New York Bus Accident Lawyers

Bus accidents can be traumatic for victims. They have the potential to not only leave you with lasting injuries, but also force you to navigate a complicated legal process when pursuing justice. If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus crash, Block O’Toole & Murphy is prepared to ensure that your legal rights are protected and that those responsible will be held accountable for your injuries. Our dedicated attorneys are experienced in bus accident litigation and have a strong track record of successful results, including a $9,500,000 settlement for a pedestrian who was hit by an MTA bus while crossing the street at a crosswalk.

Need to Know:

• Buses can be publicly or privately owned. Whether a bus is run by a private company or a municipality will affect how legal proceedings unfold after an accident.
• Rapid investigation is critical, as many bus accident lawsuits depend on obtaining witness testimony and securing data—such as surveillance footage—which might otherwise be erased.
• Virtually all modern buses are equipped with EDR devices that collect “black box data.” Retaining that data can be invaluable when it comes to proving or enhancing a bus accident case.

In This Article:

• Private vs. Municipal Bus Accidents: How Ownership Affects Your Legal Deadlines in New York
• Securing Critical Evidence: Why Early Investigation Matters
• Case Study: $2,225,000 for Passenger Injured on Access-a-Ride Bus
• What the Legal Concept of Joint and Several Liability Means for Your Case
• Case Study: $2,925,000 for Client Injured in Side Impact Collision with School Bus
• Case Study: $3,250,000 for Client Who Suffered Head-On Collision with MTA Bus
• The Importance of Black Box Data in Bus Accidents
• Case Study: $9,500,000 for Pedestrian Hit by MTA Bus in Brooklyn Crosswalk
• Your Story, From the Accident Scene to the Court: How We Prepare Your Case for Trial

Private vs. Municipal Bus Accidents: How Ownership Affects Your Legal Deadlines in New York

If you were injured in an accident involving a privately-owned bus, you will have three years from the date of your accident to file a lawsuit. However, if you were injured by a publicly-owned bus, you will have just 90 days—about three months—to file a notice of claim, and one year and 90 days—about fifteen months—to file a lawsuit.

While only an experienced attorney can offer you legal perspective pertaining to bus ownership in your case, the following guidelines may give you a rough idea of what to expect.

• Buses owned by the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) belong to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and are therefore public buses.
• Commercial buses, including tour buses, are privately-owned. Examples of commercial bus services include Greyhound, Peter Pan, MegaBus, and Trailways.
• Access-A-Ride buses are owned by private companies under contract with the City of New York, potentially complicating liability. Your attorney may elect to sue both the private company and the municipality.
• Charter buses—such as those hired by businesses to transfer employees to events—are privately-owned.
• School buses may be publicly-owned—by a public school district, for example—or owned by a private contracting company that serves a district or individual school.

Securing Critical Evidence: Why Early Investigation Matters

The attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy believe that early—if possible, immediate—investigation is critical in every personal injury case, but it is especially critical after a motor vehicle accident. Bus accidents—particularly those that occur in urban areas, such as New York City—tend to draw large crowds, meaning that swift investigation improves your chances of locating witnesses. We always request the paperwork from police and transit authority investigations to determine who, if anyone, was interviewed. But we also seek witnesses ourselves.

People’s routines tend to remain the same from day to day but may shift over longer periods of time. Our attorneys, and the investigators they retain, have had great success locating accident witnesses by interviewing people who are near the accident scene on the same day of the week and at the same time of day as the accident.

This strategy becomes less effective after just a few weeks. The hours and circumstances of a person’s commute might vary, or a drop in temperature as the seasons change could cause a worker to start packing lunch rather than take her usual walk to a favorite coffee shop. Even if you manage to find a witness weeks or months after the accident, his or her memory of the crash will be much less clear and therefore less reliable.

Other crucial sources of evidence are similarly fleeting, requiring us to act quickly. When examining an accident scene, our first order of business is to search for nearby security cameras so that we can request any available footage of the accident. Many of our firm’s successful bus accident resolutions have depended on securing evidence, such as camera footage, that would have otherwise been automatically deleted or taped over. Such deletion can occur as early as 48 hours after an accident.

In some of these cases, the data we secured dramatically turned the case around. We once settled a case on behalf of a homeless client who was hit by a New York City Transit Authority tandem bus while crossing a street. The driver testified that our client was at fault for the accident, and our client himself was unsure of exactly what had occurred and provided an account which—if true—would have made him partly, if not fully, responsible. However, we secured camera footage from a nearby restaurant which demonstrated that our client had had the right of way. That footage led to an $8,000,000 settlement for our client. Most modern buses are also equipped with onboard video cameras, so a good lawyer will promptly send notices to the bus owner to preserve any such footage.

