Regarding civil law suits, all I have to say on this topic is the next time me or a family member gets bit by a large breed dog, the first call is going to be to my lawyer. I have been bitten twice so far, once by a German Shepard that was running loose and the bite required stitches. A couple of months ago I was bitten about eight inches from my crotch by a pitbull mix...my dog was also attacked by the lady's Husky and required surgery. Both dogs came darting out of the house because the neighbor left the door open. At one point I had both dogs circling me...in was crazy! I am thankful my six year old was able to escape on his bike. Turns out the pitbull mix had previously attacked another neighbor which resulted in 38 stitches to patch up her arm. Apparently the dog was her son's ex-girlfriend's and the dog conveniently disappeared after the attack. Sure, my medical bills were covered in both incidents but I am not going to be so nice the next go around.
That is what I have been asking from page 2 or 3. The court should clearly outline what each payment is for and how it will be treated, tax wise.
I never stated that changing civil recourse has a majority vote. I made a point that I am not the only one who sees the problematic issues with awarding millions in punitive damages in civil suits. Millions others voice similar concerns. That was my point. Hope you get it now. And no, thanks, why do I need to show up at your offices? You don't sound like you work in financial trading hence I have zero business interest in engaging with you commercially.
So, initially a 15k per year payment was awarded but then instead your father and the transgressor settled on a fixed amount? How is that possible after the payment terms were decided in law court? You mentioned that the case was decided in court which means that no private settlement took place. Now you talk of a one time settlement.
You seem to know a thing or two but something here does not add up. First it was a court decided agreement of a 15k payment per year. Now it's a one payment settlement. Confused...
Sorry for your loss Danno, If I were you I would try to establish 2 trust funds: 1 onshore and 1 offshore.
Yeah, too bad we don´t keep count, Grul might get an award for the highest number of aliases on this website. Besides although I´m also bemused at some of the lawsuits and settlements coming from the US, it does appear not to be hurting business too much, huge economy, besides the world famous multinationals, I´ve met quite a few american entrepreneurs running SMEs but much bigger than people in similar positions would run in Europe. Yet the severity of civil and criminal suits in the US coupled with the price of lawyers make the country much more worrying than Europe, at least in my eyes.
I think it's one off those things that appears much worse than it does precisely because of the infrequency of the huge awards. Kind of like how an airplane crash that kills 100 is front page news nationwide while100 people die every day in car crashes that seldom make it off page 5 of the local news. If you're got 400+ million people and a jury system you're bound to randomly have a large judgement pop up now and then and it's going to make headlines. But for a given business the chances you'll get hit with one of those is so infinitesimally small that it's really the least of your concerns, right up there with your concern that a car will plow into your office and and lightening striking your company picnic. And that's reflected in liability insurance rates, my company liability insurance is literally less than .1% of my EBITDA. I spend more of coffee for my employees than that, so while like every expense we'd all prefer it was less, it's certainly not even approaching the point of factoring into decision making on the part of entrepreneurs. Similar argument is randomly made about healthcare, that basically we could "fix" healthcare in the US if only we could eliminate lawsuits. But it turns out the per capita cost of malpractice is between $3 and $36 per year depending on what state you live in (http://truecostofhealthcare.org/malpractice_statistics/ because I don't pull statistics out of my ass) so again an annoying cost we'd prefer to eliminate but doesn't really move the needle in proportion to what some seem to think it does.