Drunk Driver

"Today in Denver we read the news about a 23-year-old man who was driving drunk and admitted killing a Community College of Denver professor. The guilty driver Jose Nevarez-Coronado received the maximum sentence on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide while under the influence. He had prior drunk driving convictions. Professor Yvonne Frye was killed in 2010 when she headed home after grading papers. This was a really sad story and I hope the victims family can recover from this tragedy. I wanted to bring up a legal learning point. In the civil arena we often bring civil actions for cases like this. I've been wanting to explain some unusual personal injury issues of law. A legal analysis would go something like this. The victims family would be able to bring a civil personal injury case against the insurance company for the at fault driver. The case would be called a wrongful death claim. There are a couple of real world limitations that would apply. One would be that the insurance company would only have to pay the insurance policy limits of the person at fault. The second would be that the insurance company would resist the claim. Another interesting aspect would be that since the at fault driver was DUI then he would not be able to hide behind a bankruptcy if a jury awarded more than the policy limit, plus since he was DUI there is potential that he could be sued for punitive damages which are punishment damages beyond the typical economic and non economic damages. This is the kind of thought process a lawyer would go through to decide legal issues. Sometimes it's easier to understand the law when it is applied to the real world,even though the real case facts are sad."