Injured bus passengers have an additional reason to take action quickly: many face the challenge of proving that they were present on the bus at the time of the accident. Typically, following a bus accident, the driver or some other authority will ask passengers to remain in place while waiting for a police investigation or an MTA supervisor to arrive on the scene.

Understandably, however, passengers often want to leave an accident scene as soon as possible, for reasons ranging from pain or discomfort following injury to personal responsibilities—the need, for example, to get to a job on time or to pick up a child from school. In some cases, passengers may even be encouraged to leave by other parties. In one case that our firm dealt with, a client’s presence on a bus was disputed because, following the accident, he had been quickly transferred to another bus along with other passengers so that they could reach their original destination.

If your presence on the bus was not documented in any way, a good attorney will strive to establish your presence by other means. Tickets and receipts, eyewitness testimony, records of phone calls, emails and text messages, video taken inside the bus, and other types of evidence can be effective ways of proving that you were on board. Make an effort to preserve any such evidence that you may have, and be clear with your lawyer about the timeline of events in your case.

Case Study: $2,225,000 for Passenger Injured on Access-A-Ride Bus

Block O’Toole & Murphy once settled a case for a 55-year-old passenger who was traveling in an Access-A-Ride bus when it collided with another vehicle at the intersection of 34^th Street and Park Avenue. Our client  which impinged upon a nerve root, causing chronic pain in her lower back and right leg. To relieve this pain, she was forced to undergo two separate lumbar fusion surgeries, the second of which became necessary after the first resulted in failure to fuse.

Because Park Avenue is a two-way street, the two defendant drivers—that is, the driver of the Access-A-Ride bus and the driver of the vehicle with which it had collided—each blamed the other, both claiming to have had the right of way.

This was not the only complexity in the victim’s case. An ankle injury sustained in a prior accident had compromised her mobility, making her eligible to use Access-A-Ride. Although she had never claimed any injury to her knee or ankle in the Access-A-Ride accident, the defendants in the case were prepared to allege that her pain stemmed entirely from pre-existing conditions and had nothing to do with the new accident. They further claimed that her lower back injury was either the result of a cyst in the affected area or was due to her prior injuries.

Initially, our client worked with the attorney that had represented her in her prior accident, who wanted to settle the case for $750,000. Upon consulting with partner Jeffrey A. Block, however, she asked him to handle her case, which he believed was worth well over $1 million.

Block, along with partner Joseph Donahue, argued that the herniated disc resulting from the Access-A-Ride accident exacerbated the condition caused by the cyst, leading to our client’s chronic pain. In making this argument, they faced the challenge of demonstrating that their client’s new injury had changed her life in a way that her past injuries had not. They did this by comparing the relevant medical records. These records demonstrated that, following the ankle injury caused by the prior accident, our client had resumed her daily activities and returned to full-time work. By contrast, the new injury had made her unable to do her normal household chores and had disabled her from her work as a receptionist.

Thanks to these efforts, Block and Donahue were able to settle the case at mediation for $2,225,000. They obtained this settlement number by establishing that Access-a-Ride, which is administered by the NYCTA, was partially responsible for the accident. By naming the NYCTA as a defendant in the case, along with the driver of the other vehicle, Block and Donahue were able to secure a better settlement.

What the Legal Concept of Joint and Several Liability Means for Your Case

The result we obtained in the Access-a-Ride case was possible because of a legal concept called joint and several liability. In New York State, when a motor vehicle accident has more than one potential defendant (that is, responsible party), the accident victim, or plaintiff, is not only free to sue multiple parties, but able to hold a defendant responsible as much as if that defendant were the only party at fault.

To name a typical example, suppose a collision occurs between a city bus and a privately-owned truck, injuring a passenger on the bus. While the drivers involved will probably blame each other, it is likely that both drivers have some share of the responsibility for what happened. But such responsibility is rarely an even 50%-50% split. What if evidence shows that the trucker was driving in an obviously reckless manner—violating multiple traffic laws—while the bus driver mostly followed the rules of the road, but failed to properly adjust his mirrors? 

In such a case, the bus driver would still have a percentage of responsibility—that is, liability—for the accident, but it would be a smaller percentage. Suppose, for example, the bus driver is only 30% liable, while the truck driver is 70% liable. Without joint liability—the ability to hold both defendants responsible—you would only be able to sue one of the drivers. But if joint liability was all you had, you would only be able to hold each driver responsible for his or her own percentage of liability.

