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Aaron Hirschhorn died on March 28, 2021, while piloting his hoverboard in Biscayne Bay, Florida. He had collided with a center-console. (Instagram)
Five years ago, the owner of a Chris Craft Launch 38 collided with a guy on an electric foil hoverboard, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Aaron Hirschhorn, a celebrity entrepreneur, was survived by his wife Karen Nissim and their three young children
Insurance companies for the Chris Craft owners denied the Hirschorn family’s claim for compensation, spawning a legal battle so epic that it would rival the upcoming summer movie Odyssey with a legion of suit-wearing attorneys instead of helmeted Greek heroes. At stake is a $66 million arbitration award.
“The insurers denied coverage for the subject accident, declined to pay any amount on the claim, and refused to defend their insureds in litigation,” Lawyers for Karen Nissim wrote. In other words, the lead insurance company tried to walk away from their own clients on the basis of a couple technicalities—a move barred under Florida law.
Florida’s so-called “anti-technical” statute is “designed to prevent the insurer from avoiding coverage on a technical omission playing no part in the loss.”
The recalcitrant insurance company is defendant Yachtinsure Services, a managing general agent and claims-management firm representing “actual insurers” Clear Blue Specialty Insurance and Aspen American Insurance Company, who each provided coverage to one of the two partners that owned Caprice.
(At this point it should be noted that one of the owners himself died a few months before the accident.)
According to the lawsuit, Yachtinsure refused to settle the claim against itself and the two companies or defend them in court.
Yachtinsure denied the claim under the dead owners’s policy because the live owner, who was operating the vessel, was supposedly an “unapproved operator.” This, even though the live owner’s separate policy—also administered by Yachtinsure— specifically listed live owner Randy Harmat as an operator.
So how did Yachtinsure deny coverage under the Harmat policy listing him as an operator? Kissim’s lawyers take up the story:
Coverage for the Harmat Policy claim was denied on the purported grounds that there was a “misrepresentation and failure to disclose material information related to a prior loss involving the Vessel.” The purported “misrepresentation” that justified its denial of the claim was the “fail[ure] to answer the question” on the insurance application whether “the vessel suffered any damage or undergone repairs in the last five years.”
Which, of course, raised the question: If this were an issue, why was the policy issued to Harmat in the first place? Especially after the answer blocks appear to have been filled in, then erased.
In May 2022, an arbitrator apportioned blame in the accident, deciding that Hirschhorn was 25 percent at fault, while the estate of the guy who died before the accident happened was 75 percent at fault. Based on Hirschhorn’s young age—he was 42 when he died—and the likelihood of future earnings, the arbitrator ruled that his family was entitled to $66 million even after factoring Hirschhorn’s own culpability.
Then in January 2024, Harmat the living owner agreed to the same settlement under the ancient legal doctrine of any party not at the table is on the menu.
Actually, it is called a Coblentz agreement, which refers to a negotiated consent judgment “entered into between an insured and a claimant in order to resolve a lawsuit in which the insurer has denied coverage and declined to defend.”
The agreement guaranteed that Hirschhorn’s survivors would not go after Harmat or his dead partner’s estate for the settlement—only the insurers.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Both insurance policies were limited to $500,000 payouts, but lawyers for the widow argued that, under Florida law. Yachtinsure’s “wrongful refusal to defend the claim” mean that those limits went out the window and the entire $66 million was at play.
Through its lawyers, Aspen Insurance argued that the arbitration award agreed to by the plaintiff and the boat owners “was not reasonable and is the result of collusion, fraud or lack of ‘good faith’.”
Aspen, which represented the dead owner, also argued that his policy died with him and that Aspen, therefore, didn’t owe Hirschhorn’s survivors a nickle.
That’s just a quick and undoubtedly incomplete summary of just one of five federal lawsuits arising from the untimely death of Aaron Hirschhorn. Some have been settled, but the central case had 284 document entries as of last week—with no sign of letting up.
Chief takeaways: Read your policy. Ask questions. Realize that Florida’s anti-technicality law may not be the case in your state.
A sistership to the Chris Craft in question.
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
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