TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015
LOS ANGLES, CALIFORNIA
(Reuters) - A California civil court jury on Tuesday cleared
the Greyhound bus company of negligence in a lawsuit brought by families of
three of the six people killed when a motor coach plowed into an overturned SUV
near Fresno, the Fresno Bee reported.
The bus driver, two Greyhound passengers and the three
occupants of the sport utility vehicle, including a woman who police said was
drunk behind the wheel of the Chevrolet Trailblazer, were killed in the predawn
July 22, 2010, wreck on Highway 99.
The lawsuit contended that the Greyhound driver was at fault
for the deaths of the three SUV victims because he was speeding and not wearing
his eyeglasses when his bus slammed into the Trailblazer, which had crashed
moments before and rolled over in traffic lanes, according to the Bee.
The suit argued that dozens of other motorists on the
highway had avoided hitting the overturned SUV and that the bus driver should
also have managed to avoid it had he not been careless, the newspaper said.
The California Highway Patrol investigators blamed the
deadly crash on 18-year-old Sylvia Garay, who they said was intoxicated while
driving the SUV. They also asserted that the Greyhound driver was wearing his
glasses and did nothing wrong in failing to see the dark undercarriage of the
Trailblazer.
During the trial, according to the Bee, attorneys for the
plaintiffs sought to dispute evidence that Garay was at the wheel of the
vehicle.
The jury sided with Greyhound, whose attorney, Dana Alden
Fox, accused the plaintiffs' attorneys of trying to win "the litigation
lottery," the Bee reported.
Greyhound is a division of British transport company
FirstGroup Plc.
//------------------------------//
GREYHOUND DEADLY BUS
CRASH CASE READY FOR TRIAL
The Fresno Bee
February 8, 2015
California Highway Patrol investigators look over the
smashed Greyhound bus at an accident scene on Highway 99 in Fresno on July 22,
2010. Early that morning, the bus plowed into a Chevrolet TrailBlazer that was
overturned on the freeway. Three women in the Blazer were killed, as well as
the bus driver and two passengers. The accident and CHP investigation are now
the focus of a negligent-death civil suit scheduled to begin Monday, Feb. 9,
2015.
In the early hours of July 22, 2010, a Greyhound bus slammed
into an overturned SUV on Highway 99 in Fresno, killing the three occupants of
the SUV and three people on the bus, including the driver.
The California Highway Patrol blamed the horrific collision
on 18-year-old Sylvia Garay, saying she was drunk when she lost control of her
Chevrolet TrailBlazer.
But a civil trial starting Monday in Fresno County Superior
Court could cast serious doubt on the CHP investigation.
The families of Garay, of Dinuba, and her two passengers —
Stephanie Cordoba, 20, and Vanessa Gonzalez, 19, both of Fresno — contend
Greyhound was negligent in the deaths of the three young women because bus
driver James Jewett was speeding and the bus had bad brakes. They also point
out that dozens of cars had missed the overturned SUV before the bus slammed
into it.
In the wrongful-death trial, they will also claim the CHP
doesn’t really know who was driving the SUV because the bodies of the three
young women were found on the roadway. The families want the jury to decide
what damages Greyhound should pay.
“This was a tragic loss of lives that shouldn’t have happened,”
said Fresno attorney Stuart Chandler, who represents Cordoba’s and Gonzalez’s
families. Fresno attorney Jason Helsel represents Garay’s family.
Greyhound has spent more than $3 million to settle with the
two dozen injured bus passengers and with the families of passengers Epifania
Solis, 60, of Madera, and Tomas Ponce, 79, of Winton. Both were killed on the
bus.
Greyhound contends it is not responsible for the deaths of
Garay, Cordoba and Gonzalez. In court papers, the bus company contends Garay
was at fault and the collision was unavoidable because the overturned SUV was
hard to see on the darkened highway.
Chandler and Helsel say there is ample evidence to show
Greyhound was negligent and that the CHP did a shoddy investigation.
“That will be one of the challenges for the jury —
determining who was driving,” Chandler said.
The CHP determined Garay was driving because the SUV
belonged to her mother. Witnesses also told CHP investigators that Garay was
driving. But Helsel and Chandler contend other witnesses say Gonzalez, who had
no alcohol or drugs in her body, was behind the wheel. To bolster the case, the
lawyers have Garay’s cell phone video that shows Gonzalez driving hours before
the fatal collision.
Regardless who was driving, Chandler said the bottom line is
this: “The bus had time to slow down and avoid the collision.”
Helsel and Chandler contend Jewett was speeding in the fast
lane — traveling 75 to 80 mph — when the bus slammed into the overturned SUV.
