Officer Ware had a spent a lifetime in service to others doing what he loved to do. Fortune had spared him for decades from being assaulted or attacked as many around him were. As attacks on police escalate and the public rhetoric worsens, he looked forward to retirement and enjoying his golden years in full health surrounded by his loving family. Then in the time it took a young man to check his texts or otherwise ignore the road, that all came crashing down.
Despite driving past one officer and into a coned off work zone, that young man felt the characters on his phone were more important than the lives around him. Without looking, he sent his van careening through the work area and directly into Officer Ware sending him hard to the pavement.
When Officer Ware awoke he immediately realized that grace had spared him being added to the hundreds of officers killed in the line of duty each year. He was airlifted to a Boston Hospital and would spend years recovering from a traumatic brain injury, facial fractures, broken teeth, a broken hand, and a broken leg. During that time, he also had to endure the fight against a defendant driver who claimed he bore no responsibility since the crash was caused by unavoidable solar glare. Officer Ware was fortunate to make a terrific overall recovery, but he was ultimately left with ongoing difficulties resulting from head trauma. He has been able to return to a wonderful life but not the police work he knew and loved. He was granted an accidental disability retirement, but in his case there remained a fierce debate as to whether his ongoing issues that prevented him from returning to work were caused by the collision or were the remnants of something he had dealt with a decade before this incident ever occurred. By thorough investigation we were able to present a compelling case that this crash more than met the legal hurdle of being causally related to Officer Ware’s retirement and pushed the insurer to pay Officer Ware $2,000,000 before he ever had to see a courtroom.
Of course, it would have been far better had this never occurred but one silver lining to the Ware family is that the individual who hit Officer Ware was driving his work van which carried millions of dollars of insurance. This is not usually the case. Our government only requires drivers to carry $20,000 of coverage for each person they hit, and that is exactly what most people have. As always, this is why it is absolutely critical that everyone and especially officers on the road all day MUST carry high limits of uninsured and underinsured motorist benefits coverage. Read this article and watch our free webinar to learn more.
In order to protect the privacy of the injured person and witnesses, all names have been changed. Any resemblance to names of real persons, past or present, is merely coincidental and not intended. The injured officer agreed to have this article published in order to better educate everyone, especially police officers, about their legal rights to compensation when injured
