Expensive Samaritanism

Last June, apparently on a wild impulse, David J. Hanley, 30, dashed out of a cocktail lounge near St. Louis' Lambert Airport. He got into his 1972 Cadillac convertible and crashed it into an American Airlines 727 jet airliner in a foolhardy attempt to stop a skyjacking then in progress. The skyjacker and his hostage crew merely switched to another plane and took off with $502,500 in ransom (he parachuted safely, but was later arrested). Even so, Hanley was seen by some as a courageous citizen acting boldly to stop a crime.

It now turns out that Hanley would have been much better off had he sat tight and let the proper officials worry about the skyjacking. As a result of his derring-do, he was charged by the Federal Government with interfering with an aircraft. He sustained severe injuries and is accumulating medical bills for which he has not yet been fully compensated by his medical insurance.

Moreover, his auto-insurance company is refusing to pay for any of the damages to his demolished car, the plane or the airport fences he drove through.

Hanley might well yearn for the simplicity of biblical days, when the Good Samaritan, reaching humanely to help a stricken traveler, had no need to fret about warrants, lawsuits, the high cost of medical care or the expensive frailties of Cadillacs and jet airliners.

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