They point out that other cars avoided the overturned TrailBlazer, or had
stopped to render aid to the three woman.
“We have a witness (Alan Helmuth) who stopped on 99 and saw
two of the three women already out of the wrecked SUV. They were yelling for
help because their friend was trapped inside in the SUV,” Helsel said.
In his deposition, Helmuth said he wanted to help the three
women, but cars were zipping around the SUV. He said he was on the side of the
highway a few minutes before the fatal collision.
Helsel and Chandler said there is a logical explanation as
to why the bus slammed into SUV. They said bus passengers heard Jewett saying
he was running late on his route from Fresno to Sacramento. The lawyers said
there also will be evidence that Jewett was in the fast lane and wasn’t wearing
his prescription glasses.
In addition, Greyhound mechanics are expected to testify
that Jewett’s bus had bad brakes, but their concerns were ignored by
supervisors, the lawyers said.
Greyhound spokeswoman Lanesha Gipson said the company does
not comment on pending litigation.
The trial before Judge Donald Black is expected to take five
weeks.
Among the witnesses will be bus passengers who survived the
crash; experts on why it happened; CHP Sgt. Rob Krider, who authored a 627-page
report on the collision; and Fresno police officer Lee Harris, who was off-duty
when he stopped along the highway and tried to help the women before the bus
rammed into them.
Birthday celebration
The crash happened just after 2 a.m. on the northbound lanes
of 99 near the Clinton Avenue off-ramp. After the Greyhound struck the
overturned SUV, it careened down the highway more than 400 feet before going
down an embankment and plowing into a eucalyptus tree.
“Everyone agrees that the people on the bus were killed or
injured when it hit the tree,” Chandler said.
Jewett, who lived in Sacramento, was a 32-year veteran of
Greyhound. He had been making the Los Angeles to Fresno to Sacramento run for
at least seven years, Chandler said.
Though the crash happened in a darkened area of the highway,
Jewett should have been familiar with the roadway, Chandler said. “We figure he
had seen that stretch of the 99 hundreds of times,” he said.
According to the bus driver’s log, Jewett went on duty in
Los Angeles at 7:30 p.m. and arrived in Fresno at 1:45 a.m.
While Jewett was making the Los Angeles to Fresno run,
Garay, Cordoba and Gonzalez were celebrating a friend’s birthday. With the help
of a friend, they first went to a liquor store in Fresno to purchase vodka and
Four Loco, an alcoholic beverage. They then went to a friend’s home to drink.
They capped the night by walking to the nearby Starline nightclub.
Chandler and Helsel said the three women never drank at the
Starline; they wore bracelets that showed they were underaged. Because there’s
no evidence of them drinking, Starline, which was initially sued, was dismissed
from the case, the lawyers said.
Chandler and Helsel said there is other evidence to show
that Gonzalez was behind the wheel.
Garay was from Dinuba and unfamiliar with Fresno streets,
they said. Gonzalez was Mormon and didn’t drink. “Vanessa was the designated
driver that night,” Chandler said.
Garay’s cell phone video shows Gonzalez driving around 10:45
p.m. — before they went to the nightclub. Witnesses say Gonzalez was behind the
wheel before the fatal crash, Chandler and Helsel said.
The women were headed to Cordoba’s home. The CHP can’t be
sure who was driving because the women’s bodies were too mangled, Helsel said,
noting that the CHP could have done DNA testing of the SUV’s seatbelts, but
didn’t.
At the time of her death, Garay had a blood alcohol level of
.11 — more than the legal limit of .08 to drive, the Fresno County Coroner’s
Office reported. Cordoba’s blood-alcohol total was .05 and Gonzalez had no
alcohol in her body, court records say.
Unavoidable crash?
Both sides agree that the TrailBlazer was traveling north in
the far right lane, or slow lane. CHP investigators say skid marks indicated
that it swerved away from an exit sign at the McKinley off-ramp and veered into
the center median. The vehicle rolled, and then came to rest on its side in the
left lane, or fast lane.
In its report, the CHP says Jewett had no way to avoid
colliding with the TrailBlazer because it landed on its side. The bus smashed
into the the SUV’s dark undercarriage, the CHP said.
Krider, the CHP sergeant, said only 21/2 minutes passed from
the initial crash of the Blazer to the bus colliding with the SUV. But Chandler
and Helsel contend up to four minutes elapsed. . They said several cars avoided
the Trailblazer by driving around it. Some motorists stopped to help, including
Harris, the off-duty Fresno police officer, and another man named Vincent Thao.
Chandler said Harris testified in a deposition that he saw
Garay trying to get out of the SUV before the bus slammed into it. “Harris did
not see the bus take evasive action,” Chandler said.
