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Haridopolos: Brody claims bill will be one of the first heard

By Regan McCarthy

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-990731.mp3

Tallahassee, FL – Florida lawmakers are bringing forward legislation that would help pay the bills for a man injured in a crash with a Florida sheriff's deputy. Regan McCarthy reports the measure has passed the Senate before, but has yet to pass the House.

It's been about 13 years since a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy T-boned then- 18-year-old Eric Brody leaving him with severe brain injuries and the need for around-the-clock care. The officer who hit Brody was reportedly speeding on his way to roll call when he smashed into Brody's car as Brody made a left turn out of a parking lot on his way home from work.

It the kind of crash that would usually trigger the sheriff department's insurance company to pay up. But this time that's not what happened. Eric Brody is 31 years-old now and still hasn't received a payment from the sheriff's department. Representative James Grant, a Republican from Tampa says that's partly because of what he calls political games.

"Some of the arguments against the passage of this claims bill change. And so every time we get to a point where we clear the air and we really get down to the facts of what's going on you start to see a little bit of a different argument from the other side."

And Grant isn't the only one who's frustrated by the games. Brody's Dad Charles says he can't understand why the measure hasn't passed.

"This past session it died in the House. The Senate approved it. We were in the gallery from 12-noon until 2 a.m. the next day. And it wasn't even heard at all. It wasn't heard on the floor of the House at all. It wasn't addressed at all. It was like it didn't exist. It was like he didn't exist and the bill didn't exist. We were not told why. We just never, never heard why."

But the bill has a long history of not making it through the House. In 2009 rumor had it the House leadership held concerns the bill would set a precedent and Scuttlebutt is that current House Speaker Dean Cannon didn't address the bill last session as a snub to Mike Haridopolos in a move that left the Senate President misty-eyed. But Haridopolos says he's not dwelling on the past now and will focus instead on getting the bill passed out of the senate as early as possible in the coming session.

"As we all saw at the last night of session we were all hopeful that this bill would have passed. And we felt we had the support in both the House and the Senate and of course from the Governor's office, but it did not come to fruition. What we'll be pushing early in the session this year so there's plenty of time is to provide the Brody family some finality and justice."

Senator Lizbeth Benaquisto is sponsoring the Senate's version of the bill. Under her proposal Brody would be awarded $15-million. Benaquisto says passing the bill is the right thing to do.

"When you have an instance where in the blink of an eye a life is changed forever, and it doesn't resemble the form in which it was dreamed to be we owe it to each other, the collective work of our body to do the right thing by Mr. Brody."

Representative James Grant is sponsoring the House bill. His bill would give Brody 30-million the dollar amount a jury found Brody deserves. And Grant says that's not money being taken away from tax payers. Grant says that to collect more than 200-thousand dollars from a government entity the legislature must first give its okay, but then the sheriff's department and its insurer will pay.

"This claims bill in no way allocates money from the state legislature. This claims bill simply tries to state that if you come into the state of Florida and if you purchase an excess liability policy that you don't get to sit back and deny coverage until the eve of trial and avoid bad faith litigation. All we are trying to do is provide the mechanism by which the Brody family can then go to court and enforce the laws of this state as if it had happened in the private sector."

House Speaker Dean Cannon says he makes it his policy not to comment on member bills because he doesn't want to influence the way they're viewed in the House. But Cannon has said that he plans to let the House members set the tone for the chamber's agenda.

Brody's parents say they'll use the money to ensure Brody is taken care of after they die. Right now he depends on support from his family and tax-payer funded assistance programs.