Miami Beach, FL – The family of a New York jazz musician who drowned trying to save a rabbi’s wife in treacherous riptides off Miami Beach has won $5 million in damages.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
It’s a decade-old case that raised serious liability issues for seaside communities that don’t provide lifeguards at public beaches.
U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ordered Delaware-based Monticello Insurance Co. to pay damages to the surviving wife of Zachary Breaux. Her lawyer and the city of Miami Beach had negotiated a settlement, but the city’s insurance carrier had refused to pay. Gold also ordered the insurance company to pay $750,000 in damages to the surviving husband of a New York school secretary, Eugenie Poleyeff, whom Breaux tried to save during a midwinter vacation in 1997. The city also negotiated that settlement, but the insurer had refused to pay.
In 2003, The Miami Herald wrote about the drowning incidents and their implications for seaside municipalities. The cases rose to the Florida Supreme Court and ended up in federal court in Miami.
During the 1997 vacation, Eugenie Poleyeff went for a swim off 29th Street and Collins Avenue on Miami Beach.
Moments later, she yelled for help, but her husband, Israel, didn’t hear her.
Zachary Breaux, an up-and-coming smooth jazz guitarist, raced into the water while his wife and daughter searched desperately for a lifeguard.
“I saw Zachary reach her,” Frederica Breaux, a schoolteacher, told The Miami Herald. “I thought he would bring her back in. . . . It was over in an instant.”
Read the full story at Miami Herald Record
did he save the woman
can’t you read english
What a terrible story. The City needs to have a posted sign with hours of life guards and a warning not to swim for other times.