Thao said in his deposition that he drove past the
overturned SUV and stopped about 30 yards from it. He put on his emergency
flashers. “He recalls looking back and seeing the bus going straight in the
fast lane for about 400 yards before the impact,” Chandler said.
The lawyers also contend two different Greyhound mechanics
recommended that the bus be taken off the road until its brakes were replaced.
That did not happen, Chandler said, because “Greyhound supervisors were under
corporate pressure to keep buses on the road.”
When the CHP released its findings a year after the crash,
Krider said it didn’t appear that Jewett was speeding. He said the data
recorder, or black box, in the bus could have provided Jewett’s speed and other
information, but it was too damaged to give reliable information.
Chandler, however, said the evidence will show that
Greyhound dispatched a lawyer from Los Angeles and a collision-reconstruction
expert to the crash scene within hours of the collision. He said the CHP didn’t
have the equipment to download the black box, so it allowed Greyhound’s
reconstruction expert to do it. But the expert reported to the CHP there was no
data in the black box, Chandler said.
In addition, Chandler said one bus passenger, Modesto
veterinarian Avtar Singh Jandi, told the CHP that Jewett appeared to be driving
fast after he left the bus terminal in downtown Fresno. “Dr. Jandi got up from
his seat to tell the driver to slow down,” the CHP report says. Jandi looked at
the speedometer and it showed 75-80 mph, the report says.
And passenger Robert Long Jr., a big rig driver from
Stockton, said Jewett was “speeding from the time they left Los Angeles.”
Chandler and Helsel blamed Greyhound for putting up road
blocks in the CHP investigation.
For instance, Greyhound declined to loan the CHP a bus
similar to the one Jewett was driving, the lawyers said.
For the testing, the CHP used a 1999 bus; Jewett was driving
a 2006 bus.
In addition, the lawyers said the CHP needed to blame Garay
because Greyhound had sued the CHP, alleging that its officers were too slow in
responding to the SUV crash. The lawsuit was still pending against the CHP when
Krider told reporters at the July 2011 news conference that Garay was at fault
and that it was not possible for officers to reach the crash scene before the
bus ran into the TrailBlazer, Chandler said.
Greyhound’s lawsuit against the CHP was later dismissed. By
law the CHP can’t be sued for mishandling an emergency, Chandler said.
“I firmly believe the CHP blamed Garay because it wanted to
make her the poster child of the dangers of underaged drinking,” Chandler said.
“But the evidence doesn’t support it.”
//----------------------------------//
SIX PEOPLE DIED AND AT LEAST 34 WERE INJURED -- FOUR OF THEM
CRITICALLY -- IN A CRASH INVOLVING A GREYHOUND BUS AND TWO OTHER VEHICLES ON A
HIGHWAY IN FRESNO, CALIFORNIA
(CNN) -- Six people died and at least 34 were injured --
four of them critically -- in a crash involving a Greyhound bus and two other
vehicles on a highway in Fresno, California, early Thursday, the California
Highway Patrol said.
The accident occurred about 2:15 a.m. on northbound
California Highway 99, highway patrol spokesman Officer Kirk Arnold said. The
bus struck an overturned SUV that was in the highway's fast lane and then
struck a second vehicle. All three vehicles traveled down an embankment, and
the bus slammed into a large eucalyptus tree, Arnold said.
"We're still trying to piece everything together,"
he said.
Taxi driver Mike Coupland told CNN affiliate KMPH-TV that
"at the last second," he saw the SUV on its side in the highway:
"no lights, no nothing." He said the bus did not have time to stop
before striking the SUV.
The impact was "like a bomb going off," Coupland
said. "Just pieces and parts everywhere. It was terrible."
The bus driver, he said, was "doing nothing
wrong."
Arnold said authorities are not sure whether the SUV had
just overturned before the crash or whether it was previously in the road.
The fatalities -- four women and two men -- included the bus
driver and at least one person in the SUV, he said. Five people were pronounced
dead at the scene, and one man died later.
Greyhound spokesman Tim Stokes said the driver, a 32-year
employee, and two passengers were killed aboard the bus. Stokes did not
identify the driver but said he "was an excellent driver with a clean
driving record and was a very well respected member of the Greyhound family.
"
The bus was en route from Los Angeles to Sacramento,
approaching its next stop at Madera, California, with 35 people on board,
Stokes said.
The highway's northbound lanes were closed, Arnold said.
Greyhound representatives were on scene.
The cause of the crash was still under investigation.
"It's going to be a lengthy process," Arnold said.
Six people sustained moderate injuries in the crash, and 24
had minor injuries, he said.
Relief buses were sent to the scene to pick up passengers
who were uninjured, Stokes said.