Dear editor:

All is quiet on the Western Front. Well, at least on West Front Street, Buchanan just now.

Woke up at 3 a.m. and by 5 a.m. knew it was going to be another of those nights when sleep just wasn’t going to return. It happens quite often now.

My inability to sleep well pretty much went out the window Oct. 11, 2010, when the taxi my husband was driving was rudely interrupted on its way to pick up a passenger at the Tyler Airport. You may remember the story.

It was a sunny day but as he approached the intersection of 933 and Stateline Road another driver decided to turn left in front of him without warning. He spent about eight weeks in the hospital and after three surgeries, more than 100 therapy rehab sessions and countless doctors’ appointments; Phil can now negotiate his way around fairly well with the use of his walker and wheelchair for longer trips.

We hold little animosity for the girl who was driving the other car. She is young. A bit harder to understand, perhaps, that my husband had to watch her sitting on a curb, hunched over her phone, while her passenger, a resident at the adult foster care home where she worked, was screaming hysterically after almost being killed. He was trapped in a smoking car, his leg shattered. But again, she is young.

What is increasingly difficult to accept are the actions of the insurance companies. They have so delayed the legal process over the past 15 months in their attempt to pay nothing on any of the three legal contacts involved and in force at the time of the crash, that to date we have no decision at all as to whether anyone ever will ever pay. Not even an initial judgment to suggest that at least someone has to be responsible for what is owed and all that has been lost.

Why? Because they can.

Don’t get me wrong. I consider we are about the most blessed people I know. We have good friends and family that care and love us. We have been able to survive to this point. When I knew my husband was alive, I made the statement that nothing else mattered; that if we ended up in a two-story cardboard box, I’d put up pretty curtains. Still will. Just never thought I may have to borrow the fabric.

I’m a writer. It is what I do. For the past 15 months I have remained silent, waiting to see what would happen. I never dreamed that what would happen would be nothing.

And we are not alone. We have talked to other innocent victims of accidents, who have waited up to five years for settlement.

People, who as we well may, have lost their homes, gone without much needed surgeries and counted on the goodness of others to keep both stomachs and spirits full.

There are two active court cases awaiting any decision and a third that was thrown out in Indiana, when the cab company’s insurance company sued us, so as not to pay. We now learn they want to re-file bringing the number of cases hanging to three again.  The underlying, daily stress of the lives we continue to try to lead as normally as possible, is wearing.

We have a court date on Jan. 25 where we are supposed to hear an initial decision; however, we already know there will be appeals. Optimistically, our wonderful lawyer says it may not take five but in all likelihood will take another two years.

On the way to his office we pass a sign for our insurance company, Farm Bureau, that says “Your Best Friend on Your Worst Day.” It’s just all the days after you have to really be wary of.

We are all required to have auto insurance. In this state, you must carry insurance that will fulfill Michigan no-fault standards, if you drive any car for 30 days aggregate, regardless of where it is registered and licensed. However, even if you are driving another’s vehicle, borrowed or for your livelihood, that the owner says is fully insured; (as the cab company did in an article I wrote when the business first started in Berrien County); you could be deemed the owner and responsible, if they didn’t buy the right policy. Of course, you can’t buy insurance on someone else’s vehicle, but it doesn’t seem to matter — or at least gives the offensive insurers a way to stall.

At the Super Bowl just after the accident, Farm Bureau introduced a series of commercials saying don’t just “knock on wood” but know under what circumstances you are covered.  Good luck trying to dream up all those questions to cover every contingency.

After what we have gone through, I am beginning to think you need to take your insurance contract to your lawyer before anything happens. We need to know the book of exceptions, not shown in the policy that may be lurking behind the smallest, fine print paragraph. May not do any good, but at least it might re-enforce the notion that this is a contract under which the insurer should be legally bound to deliver. It is a paid contract after all.

I sit here before the sun is up wondering why it is that we have seen so many high-profile crimes in the news; committed, defendants put through the court system, cases decided, even fully discharged; before I know if my husband will ever get the double knee replacement he still desperately needs.

My wonderfully loyal dog, Finnegan, has been ill the past couple of days. I wondered if he would have to die because we can’t afford to take him to the vet. I will be really upset if I lose my best friend of 14 years because of manipulated technicalities.

There are those seeking to change Michigan’s insurance. They want to set limits and restrict what these insurance companies are responsible for. They say it is hard on the insurance companies. Hard on the State.

We need to let them know, that it is no picnic out here either.

Kathie Hempel

Buchanan