Insurance

Taxicabs of all stripes circled City Hall for about an hour at lunchtime yesterday, horns blasting and drivers steaming over high insurance rates. "I can't make a living with all this insurance to pay," said Raanan Doar, 32, of Northeast Philadelphia, as he drove round and round City Hall in his red-and-yellow United cab. While Doar and a score of other cabbies were causing a ruckus outside City Hall, lawyers inside were arguing about the cause of it all before Common Pleas Court Judge Samuel M. Lehrer.

A day before he was hospitalized, Jerry Saxon showed a Levittown neighbor a blueprint for the home he and his wife were going to rebuild on the slab where their former house had burned down. "He was going to have a party for the neighborhood to say 'thank you' for the help," Ann Sloskey testified yesterday in Bucks County Court. Jerry Saxon, 52, died in April 2003, five weeks after falling into a coma from what a forensic pathologist later called a "homicidal injection of insulin.

Stephen Lawrence, 91, an insurance public relations executive, died of cancer Wednesday, Sept. 26, at the Springfield Rehabilitation Center in Wyndmoor. He was a longtime resident of the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. In 1957, Mr. Lawrence joined the Insurance Co. of North America (INA), which later became part of Cigna, as a public relations and marketing communications executive. He retired in 1991. He then started his own consulting company, Steve Lawrence Associates, which he ran until 2002.

On Monday, I got a telephone call from a woman whose message evoked both pleasant memories and sadness about a man whom I will never forget. "Do you rembember Martin Rudnick?" the woman's soft voice asked over the phone line. A smile came over my face when I recognized the name. "I'm Libby Rudnick, Martin's wife, and I am calling you because I was just looking over his book and saw your name," said the woman whose voice began to break until it became barely audible. The call caught me off guard.

The Phillies announced yesterday the signing of Jeff Reed, a veteran catcher, to a triple-A contract. Reed, 38, has spent time with Minnesota, Montreal, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Colorado, and the Chicago Cubs during a 21-year professional career. General manager Ed Wade said that Reed, who will report to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre tomorrow, would provide "veteran protection" at the position in case "we needed someone at the big-league level. " The club also said that relief pitcher Vicente Padilla would begin a rehabilitation assignment with the Red Barons tomorrow.

A former West Chester insurance broker who admitted defrauding four insurance finance companies of $2.3 million was sentenced yesterday to 27 months in prison and ordered to repay the companies. James C. Carr Jr., 46, of Media, pleaded guilty in July to one count of mail fraud involving a scheme that lasted from January 1989 through March 1991, affecting the Cananwill Consumer Discount Co. of Philadelphia and the First Eastern Premium Finance Co. of Wilkes-Barre. Yesterday, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph G. Poluka, U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody ordered Carr to make restitution of $1,534,970 to Cananwill and $558,981 to First Eastern, as well as repay two other companies he acknowledged defrauding: $74,000 to Universal Premium Acceptance Corp.

Washington Township is considering a switch to a self-insurance plan that might save thousands of dollars, but also could have a dramatic impact on the health care available to employees. The township's two largest groups of workers, its police officers and its public-works employees, agreed to the change during contract negotiations last year. Nearly 180 employees and their dependents could be affected by the switch, which Mayor Gerald Luongo says could save the township about $500,000 a year.

Old Republic International Corp. completed its purchase of PMA Capital Corp., Blue Bell, in an all-stock deal, the companies said today. The price was about $240 million, based on Old Republic's current stock price and the number of shares PMA had outstanding as of August. PMA Capital, a workers' compensation insurance company, will change its name to PMA Cos. Inc. and will keep its main office in Blue Bell. Half of its 1,300 employees work there and at other Pennsylvania locations.

If there is some good news to be gleaned from the 76ers' experience with Andrew Bynum, it's that they won't be on the hook for all of the $16.9 million the inactive center will be paid this season. "There is a leaguewide insurance that he's under," Sixers president Rod Thorn said Wednesday before the team hosted the Miami Heat. "There is some relief along those lines. " Thorn did not say how much of Bynum's salary would be covered by the insurance. However, he said that the Sixers would get full relief because there are no preexisting conditions that would prevent Bynum's coverage.

Like many Americans, the tiny borough of Rockledge - population 2,800 - is trying to find affordable insurance. The borough pays its insurance broker, Alexander & Alexander, $28,000 per year for $1 million in liability insurance. At its workshop session on Monday night, the Borough Council discussed getting an additional $1 million of insurance, and the broker said that would cost an extra $7,200 each year. It is $7,200 that borough officials say they cannot handle. "I can remember buying $3 million (worth of insurance)