A retired Illinois foot surgeon paid back a court ordered $500,000 in insurance money the unconventional way — in quarters that weighed 4 tons.
Roger Herrin was awarded $1.6 million in personal insurance compensation when his teenage son, Michael Herrin, was killed in a Jeep crash in 2001. Michael, 15, was the only passenger killed in the crash. Three survivors who were also in the Jeep sued Roger Herrin who collected the bulk of an additional $800,000 insurance policy, since his son was the only one killed.
After a decades long court battle, Herrin was ordered to pay back $500,000 of the $800,000 to the survivors who complained that he received too large a cut of the insurance proceeds.
“I’ve had 10 years to think about this a little bit, and I’m very, very bitter at this ruling,” he said. “It’s wrong, and everybody knows it’s wrong.”
After reconsidering his decision to make the payment in pennies, Herrin (pictured center) obtained 4 tons of quarters from the Federal Reserve in St. Louis, packed in 150 transparent bags that weighed 50 pounds each, the NY Post reports.
“There was no satisfaction from doing that,” Herrin told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The loss of a child is the loss of a child, and all the money doesn’t replace that.
“I just wanted to draw attention to what went on here,” said Herrin, 76. “I really wanted to do it in pennies,” he added with a chuckle. Someone tipped off the local media, who descended on the opposing lawyer’s office like locusts.
Mark Prince, the attorney representing the Jeep’s driver and her son, who was also a passenger, called the unwanted media attention a “burglary risk” for his law firm in Marion, Ill., where the bags of change were delivered.
“We’ve been on pins and needles because we had a lot of cash suddenly laying around, it was publicized,” Prince said. “We don’t have safes or vaults, and we lock our front door. Advance notice would have been nice, because we could have made arrangements to have it delivered to the bank.”
