NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2009

Laidlaw Settles Bus Crash Suits
March 4, 2009
26 deals reached with Lee students hurt in '06 wreck

Laidlaw Transit, the former bus company for Huntsville City Schools, has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of money to settle 26 lawsuits brought by students injured during a deadly Lee High School bus crash in 2006.

Four lawsuits filed by the families of four girls killed in the Nov. 20, 2006, crash were settled out of court in November. The settlement of the 26 injury cases was reached in February during mediation, said Douglas Fees, an attorney with the Cochrane Firm in Huntsville.

Fees, who represented seven injured students, said he could not comment on the terms nor the amount of the settlements.

"It's always good to resolve disputes and put them behind you," he said. "It provides some semblance of justice for my clients."

The 30 lawsuits, most filed in 2007 by the students' families, claimed the students were killed or injured because Laidlaw and the company's driver, Anthony Tyrone Scott, were negligent.

The bus collided with a car being driven by Tony Williams, then 17, and careened off an elevated section of Interstate 565. The bus and Williams were headed to the city school system's Center for Technology on Drake Avenue.

The lawsuits allege the bus driver, Scott, was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the bus onto the elevated roadway before the vehicle plunged off the overpass .
A report from an investigation into the wreck by the National Transportation Safety Board is still pending.

All claims against Laidlaw in all 30 cases have been resolved. A part of one of Fees' lawsuits is pending in the Alabama Supreme Court, he said.

Fees sued Laidlaw and the manufacturer of the vehicle, International Truck and Engine, on behalf of one client. The bus maker was not present at the mediation sessions in November nor in February, Fees said.
Fees said he added the manufacturer because the lawsuit claims the bus was not crashworthy, did not include seat belts for the passengers or a seat belt reminder for the driver, and passenger seat belts were offered only as optional equipment, Fees said.
Seat belts for students are being included in the bus manufacturer's 2009 models, Fees said.

Circuit Judge Loyd Little Jr. threw out the claim against the bus manufacturer on the issue of student seat belts, Fees said. Little's ruling is in line with a 1986 Supreme Court opinion that lawyers could not sue bus manufacturers because seat belts were not included on school buses for students, Fees said. The justices left it up to the Legislature to create a law requiring seat belts for students, he said.

"Since the Alabama Legislature has not done that, we are asking the Supreme Court to revisit that issue."

By DAVID HOLDEN

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