Kalamazoo County Fair-goers await repayment after runaway cow incident | Kalamazoo News - - MLive.com.
A Paw Paw woman wants thousands of dollars to cover her medical bills. A Scotts man wants his smashed cell phone replaced. Both were in the path of a pregnant cow on a rampage at the Kalamazoo County Fair last summer. And both have not been paid by the fair’s insurance company. The Kalamazoo County Fair Board turned over two claims — one from Jeff Dahlman for his broken cell phone and one from Pamela Moore for her medical expenses — to its insurance company, Wisconsin-based West Bend Mutual Insurance Co., said Bonna Perrin, the board’s president. Brad Temple, the manager of the claims department at West Bend, said both Dahlman and Moore do have open claims but would not comment further because of a company policy not to discuss ongoing litigation. Now, Jeff Dahlman has a Dec. 17 court date in Kalamazoo to fight for the $529 he spent to replace his cell phone damaged by the cow and on court costs. Moore, who suffered spinal cord damage during the Aug. 11 incident, declined to comment on her case on the advice of her attorney. During the fair, a 5-year-old cow, expected to give birth within a couple of days, broke loose and ran wild for 45 minutes, charging several bystanders and fair workers. The cow knocked over Moore, putting a tear in her spinal cord and crushing discs in her neck. The cow also ran over Dahlman, sending him to the ground and cracking his cell phone’s screen. Moore was taken to Borgess Medical Center. She spent the night in the intensive care unit, said her husband, Michael Moore, who spoke a couple of days after his wife was injured. Two days after the incident, Moore was in stable condition at Borgess. Dahlman’s claim has turned into a headache, he said. He just wanted his cell phone replaced. After the run-in with the cow cracked the screen of his Motorola Razor phone, fair officials told him they would replace it, he said. Dahlman bought a $300 phone to replace his phone and called the insurance company. “They didn’t ask how much I spent. They didn’t ask what I was replacing. They just flat out denied everything,” he said. “So I thought, my next step is I’m going to take it to small claims court.” Dahlman filed a $529 claim to include the cost of his phone, court fees and time lost from work. The insurance company responded by hiring an attorney and moving the case from small claims court to district court. Dahlman is not hiring an attorney, believing the legal expense would dwarf what he has spent on his phone. “I’m not going after some large sum of money, just what was broken, and I think that is fair and reasonable,” he said. “I know they’ve already paid their attorney more than my claim.” When asked how much West Bend has spent on Dahlman’s claim, Temple would not comment.
