Judge orders new trial after jury initially finds Greyhound not liable for bus accident.
In a rare turn of events, a Fresno Superior Court judge has ordered a new trial for several victims involved in a deadly Greyhound bus accident. In his opinion the judge wrote that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding in the original case.
The case at hand actually only involves 3 of the more than 30 individuals injured or killed in the bus accident, which took place on Highway 99 near Fresno on July 22,2010. On that day, an SUV carrying Sylvia Garay (18), Vanessa Gonzalez (19), and Stephanie Cordoba (20) had overturned on the roadway. Several other motorists had pulled over to try to help the young women, leaving their own cars parked with the flashers on. According to witnesses, a Greyhound bus driven by James Jewett struck the SUV, then swerved into an embankment and finally crashed into a large tree. The three women in the SUV, the driver of the Greyhound bus, and two bus passengers were killed. Another 34 passengers were injured.
Interestingly, Greyhound had already paid over $3 million in settlements to the passengers, but had not offered anything to the families of the women in the SUV.
In the initial trial, the jury was instructed only to address the question of whether the Greyhound driver was negligent. Attorneys for the victims presented the following evidence on this subject:
- The driver of the bus was speeding at the time of the accident
- The driver had been driving in the passing lane for no reason
- The driver did not slow down as the flashers from the stopped motorists came into view
- The driver was not wearing his glasses at the time of the bus accident
The defense presented very little evidence of their own to rebut any of these allegations. Instead, their strategy focused mainly on an explanation of the “sudden emergency doctrine.” In other words, defense argued that the bus driver was presented with an emergency not of this making (the overturned SUV) and needed only to act as a reasonably careful person would in order to escape liability.
The jury seemed to accept this explanation and returned their verdict in less than three hours.
However, in his opinion judge pointed out that while it was clear that the bus driver was presented with an emergency, the fact that he did not take any action at all to avoid the SUV showed a lack of reasonably careful behavior and actually made the emergency much worse.
We will be following this case closely to see how the new bus accident trial turns out, or if Greyhound opts to settle with the families of the three young women in order to avoid another lengthy trial.
