“Former Illinois State trooper Matt Mitchell is asking the state to compensate him for injuries from a crash in which he hit and killed two Collinsville sisters at triple-digit speeds.” Mitchell pleaded guilty to reckless homicide after the incident, in which, headed for an accident scene, he “was driving 126 mph in busy day-after-Thanksgiving traffic on Interstate 64 near O’Fallon while sending and receiving e-mails and talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone.” “People get hurt at work all the time,” said Mitchell’s lawyer, Kerri O’Sullivan of St. Louis’ Brown and Crouppen. “It’s our job as lawyers to help people with the difficult and complicated administrative process of worker’s compensation.” [Belleville News-Democrat]
2 Comments
Can we all say, based on the facts presented, we hope he doesn’t get a dime.
I can understand seeking (and getting) worker’s comp in cases of negligence — the whole point of the system is to avoid having to make a determination of fault. But where there’s been a prior criminal conviction on a charge involving recklessness, it seems to me that that ought to be an automatic bar to recovery.