Runaway School Bus Kills Eight-Year-Old in Crown Heights: $5.7 Million Verdict Against Jofaz Transportation

On the afternoon of May 22, 2006, a parked yellow school bus on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, became a lethal hazard. The bus had been left unattended by its driver, and an eight-year-old boy broke into the vehicle through the rear emergency exit, which federal law required to remain unlocked. The boy released the parking brake, and the 26,000-pound bus began rolling down a grade toward the street below.

At the bottom of that grade, a second child was crossing with her older brother. The boy managed to escape, but his sister was caught beneath the bus's right undercarriage and pinned against a street pole. She died from her injuries. She was eight years old, a second-grader at Public School 161 on Crown Street.

The family turned to Jacoby and Meyers, and trial attorney Michael Feldman brought their case before a Kings County jury a decade later. The central legal argument was straightforward: New York Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 1210(a) requires a bus driver to turn the vehicle's wheels toward the curb when parking on a grade. The driver had not done so. Feldman pressed the case that Jofaz Transportation had also failed to properly train the driver on that requirement.

Defense counsel argued that the intervening act of the boy releasing the brake broke the chain of causation. The jury disagreed, finding that the driver's failure to secure the bus created the conditions for the tragedy. The jury apportioned 40 percent of liability to the bus driver and Jofaz Transportation, with the remaining 60 percent attributed to others.

In November 2016 the jury awarded $5 million to the girl's estate, represented by her parents, and $700,000 to her brother for past and future pain and suffering. The total verdict came to $5.7 million. At 40 percent liability, the recoverable share against Jofaz Transportation and its driver came to approximately $2.28 million from that apportionment. No appellate reduction of the verdict appeared in subsequent court records reviewed.