Fracturing Fraud

Posted on August 18, 2007 in Reading Scoundrels

In Accidentally, On Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America, Ken Dornstein tells the story of

a husband-and-wife team who slipped and fell their way around the nation, amassing a small fortune in bogus claims. Their scheme was said to have been made possible by the wife’s rare bone condition, which rendered her limbs susceptible to breakage at the slightest blow. In 1870 the woman, who is referred to only by her maiden name Baker, married a man names James. G. Wheelright of Worcester, Massachusetts. The couple moved to Utica, New York, where Mr. Wheelright soon brought his wife down to the railway platform and had her break her leg on a broken plank. Wheelright then sued the railway company for $10,000. Ten days later he accepted $5,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Over the course of the next year, Mrs. Wheelright would break a leg in Pittsburgh and in Cincinnati, netting more than $20,000 for the two faked falls. Later in Chicago, the couple, operating under the name McGinniss, collected $8,000 for an alleged fall in a hotel courtyard. “By this time,” the Times reported, “Mrs. Wheelright was willing to retire from the business, but her husband had set his heart on making $50,000, and, like a good wife, she consented to break some more bones.”

After a failed attempt to collect money from the City of St. Louis in March, 1872, the couple planned a slip-and-fall stunt on the ice of a Canadian Railway platform in Detroit. Still $16,000 short of Mr. Wheelright’s goal, however, the couple hatched the idea that the fragile Mrs. Wheelright, now “Mrs. Wilkins,” would break both arms, netting $8,000 apiece, it was hoped. Early one morning Mr. Wheelright took his wife out and her fall on a patch of ice on Canadian Pacific property, where she successfully broke both arms. “Unfortunately, she fell more heavilly than was necessary,” it was later reported, “and, in addition to her arms, she broke her neck and instantly expired.” Unbowed by grief, Mr. Wheelright raised his demand on the Canadian Pacific to $25,000; he got all he asked for, exceeding by $9,000 his overall accident faking goal of $50,000. (pp. 61-62)