Mom sentenced in Australian court for drowning 3 children
Legal Events
A mother who drowned three of her children and attempted to kill a fourth by driving the family car into an Australian lake was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years and six months in prison.
Akon Guode, 37, drove a SUV carrying four of her seven children into the lake in Melbourne in April 2015. Her 5-year-old daughter Alual survived after passersby pulled her from the partially submerged car.
But Guodes' 16-month-old son Bol and 4-year-old twins, Hanger and her brother Madit, died.
Victoria state Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said he would have sentenced Goude to life in prison if she had not pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder.
"People don't understand why you did what you did," the judge said. "In my opinion, your actions were the product of extreme desperation," he added.
Goude wept and wailed through her sentencing hearing as the judge outlined her crimes and her troubled life that led to it.
Born one of 16 children in 1979, she fled Sudan's civil war in which her husband died and arrived in Australia as a refugee in 2006.
The judge set a non-parole period of 20 years and said she will likely be deported on release. Her hometown, the city of Wau, is now in South Sudan, which became an independent country in 2011. It's not clear to which country she will be deported.
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Workers’ Compensation Subrogation of Administrative Fees and Costs
When a worker covered by workers’ compensation makes a claim against a third party, the workers’ compensation insurance retains the right to subrogate against any recovery from that third party for all benefits paid to or on behalf of a claimant injured at work. When subrogating for more than basic medical and indemnity benefits, the Texas workers’ compensation subrogation statute provides that “the net amount recovered by a claimant in a third‑party action shall be used to reimburse the carrier for benefits, including medical benefits that have been paid for the compensable injury.” TX Labor Code § 417.002.
In fact, all 50 states provide for similar subrogation. However, none of them precisely outlines which payments or costs paid by a compensation carrier constitute “compensation” and can be recovered. The result is industry-wide confusion and an ongoing debate and argument with claimants’ attorneys over what can and can’t be included in a carrier’s lien for recovery purposes.
In addition to medical expenses, death benefits, funeral costs and/or indemnity benefits for lost wages and loss of earning capacity resulting from a compensable injury, workers’ compensation insurance carriers also expend considerable dollars for case management costs, medical bill audit fees, rehabilitation benefits, nurse case worker fees, and other similar fees. They also incur other expenses in conjunction with the handling and adjusting of workers’ compensation claims. Workers’ compensation carriers typically assert, of course, that, they are entitled to reimbursement for such expenditures when it recovers its workers’ compensation lien. Injured workers and their attorneys disagree.