Insurance cash slow to come for assaulted fan

As if it weren’t bad enough already for Bryan Stow, beaten into a coma by a pair of thug Dodgers fans and still confined to a wheelchair with a litany of ailments, now he is taking blows from his insurance company.

The 46yearold Stow barely has seen any of the $ 18 million he was awarded from an L. A. Superior Court jury, according to a detailed Bloomberg report. And worse yet, he won’t even get $ 6 million of that money, though people familiar with his case estimate he will have $ 30 million in medical and caregiving expenses.

On March 31, 2011, Stow — a bigtime Giants fan and father of two— was beaten nearly to death outside of Dodger Stadium for having the temerity to wear the wrong team’s colors. Now, four Opening Days later, after being put into a coma and hospitalized for seven months, he still is in a wheelchair with a shunt protruding from his skull ( used to drain fluid from his brain) and special stockings on his legs ( to prevent lifethreatening blood clots).

To add insult to his various injuries, the Dodgers’ liability insurer— ACE Property and Casualty Insurance Company — could net $ 1.6 million off a side deal. How is that possible? Welcome to the world of insurance subrogation, which lets insurance companies recoup the money they paid to cover losses from any subsequent settlements.

In layman’s terms, you spend years faithfully forking over your premiums on time, and if anything happens to you, the insurance company takes a big chunk out of any lawsuit award you get to recoup its losses. And it can do it before you even see a penny.

A 2007 law requires Medicare and Medicaid to be notified of any settlements its beneficiaries get so it can subrogate the money. That has both delayed and cut into payouts, as the Bloomberg piece describes.

Louie Sanchez and Marvin Norwood, the men responsible for the attack on Stow, are serving jail time for the assault.