Musings from Fayetteville Ft. Bragg North Carolina: USAA and Judge Cheat Severely Injured Veteran

We need more help, please share our evolving story of how the State of North Carolina, USAA, and the Court System are harming an honorable Veteran, my husband Jeremy Bruns, with more than 20 years of service, who was catastrophically injured by a drunk and high driver in our front yard after returning home safely from 9 overseas deployments, and we are being deprived of obtaining due Justice.

Only eyeballs can help us. Eyeballs are the only reason that Bryant went to prison because we were forced to take our story to the public after Judge Ammons recommended a two-month sentence, which was less time than Jeremy was an inpatient. What really disgusted us was ADA Hood, who said that Jeremy's legs will never grow back, but Bryant needs to move on with her life. We spent more than two years living at Walter Reed, longer than she spent in prison.

It took 17 months to put Rhonda Renee Sutton Bryant in prison for Felony DUI, but the State, Judge, and USAA won't admit that she was in prison for DUI...which makes all the difference in the Court system for us with our Lawsuit against all of the parties. Judge Reuben F. Young has shown that he is not on our side, the side of TRUTH and JUSTICE.

This Superior Court Judge in Cumberland County, North Carolina, dismissed our lawsuit against USAA for Bad Faith, and against the State for letting Rhonda Renee Sutton Bryant out of prison early, among other issues, despite that we have Law and Facts stacked on our side.

In effect, the Judge concluded that no matter how many times a person attempts to establish a claim with USAA and they reject and ignore it, that it’s acceptable conduct.

The judge dismissed our lawsuit against USAA with prejudice. That means that he saw no merit in our Complaint and subsequent papers to proceed, and he rejected our thorough rebuke and rebuttal in our response to USAA’s and the State’s Motion to Dismiss. The Judge is not allowing us as Pro Se Plaintiffs the opportunity to obtain Justice. His decision is inequitable and affects our substantial rights. A substantial right is a right materially affecting those interests that a person is entitled to have preserved and protected by law.

Abuse of discretion results where the Court’s ruling is manifestly unsupported by reason or is so arbitrary that it could not have been the result of a reasoned decision.

We disagree with the Judge’s decisions because they consist of clear and plain judicial errors because he incorrectly applied the law against us. The Judge abused his discretion because our Complaint sufficiently alleged our rights to enforce the policies. We contend that it is not legal for USAA to ignore legitimate beneficiaries who make valid claims on in-force insurance policies.

When a person makes a claim on an insurance policy, the company must acknowledge it, pay it, ask for more information, or deny it. USAA performed none of these actions for Jenny’s claim attempts, for our attempts to point out that there were two occurrences because of Negligent Entrustment, nor for recognition that DUI fits as an exclusion for policy coverage.

The Judge sided with the State and dismissed our lawsuit against them. In effect, the Judge concluded that all intoxicated drivers in North Carolina, be it misdemeanor or felony DUI, don’t have to serve their full sentences, and it is okay for the State to ignore law and policy.

The Judge apparently dismissed all of our other Civil Rights and constitutional challenges against the State.

The Judge failed to answer our requests for Declaratory Judgments to determine our rights and status with regard to a number of clearly outlined issues in our Complaint, for which we required his answers in order to logically and efficiently proceed with our lawsuit.

The Judge will render his decision about the Bryants’ Motion to Dismiss on Friday.

Judge Reuben Young granted USAA’s motion to dismiss all of our claims against them, citing NC Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and (6), as well as our claims against the State, citing 12(b)(1)(2) and (6).

Rule 12(b)(6) is failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. By filing a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, it means that the moving party (USAA and the State) is asking the Court to Dismiss our Complaint because the allegations contained within it do not form any legally cognizable claim. In other words, the movant is asserting that even if all of the Plaintiff's claims were true, there is no relief that the Court would be empowered to grant to the Plaintiff. That’s Poppycock because our Complaint was Complete and the Court has the ability to grant relief.

The facts are completely clear with our Bad Faith case against USAA: Jenny made a claim in which USAA refused to acknowledge and process after multiple attempts to assert her claim.

USAA repeatedly attempted to pay both of us a total of $30,000 “Policy Limits” for both of our damages to cover the illegal choices by both Bryants, Rhonda, and her husband Dalton Senior because he owned the car.

USAA also failed to acknowledge that Rhonda wasn’t insured because she was excluded from coverage by the very fact that DUI is intentional, criminal, dangerous conduct.

Rhonda has been charged with DUI at least 4 times, she knew about DUI laws, therefore she knew what she was doing, and she intended to DUI.

As a result, the Bryants’ USAA should have denied payment of the claims on their USAA insurance, and our USAA Uninsured Motorist should have kicked in.

