This may be the ultimate justification for a client to be on direct billing, since repayment of these insurance proceeds was of an unusual nature.
Roger Herrin learned that a court had ordered him to repay $500,000 he had received in insurance payments for the death of his son. Upset about the decision, he repaid $150,000 of the insurance funds – one-quarter of the court award – in quarters.
Herrin's 15-year-old son, Michael, was killed in a car accident in 2001, as reported on gawker.com. Michael was the only one of the four passengers in the car who died, so Herrin received the bulk of the $800,000 settlement from the car's insurance. He also received $1.65 million in other insurance payments as a result of his son's death.
The other crash victims and their families contested the ruling. The appeal court required Herrin refund his share to increase the other families' take.
Herrin delivered 7,500 pounds of quarters, packed in 50-pound, transparent bags, to attorneys representing the other families on a flatbed truck and in an armored truck. They were transported from the Federal Reserve in St. Louis.
The attorneys weren’t thrilled about receiving the insurance proceeds in coins. They were suddenly in possession of $150,000 with no secure way to store the money, and no immediate means to transport the 150 bags to the bank.
“Advance notice would have been nice, because we could have made arrangements to have it delivered to the bank,” one of the lawyers told Gawker.
Herrin’s only regret was that he couldn’t make the delivery in pennies instead.
