Man Pays in Quarters: Man Pays $150,000 in 150 Bags Weighing 4 Tons to Protest Court Order (VIDEO, PHOTO)
A man has paid a court ordered settlement in quarters – 600,000 of them.
Roger Herrin, a retired foot surgeon, nursing home owner and Southern Illinois University trustee, was ordered by an Illinois appeals court to share $500,000 from insurance with passengers who survived a car crash that killed his teenage son.
Angered by the order, Herrin protested the settlement by paying $150,000 in quarters.
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The payment was made via 150 bags filled with quarters that were said to have weighed 4 tons, according to The Southern newspaper.
Herrin, of Harrisburg, Ill., told the paper, "It's vehemently wrong in my view and nearly everybody else in the world. If and when someone loses a child, it leaves a hole in your heart that is never repairable."
The businessman's 15 year old son, Michael, died in 2001 when a farm truck failed to halt at a stop sign in southern Illinois; it went on to broadside the Jeep Cherokee he was in. The crash killed Michael, and injured two friends and the driver, who was the mother of one of the friends.
The teens family was given $1.65 million in a settlement for a wrongful-death lawsuit with two insurance companies representing the truck driver.
A court also awarded the Herrin family $500,000 of an $800,000 pool for underinsured motorists for all passengers.
However, in January 2012, an appeals court ruled that the original court had erred in awarding the family the money, and gave a new order that the money should be redistributed to the injured passengers.
Herrin was given until Wednesday to comply with the court order or be held in contempt. However, he did eventually deliver when an armored truck transported the huge batch of quarters from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to a bank in Marion, Ill.
The bags of quarters were then transferred to other vehicles that took the money to the two law firms' offices that had represented the other injured clients in the case. The bags were dumped in the lobbies of their buildings.
