This morning her attorneys confirmed what many of us suspected, that the woman who is being vilified on "social media" for suing her 8 year-old nephew to recover the $127,000 in medical bills incurred as a result of the nephew jumping into her arms and breaking her wrist, did so not out of any malice towards her nephew, not out of greed, but because she was forced to do it by the nephew's father's homeowner's insurance company:
Jainchill & Beckert, Connell's law firm, said her nephew's parents' insurance company offered her $1 over the fall, which occurred at their home. She had no choice but to sue to pay medical bills, they said, adding that she has had two surgeries and could face a third, her lawyers said.
"From the start, this was a case ... about one thing: Getting medical bills paid by homeowner's insurance," the law firm said Wednesday in an emailed statement. "Our client was never looking for money from her nephew or his family."
Anyone who has had someone injured in their home, even if that person is covered by health insurance, is familiar with the efforts insurance companies will make to find an excuse to deny payment. The easiest way for insurance companies to do this is by finding a secondary source. It's not entirely clear whether Ms. Connell had health insurance but as she was gainfully employed in HR one suspects she did, and it simply didn't or wouldn't cover her bills. Whether that is the case or not, the homeowner's policy provided an avenue of recovery--but they denied liability. Connecticut law required her to sue an individual, rather than a third-party homeowner's insurer who owed her no legal duty. Because it would be difficult if not impossible to prove that the boy's father did anything wrong in failing to properly supervise his son (since the boy's action was spontaneous and done without warning) she had no choice but to sue the boy. When she did so her attorneys knew full that the boy had no assets, and that the homeowner's insurance company would thereby be required to defend against the suit and ultimately pay any judgment. But--(and here's the kicker)
the jury was not permitted to know about the insurance company's involvement. As a result, the media greedily lapped up and spread the meme that this was all just about an "evil Aunt" suing her nephew.
Ms. Connell appeared on the Today Show this morning with her nephew:
In fact, Connell wasn't the only one on TODAY to speak out about the situation — her nephew, Sean, was right by her side.
"She would never do anything to hurt the family or myself," he told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie.
Many in the media and on social media speculated that the boy would never want anything to do with the relative who took him to court, but that's clearly not the case.
"I love her and she loves me," he said.
Sean also had
his own take on the media circus:
Sean defended his aunt, saying: "Everybody was saying stuff that they didn't know."
Which brings me to the point.
The media in its never-ending search for eyeballs to cover its advertising costs never once considered what seemed to be patently obvious to anyone with a modicum of knowledge as to how our current insurance-based medical system functions. Or if they did consider it, they ignored it. It's much easier to demonize someone for failing to adhere what they consider social norms of "good conduct." The Internet in this case--as it has in many other cases--then provided an avenue for clueless people to "gang up" in a herd mentality to publicly "shame" this woman for something that they neither understood nor should have been any of their business in the first place. As a result of the media firestorm this woman doubtlessly had to endure vicious threats and insults which she didn't deserve but will now have to reckon with:
Connell said she was shocked by the backlash, which included her vilification on social media as a terrible aunt, the most hated woman in America and an awful human being.
"It was amazing how I walked into court that morning and walked out all over social media. It just spun and spun, and suddenly I was getting calls, 'Don't look at the Internet. Don't turn on the television,'" she said.
Trending hashtags on Twitter dubbed her the "worst aunt ever" and the "aunt from hell," and one New York tabloid even called her the "auntie-Christ[.]"
Everyone loves it when someone else's conduct falls short of what they think are their own "standards." It's just too bad that we can't dissect everyone's life to find instances where their behavior doesn't measure up to our own. If we could we would probably spend all our time criticizing each other. It's human nature, I suppose. Before the wonderful invention of social media this impulse to publicly shame others required a lot of energy and perseverance. Cases of unwarranted public hysteria and misguided groupthink would be confined to history books like the
Salem witch trials. Now, however, any person has the ability to pretty much destroy the life of someone else on a whim and a click of the mouse. The Internet has no filter winnowing out the ignorant, malicious, or just plain stupid people. Everyone has a voice, and they are egged on to use it by lazy convenience and by media greed.
And there's no use pretending, we do it because it's fun. It's fun to think you're better than someone else. It's fun to be validated by others. But as with most things at some point "fun" turns into "dangerous." As a consequence, ordinary people with less emotional fortitude than Ms Connell is showing here can be pushed off a cliff. We see it in stories of teens and even young children committing suicide after being harassed and bullied on social media. We even see it on this site with people gleefully ganging up and attacking others over some perceived slight or misstatement.
There's no cure for human nature and this isn't going to stop anytime soon. But the bottom line, really, is that no one deserves to have their lives ruined for some trivial "misdeed" by a gaggle of uninvolved strangers who've taken it upon themselves to pass judgment. And it would be nice if people would be a little less willing to give credence to something simply because it shows up on a smartphone or tablet screen.