Kline & Specter Wins $51 Million SEPTA Escalator Verdict for Boy Who Lost His Foot

On November 27, 1996, a four-year-old boy rode an escalator out of SEPTA's Cecil B. Moore station on the Broad Street Subway in North Philadelphia. He was heading home with his mother and brother after a shopping trip ahead of Thanksgiving. As they neared the top, a step on the escalator gave way. The boy's right foot was caught in the machinery and severed. The amputation was permanent.

Thomas R. Kline took the family's case against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. SEPTA's early position was that the family was at fault, pointing to a loose shoelace. Kline set out to prove something different: that SEPTA had known for years its escalators were in dangerous disrepair and had done little about it.

The trial took place in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County in late 1999. Midway through, internal SEPTA records that the agency had never produced in discovery came to light. They showed SEPTA knew about the hazardous condition of its escalators well before the accident. The court convened a contempt hearing over the withheld evidence and fined SEPTA $1 million. The judge also permitted Kline to amend the complaint to add a civil rights claim under a state-created danger theory, the argument being that SEPTA's own conduct had put riders in harm's way.

In December 1999, the jury returned a verdict of more than $51 million. About half of that figure, $25 million, rested on the civil rights claim, which carries no statutory cap on damages. The rest was ordinary tort liability.

That distinction mattered. SEPTA is a Commonwealth agency, and Pennsylvania's sovereign immunity statute limits tort damages against such defendants to $250,000 per claim. SEPTA announced an appeal, and real questions remained about how much of the verdict could ever be collected, including the untested civil rights award. In January 2000, the family settled with SEPTA for $7.4 million, and the court reduced the contempt fine to $100,000 as part of the deal.

The litigation changed how SEPTA managed its escalators. The agency hired an outside firm to inspect every unit in its system, replaced at least ten of them, and added safety features to others.