A man in Illinois was angry at the prospect of having to pay back an insurance settlement for an accident that took the life of his teenage son in 2001; he did pay it back but did so with bags of quarters weighing about 7500 pounds.



KSDK reports that Roger Herrin was ordered by an Illinois appeals court to share $500,000 from insurance with passengers who survived a car crash that killed his teenage son, an angry businessman complied by paying about one quarter of the settlement in quarters -- 600,000 of them.

The $150,000 payback in change Wednesday was a "protest against the ruling."

The four-ton, 150-bag payback was first reported by The Southern newspaper.



"It's vehemently wrong in my view and nearly everybody else in the world," Herrin, of Harrisburg, Ill., told the paper. "If and when someone loses a child it leaves a hole in your heart that is never repairable."

His 15-year-old-son Michael died in June 2001 when a farm truck ran a stop sign in southern Illinois and broadsided the Jeep Cherokee he was in. The crash injured two friends and the driver, the mother of one friend.

The boy's family received $1.65 million in a settlement of a wrongful-death lawsuit with two insurance companies representing the truck driver. In addition, a trial court awarded the Herrins $500,000 of an $800,000 pool for under-insured motorists for all passengers.

The repayment was transported by armored truck and then transferred to to a flatbed truck which transported the money to two unsuspecting law firms representing the injured passengers, where the bags were dropped in their lobbies.

Herrin said that the lawyers were "not happy" and that he "wasn't real congenial."