Jun 09 2008
Drive-by shooting victim denied auto insurance claim
Left Paralyzed
Louise Russo, a Toronto mother who became an advocate for victims of violence after she was mistakenly shot and paralyzed in a botched mob hit, has lost her bid for compensation from her insurance company.
Mrs. Russo and her family sought compensation under rules allowing additional payment to victims of an automobile injury if the culprit in the incident is underinsured. The twist in her case is that the automobile injury was a drive-by shooting.
In the 2004 attack, Mrs. Russo had rushed into California Sandwiches in north Toronto to buy her teenaged daughter her favourite food, a veal sandwich as a treat for the youngster becoming an official Air Cadet earlier that evening.
Unbeknownst to Mrs. Russo, also in the restaurant was a notorious Sicilian Mafia figure and prolific drug trafficker who was living illegally in Canada.
Gangland rivals of the mobster drove through the restaurant parking lot in a stolen van and opened fire. A bullet severed Mrs. Russo’s spine.
“Suddenly I was on the ground. Instantly I lost control of my body,” she said in 2006, describing the attack. “Feeling was gone. Gone forever.”
As she lay in her own blood, the target of the planned hit scurried out the backdoor, unhurt.
Mrs. Russo remains paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair, in pain and under mental stress.
“She has been incapable of participating in the regular social, recreational household and employment activities she engaged in before the shooting,” says the judgment on her case.
Her lawsuit argued that the gangsters who rattled off the gunfire did so from a moving vehicle, that the van was part of the plot and also used by the gunmen to escape.
As emotional as the crime was, the lawsuit against The Personal insurance company dealt largely with parsing rules on insurance liability and legal precedents.
Two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions limited when an auto insurer is liable for additional payments from vehicle injuries, ruled Justice Beth Anna Allen of Ontario Superior Court.
A drive-by shooting cannot be considered a normal use of a vehicle, said Justice Allen.
“It does not stretch the imagination to say the use of a vehicle to transport persons to and from a restaurant parking lot is an ordinary and expected use of an automobile. It is, I think, more difficult to say it is an ordinary use of an automobile when you add to the scenario that the vehicle is being used to carry guns and assailants to effect a shooting and to escape the scene.
“Russo’s injuries from the shooting did not arise directly or indirectly from the use or operation of the assailants’ vehicle,” she ruled.
Detective Sergeant Bryan Bott, the Toronto police officer who lead the investigation into the shooting, said it is a shame Mrs. Russo was not found eligible for more assistance.
“Whatever she is entitled to, she should get. She’s the only one getting a life sentence in this,” he said yesterday. “Those guys will get out of jail sooner or later but she’ll never get out of a wheelchair,” he said.
Despite her own condition, Mrs. Russo has turned her anguish into action, starting the Walk Against Violence Everywhere, an awareness and fundraising effort to support ant-violence initiatives in the city.
Mrs. Russo and her family, including a severely disabled daughter, filed the lawsuit against the automobile insurer in February 2006.
Two years after the shooting Peter Scarcella, considered by police to be an influential Mafia boss, Paris Christoforou, who was a member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and three others pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 12 years.
A controversial restitution order required them to pay Mrs. Russo $2-million for ongoing medical care.
“One can feel nothing but intense sadness and regret for an innocent person like Russo who was unsuspectingly in the wrong place at the wrong time and became the victim of a violent crime,” Justice Allen concluded in her ruling.
“It is certainly not through indifference that the court arrives at its decision.”
Neither Mrs. Russo nor lawyers representing the insurance firm could be reached yesterday.
Drive-by shooting victim denied auto insurance claim - National Post - Adrian Humphreys - Published: Monday, June 09, 2008 - http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=573456
