$4.5 Million Verdict for Pedestrian Pinned Under DASH Bus by Driver with Four Prior Preventable Accidents

On a morning in August 2014, Sherry Galloway stepped into a crosswalk outside the King Street Metro station in Alexandria, Virginia, on her way to work as a corporate relations assistant. A DASH bus operated by Alexandria Transit Company turned left off King Street and struck her from behind. The front left wheel of the 17,000-pound vehicle rolled over her and pinned her to the pavement for roughly a minute before the driver backed the bus off her body.

Galloway survived, but her injuries were severe and permanent. She underwent multiple surgeries. Her leg sustained a degloving injury, stripping skin and tissue from the underlying muscle. She cannot sit for extended periods and, as the trial record showed, would not return to work.

Joseph Cammarata of Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata and Siegel took the case to an Alexandria Circuit Court jury and argued that Alexandria Transit bore direct responsibility for the crash. The theory centered on the company's own retention decision: the driver, Seblewongel Z. D'Arcy, had accumulated four preventable accidents in the 18 months before she hit Galloway, beginning while she was still in training. ATC's own written policy allowed drivers to log up to four preventable wrecks before termination, and the company applied that policy literally, keeping D'Arcy driving a 17,000-pound bus through Alexandria streets despite discipline letters in October 2013, April 2014, and May 2014 and training records that documented instructors being afraid of her behind the wheel.

The jury returned a verdict of $4.5 million in September 2015. Alexandria Transit filed an appeal; as of publication no publicly available appellate opinion has modified that figure.