One reason this distinction matters is because First- and Third-Party Privity and Beneficiary Rights and Claims of Contracts, which are interpreted through the Courts, have different implications of Duty and Breach of that Duty and to Whom and to Wherefore and to Whatnot of Legal Ramifications.

Furthermore, USAA can’t “Cure” their Bad Faith based on the fact that they finally offered us $60,000 “Policy Limits” before we filed our lawsuit, which USAA offered more than 32 months after Jeremy’s injury, and after we explicitly told them that they were acting in Bad Faith and warned them that their failure to correct the issues by a certain deadline would force us to complain to the NC Department of Insurance and file a lawsuit. They offered the $60,000 “Policy Limits” after we made the NCDOI complaint, which we sent about a week after the deadline that we gave USAA to settle our Claims.

USAA’s 32-month delay to “extend” the $30,000 into $60,000 from one Bryant policy resulted in subjecting us to personal injury, intentional tort, negligence, and contract harm. One form of harm is not receiving the money due by the contracts of the insurance policies. USAA attempted to “Cure” their Bad Faith almost three years later by tendering this new “Policy Limit” in an attempt to prevent our lawsuit against them from moving forward.

USAA cannot “Cure” their Bad Faith partly because their refusal to acknowledge our claims doesn’t cure the harm that they caused us and continues to cause us as we try to fight this battle in Court. USAA committed a willful disregard for contractual obligations, which naturally harms Consumers of Insurance Companies, who write and interpret the policies that Consumers mandatorily purchase, who have deeper pockets than most Consumers, thus they have inherently considerably more control, power, and advantages to keep as much money to themselves as possible.

USAA’s profits were $3.4 billion in 2014, up from $2.7 billion in 2013. Their net worth in 2014 was $26.7 billion.

Because Insurance Companies have tremendous advantages over Consumers, Insurance and Bad Faith Laws are meant to protect Consumers from Bad Faith tactics such as the ones USAA has used against us in their refusals and delay to pay proceeds on policies for our legitimate and indisputable claims.

USAA refused to commit to whom they were covering. USAA refused to acknowledge or investigate our claims or injuries and/or ignored them. USAA used vexatious language to load the dice in order to position themselves to pay as little as possible for our legitimate claims. Our Complaint cited a series of independent causes of USAA’s Bad Faith toward us. Insurance companies are charged with the duty to promptly investigate a loss so that all of the benefits owed are determined and paid promptly in good faith service of the policyholders. USAA is liable for Bad Faith because of their poor Claims handling in that they lacked a reasonable basis for ignoring, denying, and delaying our Claims as a Matter of Law. Everyone can plainly see that this sort of conduct is unlawful.

Because this is a Matter of Law, it means that we should get a judgment against USAA for Bad Faith and go through trial in sequence first with the coverage claim, then the Bad Faith claim. We can pursue a Bad Faith claim against USAA even if we are not entitled to any additional recovery under the contract.

Moreover, because Senior is the Owner of the car, he has a Duty to keep a Known Hazard off the road through the use of his car, and based on her criminal record and habits, like her disappearing for days and known illicit drug use, which Senior admitted the latter through Counsel at Rhonda’s sentencing, he is also liable. This is called Negligent Entrustment in North Carolina, where the state recognizes it as a caused-based action, thus in our case there were two “occurrences” or “accidents” because each had a separate proximate cause of our injuries, so even when the result is one injury, the causes are two separate people who are separately liable for the injuries they each cause, and in our case, to two separate people because I was a bystander who witnessed the calamity.

Because USAA’s policies don’t define “occurrence” or “accident” (these words are interchangeable, or perhaps not if USAA had defined them to not be interchangeable), the Courts are charged with interpreting such ambiguities. When there are multiple interpretations of policy language, the Courts are supposed to rule in favor of the policyholder.

Our Complaint asked the Court to recognize exclusion for DUI and two Occurrences because of DUI and Negligent Entrustment.

Anyone who causes DUI or Negligent Entrustment is liable for the injuries that occur as a result of those choices, and Jeremy and Jenny are both entitled to recover from both Rhonda and Senior. This means that we are entitled to $120,000 “Policy Limits,” and USAA has exposed themselves to punishment via Punitive Damages.

But Judge Reuben Young Dismissed our Lawsuit against USAA and the State, who in tandem aren’t following North Carolina Laws to help keep DUI offenders off the streets. It would behoove all parties, the Judge, USAA, Policyholders, and the State to keep habitual DUI offenders off the streets.

Our options are limited. We have e-mailed the Judge our Response to his Rulings, pictured below before we sent it. If he doesn’t change his mind, then we will be forced to file an appeal.

I’m sorry for the picture quality because this screenshot is scrunched and reduced to fit to capture everything, click on the pictures to bring them up full size: