Detroit: “Scared to death” theory brings $300K after 85-year-old’s crash

An 85-year-old driver crashed into the back of a tractor-trailer, both vehicles traveling at relatively low speed, and was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. A Michigan appeals court agreed that a jury could hear an expert witness’s theory, dismissed by a cardiologist as “silly,” that Abdulla Kassem had suffered a heart attack that “could have been caused by a ‘fear of impending doom,’ just before the 2008 crash in Dearborn. There was no autopsy.” An insurance company has now paid $300,000 to settle the case. [AP/WDIV]

2 Comments

  • Occam’s razor, a maxim to accept the simplest explanation among competing otherwise plausible explanations, suggests that perhaps this 85 year old was already suffering a pre-morbid event that caused him to rear end a truck stoped a t a red light.

  • The lack of an autopsy is astounding.