Bronx Jury Awards $14.25 Million After MTA Bus Crossed Two Lanes and Struck Retired Superintendent's Minivan
Won by Subin Law.
A Bronx jury returned a $14.25 million verdict for retired building superintendent Miguel de los Santos, who suffered spinal injuries when an MTA bus veered across two lanes on Pelham Parkway and struck his minivan, then watched the transit authority's own medical expert admit he had no memory of ever examining the plaintiff.
What happened
On an evening in 2013, Miguel de los Santos was driving his wife along Pelham Parkway in the Bronx when an MTA bus crossed two lanes of traffic and slammed into the side of his Honda Odyssey minivan. De los Santos, then 66 and a retired building superintendent, suffered serious back injuries. He eventually underwent spinal reconstructive surgery.
De los Santos brought suit in Bronx Supreme Court against the MTA. The central liability question was straightforward: a bus had left its lane and struck a minivan in the street. But the trial took on an additional dimension when the transit authority called its medical expert.
Dr. Roger Antoine, a surgeon at Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn whom the MTA retained to evaluate de los Santos, testified that a February 2015 examination showed normal muscle strength and range of motion in the plaintiff's back. On cross-examination by attorney Eric Subin, however, Antoine admitted he had no memory of ever examining de los Santos. Subin argued that a 'chaperone' paid by the MTA had attended the exam, written the notes, and then applied Antoine's electronic signature to the report. A two-year investigation by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board had separately found that Antoine had signed off on fabricated reports, including one in which he declared an injured worker was faking symptoms that the worker was not faking. Antoine eventually resigned his authorization to treat injured workers and to perform independent medical examinations in New York's workers' compensation system, effective March 16, 2018, and was prohibited from performing those functions going forward.
After a month-long trial, a four-woman, two-man jury deliberated and returned a verdict of $14.25 million for de los Santos. 'The MTA lied a lot,' de los Santos said after the verdict. 'All the way from the driver to the doctor.'
No appellate reduction of the award appears in the public record as of this writing.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.