With joint and several—that is, separate—liability, the plaintiff’s legal team can hold each of the parties responsible for 100% of the damage, regardless of their relative shares of the blame. A defendant who is shown to have some responsibility for your accident, even if that responsibility is only 1%, can be made to pay for 100% of the damages, just as if no other driver were at fault. Of course, the defendant who paid more than his or her apportioned share of liability does have a right to try to collect that difference from the at-fault co-defendant, through a legal claim known as “contribution.”

This concept is particularly important in catastrophic motor vehicle accidents that involve bus passengers. Take the hypothetical accident just described—one mostly caused by the driver of a privately-owned truck. Because vehicles owned by private companies tend to have limited insurance policies compared to those owned by a municipality or other government entity, a victim seriously injured in such an accident might not be able to recover a full and fair amount if the private vehicle were the only defendant.

However, joint and several liability does not automatically grant any plaintiff the right to a payment from any defendant involved. For a successful lawsuit against any defendant, some amount of negligence must exist, even if it’s a small percentage of the total problem. A potential case of joint and several liability requires a seasoned attorney who will carefully examine all of the potential defendants in a case, ensuring that each one is held responsible for any amount of negligence caused. (The above description of joint and several liability, it should be noted, does not apply to all types of accidents in New York, but does apply to automobile and bus accidents.)

Case Study: $2,925,000 for Client Injured in Side Impact Collision with School Bus

In another case our firm handled, our client, a 39-year-old shipping packer, was driving home from his job with two coworkers. A privately-owned school bus ran a stop sign, broadsiding his vehicle. Immediately losing consciousness, he woke up in an ambulance on his way to the hospital, already suffering from neck and back pain which would alter the course of his life.

Unable to return to his job, our client—formerly an active man who enjoyed playing soccer with his college-aged daughter—experienced unbearable pain when he attempted to walk for more than about twenty minutes at a stretch, severely limiting his opportunities for employment. A spinal fusion surgery intended to ease this pain had no effect, and he was forced to undergo a revision surgery that had traumatic sexual and physical side effects, causing him to become deeply depressed.

The defendant school bus driver tried to disclaim responsibility for our client’s injuries by pointing to a tree branch which obscured the stop sign. However, in a deposition conducted by partner Frederick Aranki, the driver admitted to taking the route very frequently—twice a day, five days a week—and even confessed to being fully aware of the location of the stop sign.

Based on these facts, Aranki and partner Daniel O’Toole decided to move for summary judgment. Summary judgment establishes that a party in a case is liable as a matter of law, that liability issue does not require a jury trial, and begins the imposition of statutory interest at a rate of 9% per year.  Obtaining summary judgment eliminates risk and places pressure on the defense to evaluate a case for settlement quickly to avoid the accruing costs of interest. The lower court denied our motion, maintaining the possibility that our client may have been partly at fault for his accident.

O’Toole and Aranki were quick to determine that their client had been denied summary judgment based, in part, on factual inaccuracy from the defense. In a brief, the defense attorney had claimed that the defendant had stopped at the stop sign. Not only did no apparent evidence exist to support this claim, but our firm had significant evidence against it: the defendant’s own statements. 

O’Toole and Aranki decided to file an appeal. In their appeal, they not only pointed out the inaccuracies in the defense’s case, but cited earlier cases to demonstrate that their client—who had the right of way in the intersection—was entitled to assume that others on the road with him were driving responsibly, and was under no obligation to anticipate that drivers would be reckless enough to run the stop sign. Their appeal was successful, and, with summary judgement now granted in our client’s favor, O’Toole and Aranki were able to settle for $2,925,000.

Case Study: $3,250,000 for Client Who Suffered Head-On Collision with MTA Bus

In a particularly challenging case handled by partners Daniel O’Toole, Frederick Aranki, and Scott Occhiogrosso, our client—a 32-year-old hotel concierge driving in wet, snowy weather—collided head-on with an MTA bus that entered her path while she was attempting to make a left turn. The accident aggravated a pre-existing herniation to her spine that had been caused by scoliosis, requiring her to have fusion surgery. It also caused her to develop scapular winging, a painful condition in which the muscles are weakened to the point where the shoulder blade can no longer lie flat against the rib cage and protrudes from the back.

Sadly, these injuries were not, in themselves, the worst effects of the accident for our client. She also emerged with immense trauma that impacted every aspect of her life.

The accident had left our client intensely fearful, not only of driving, but of being a passenger in a car. On the rare occasion that she allowed herself to be driven anywhere, her nausea was so intense that, upon reaching her destination, she would have to spend a period of time lying down with her eyes closed. Her physical and psychological injuries disabled her from employment, causing her to lose a job in which she had been a top performer. She became increasingly isolated, rarely leaving her house.

