$27.5 Million for a Pedestrian Who Lost Her Leg Under a Manhattan Transit Bus

On November 4, 2005, Gloria Aguilar, a 45-year-old housecleaner and mother of three, was on foot near West 50th Street and 10th Avenue on Manhattan's West Side when a New York City Transit Authority bus struck her. She was knocked to the pavement, pulled beneath the vehicle, and dragged along the street before the bus came to a stop.

Rescuers found her trapped under the bus. At Bellevue Hospital, surgeons amputated her left leg above the knee. Her right leg was so badly damaged that it was left with little function. Over the years that followed she went through roughly ten operations.

Gair Gair Conason represented Aguilar at trial in Manhattan, with Ben B. Rubinowitz as lead counsel and Peter J. Saghir on the trial team. The Transit Authority's position was that Aguilar had stepped outside the crosswalk and walked into the side of a moving bus, placing the fault on her. The firm set out to prove the opposite: that the operator failed to see a pedestrian who was in his path and failed to yield, and that a careful driver would have seen her in time and stopped.

The case was tried over the spring of 2009. The jury sided with Aguilar and found the bus driver entirely at fault, returning a verdict of $27.5 million. Her lawyers said they believed it was the largest award ever for the loss of a leg. The driver was later demoted to a non-driving position.

The Transit Authority appealed. In 2011, the Appellate Division, First Department, found the total excessive and reduced it to roughly $18 million. The court set the pain-and-suffering portion of the award at $10 million. Even after that reduction, the $10 million the appellate court allowed for pain and suffering stood as the largest such sum a New York appellate court had approved for a leg amputation.