In what has been an agonising case for the family of accident victim Adelino Machado, an insurance company has finally been made to pay up after four years of legal wrangling.
Machado, who worked in the admin department of Braga PJ (Judicial Police), was killed in July 2011 as he crossed a road.
The car, the lawyer of his wife and family argued, was going much too fast.
But the driver’s insurance company disagreed, saying Machado should not have tried to cross the road at the point where he was run over.
An initial court hearing saw judges uphold the insurer’s case, but the family persisted and have now been successful in the Supreme Tribunal, which has nonetheless refused the family’s application for €354,311 in damages, instead awarding them €121,500.
Supreme Tribunal judges ruled that the 50-year-old victim made a “risky road crossing” but that it was not “illicit”.