Immediately following the accident, the bus driver claimed that our client had been driving too quickly for him to avoid. Based on this, the defense blamed our client for her injuries, citing the snowy weather at the time of the accident to allege that her driving was unsafe. Although our client maintained that she had deliberately been driving below the speed limit because of the weather, the defense retained an accident reconstruction expert who would have testified to the possibility that, had she driven more slowly, she could have avoided the crash.

Our case rested not only on proving that our client had the right of way, but also on demonstrating how her injuries had affected her. The terrible psychological impact of the accident on our client resulted in a certain blurring of the line between physical and mental injury. A neurologist who examined her felt that there was a psychosomatic dimension to the way the injuries had affected her mobility, as she sometimes walked in a bent-over posture and at other times appeared to move more easily.

Our handling attorneys were easily able to establish that our client had been able-bodied and capable prior to the accident: she had given them videos which showed her kickboxing at her gym and playing with her dog. Their challenge now lay in showing that she had been mentally healthy—in other words, that the psychological challenges she was dealing with were brand-new, and that she was not simply overreacting to an accident with which a reasonable person might have been better able to cope.

To do this, our attorneys prepared to have our client’s sister, with whom she was close, testify to her quality of life before the accident. They retained a diverse range of experts—including her psychologist, her surgeon, a neurologist, a vocational rehabilitation expert, and a liability expert—to help tell a comprehensive story of how the accident had altered her life.

Immediately following jury selection, our attorneys achieved a successful settlement for $3,250,000—an ideal outcome for our client.

Throughout this process, our handling attorneys were conscious of their client’s situation and worked hard to meet her where she was. Because of her fear of car travel, they met with her on Zoom whenever possible. As the case moved toward trial, they took multiple trips to her house to give her extensive trial preparation. At every phase of the case, they made her well-being a priority, knowing that settling the case was a critical step toward regaining some measure of the peace of mind she had had before.

The Importance of Black Box Data in Bus Accidents

One way that our attorneys distinguish themselves in bus accident cases is by the high priority they place on obtaining black box data. Virtually all modern buses have Event Data Recorder (EDR) devices installed in “black boxes” on the vehicle. These devices record information such as vehicular speed, frequency and timing of braking and turning, deployment of safety devices, and more.

Black box data is not only an invaluable source of information, but can be used in conjunction with other data to confirm important details which might otherwise be unclear. In the previously-mentioned $8,000,000 case, black box data from the bus that hit our client played a critical role in clarifying the accident footage captured by the restaurant security camera. The data from the black box clearly demonstrated that the bus had been making a turn at nearly twice the acceptable speed for a bus of its kind, which led directly to our client’s accident.

Retrieving black box data—and retaining a forensic expert to interpret it—is expensive, so some personal injury attorneys don’t seek it out. However, we consider it our responsibility to access the most comprehensive sources of evidence available to us in cases where the information is unclear, and serve FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests for black box data whenever possible. Because we approach every case with an eye toward trial, we gather as much evidence as possible to prepare.

Case Study: $9,500,000 for Pedestrian Hit by MTA Bus in Brooklyn Crosswalk

In one case illustrating how black box data can be used in conjunction with other evidence, our client—a 32-year-old immigrant who worked as a meat packer in a supermarket—was crossing a street in Brooklyn when he was hit by an MTA bus as it was attempting to make a right turn. Horrifyingly, after being hit by the front bumper, he was dragged along the street underneath the bus before it came to a stop.

Our client was taken to the hospital, where his right leg was amputated below the knee. Injuries to his leg, spine, shoulder, and pelvis required multiple surgeries, and he was unable to return to work.

The MTA produced a witness to the accident who claimed that our client had walked into the street as the bus was turning, in defiance of a DON’T WALK signal. The defense also pointed to the location of our client’s sneakers, which were found outside the crosswalk following the accident, to argue that he had not been in the crosswalk when he was hit.

Our client maintained that he had been in the crosswalk at the time of the accident and had had the right of way. Partners Stephen Murphy and Michael Hurwitz, who handled the case, also noted significant inconsistencies between the story the bus driver told at the accident scene and the story he told when reporting to his MTA supervisor. To find out the truth, Murphy and Hurwitz sought data from nearby security cameras. An important breakthrough came when they secured footage from a nearby bank.

Although this footage did not capture the accident itself, it showed that our client had approached the intersection from the opposite side of the street to what the witness had claimed, and further showed that he had been waiting for the signal to change before stepping into the crosswalk.

