What Happened:
The jury gave one family from Charlotte more than $4 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the Brown family after their 13-year-old son died in a charter bus accident in Paris, France. Their son was a gifted soccer player at Myers Park High School and an active member of a local soccer team when he died in 2004 on a trip organized by the North Carolina Youth Soccer Association.
The Brown family, along with another who lost a child, sued the soccer organization for negligence in failing to properly investigate the safety record of the company hired to transport the group on their trip to Europe.
Investigators who studied the accident scene found that the bus driver was going more than 60 miles per hour on a wet, curvy road when he lost control and flipped the bus into a ravine. The Brown’s son and another child were thrown from the bus and were in a coma for more than a week before dying. The Charlotte jury awarded both families $8.3 million which they had to split.
The North Carolina Wrongful Attorney’s Perspective:
Accidents involving commercial buses are sadly not rare events. In fact, as the popularity of bus services such as Megabus and others have grown, so have the numbers of serious commercial bus accidents. Given the large number of passengers onboard and the general lack of safety features on the buses these kinds of accidents are frequently deadly. Charter buses and other commercial transportation operations rarely if ever have things like airbags or seat belts, features that are standard on even the most basic passenger cars. Passengers are thus left unprotected and vulnerable in the event of a crash, leading to severe injuries and even death.
Potentially Helpful Information:
Mass transit or bus accidents are very different than a common fender bender. The investigations can be much more time intensive and fighting with a commercial bus operator over damages is often a lengthier process than handling an accident between two individuals. Many of these bus companies, such as the one in the accident above, cross state lines all of which make recovering restitution much harder without the help of an experienced North Carolina (NC) bus accident injury lawyer.
Have Questions? Check Out Our Firm’s FAQs:
If you or someone you love has been injured in a North Carolina accident you likely don’t know where to turn for advice. The following answers to common frequently asked questions can help provide some basic information about why it’s important to obtain legal counsel after suffering an unexpected accident.
Here’s a video where one of our attorneys discusses the wrongful death claims process:
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