of its financial resources? The Soviets, the Mafia or some terrorist group? No, American lawyers who look for loopholes in the law, together with other American citizens who are devoid of any semblance of personal responsibility.

Wharton’s article explains that the awardee, Ms. Sills, now crippled, was a 16-year-old passenger in a vehicle driven by another youngster who “was under the influence of drugs and may never have braked. . . . The car ran a stop sign and was struck by a half-ton pickup. . . . Although the jury found that the city was only 22% liable, it is the only defendant with the resources to pay the judgment.” It is an outrage, an embarrassment, an obscenity that for lack of someone to sue, our city is continually raped.

Our laws guarantee personal freedom and the right to pursue happiness. Democracy--or, perhaps, liberalism is a better word-- also allows us to go crazy, be indulgent, act selfishly and make others pay for our misdeeds. Where, oh where, is a law holding us personally responsible for our own errors?

To begin with, we have a curfew law--applicable to 16-year-olds. Why isn’t the law enforced when it was, obviously, enacted for the safety of our young people? Are not the lawbreakers at fault for not observing the curfew? If not, who is, and what is the point of having curfew regulations at all?

I think that many of your readers would agree that had Ms. Sills been the passenger in a car driven by Daddy Big Bucks’ son, Little Big Bucks, the city of Los Angeles--and we taxpayers--would have saved $2.16 million that could have been better spent.

BARBARA DE KOVNER-MAYER

Encino