To help confirm the story told by the footage—which also contradicted statements made by the bus driver—Murphy and Hurwitz made a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for records of the “light cycling” of the traffic signal on the date of the accident. These records showed which signals had flashed at which times, and for how long, over the course of the day. The patterns recorded by the traffic signal were consistent with both the security footage and our client’s story, and demonstrated that the DON’T WALK signal could not have been present at the time that our client was crossing.

Murphy and Hurwitz retained an accident reconstruction expert who used black box data to show the speed of the bus at the time of the accident, completing the picture of what had occurred. This expert showed how our client had been dragged down the street after being hit by the bus, causing his shoes to be torn from his feet so that they landed outside of the crosswalk. Because of the hard, detailed work they did to disprove the defense—along with precedent they cited regarding compensation in other cases involving loss of limb—our attorneys were able to settle the case on the eve of trial for $9,500,000.

Your Story, From the Accident Scene to the Court: How We Prepare Your Case for Trial

In the above case, as in many others, our handling attorneys demonstrated the expertise and persistence that embodies the guiding principles here at Block O’Toole & Murphy. Murphy and Hurwitz spent days working at the scene of the accident, searching for witnesses and seeking sources of evidence. They acquired all known recordings of statements made by the defendant bus driver to demonstrate how they were in contradiction with one another, in sharp contrast to the consistent story told by our client, the security camera footage, and the light cycling data.

As they worked to tell their client’s story, Murphy and Hurwitz also exemplified one of Block O’Toole & Murphy’s greatest strengths: trial preparation. We prioritize securing the best results for our clients above all else, treating every case that comes our way as though it were going to trial—regardless of whether a settlement is likely or not.

This approach doesn’t just help our clients if the case goes to trial: it’s crucial during settlement discussions. In the case previously described, Murphy and Hurwitz assembled the evidence in a way that made it easily comprehensible to a jury, knowing that the case—like any case—could go to trial. They hired medical illustrators to accurately depict our client’s injuries and had a three-dimensional, full-body diagram made which depicted the extensive physical damage he had sustained. In other words, our attorneys went the extra mile, taking no shortcuts, and that effort and skill led directly to a very favorable result.

Our extensive experience with bus accidents, together with our determination to keep trial in mind, has lead to many successful bus accident results, including:

• $8,000,000 setlement for a pedestrian who was struck by a Transit Authority Bus and suffered a leg amputation
• $6,000,000 recovery for man who was a passenger in an NYC Transit Authority bus when it collided with another vehicle
• $3,500,000 settlement for bus driver who sustained neck, shoulder, and back injuries when the bus he was driving was rear-ended by a truck
• $3,450,000 settlement for a 46-year-old pedestrian who was hit and dragged 25 feet by an Access-a-Ride bus
• $3,000,000 settlement for a self-employed barber who was unable to return to work after he was injured in a crash with an MTA bus
• $2,925,000 award to driver who suffered back injuries when his vehicle was broadsided by a school bus in Queens, New York
• $2,270,000 verdict for a bus passenger who was hurt when the bus rear-ended a tanker truck
• $2,250,000 settlement for a pedestrian who suffered a herniated disc after she was hit by a school bus
• $2,250,000 settlement in a wrongful death case, when a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher was fatally struck by a bus while walking in a crosswalk
• $2,200,000 settlement for a pedestrian who was struck by a NYC transit bus while she was attempting to cross the street with the crossing signal in her favor
• $2,056,656 jury verdict to a Brooklyn pedestrian who was hit by a New York City Transit Authority bus while she was crossing at an intersection
• $1,750,000 award in Suffolk County case for a woman who sustained lower back injuries after she was struck by a bus that ran a stop sign
• $1,750,000 settlement for a motorist who suffered multiple bulging and herniated discs in a rear-end accident caused by a school bus in the Bronx
• $1,600,000 settlement for a Brooklyn woman injured who sustained neck and back injuries when the bus she was riding collided with another bus
• $1,500,000 settlement for a 51-year-old man who was rear-ended by a bus in Queens
• $1,500,000 settlement for a 55-year-old car passenger struck by a public bus in Flatbush, Brooklyn
• $1,490,000 recovery for a 39-year-old man who suffered neck and back injuries after he was involved in a collision with a school bus
• $1,450,000 settlement for a driver who crashed into a bus when both vehicles were attempting to turn right
• $1,400,000 settlement for a passenger on a public bus that was involved in a collision with a truck in Brooklyn, New York
• $1,350,000 awarded to a driver who was struck in the rear by a school bus on Henry Hudson Highway

If you or a loved one has been involved in a bus accident, the attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy are here to help. We serve all five boroughs of New York City and the entirety of New York State. Contact us to receive a free legal consultation by calling 212-736-5300, or by filling out our online contact form.