Our client, a 61 year old construction worker, was backing his red pickup truck out of his driveway when a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus slammed into him. The force fractured his neck at C5-6 and left him tetraplegic, permanently paralyzed in all four limbs. This Los Angeles bus injury case shows what can happen when a transit agency's own equipment tells the truth about what its driver was doing. MTA's defense was to blame the victim, pointing to a blood alcohol content of 0.17, more than twice the legal driving limit. The bus's own interior camera told a different story. On August 2, 2005, a Los Angeles County jury returned a gross verdict of $11,907,000.
$11.9M
Los Angeles County gross jury verdict
38.7 mph
Bus speed shown on video in a posted 25 mph zone
6 months
California deadline to file a government claim
Our client was driving a red pickup truck near his home on Truba Avenue, a residential street posted at 25 mph with limited visibility from driveways. A 15 ton MTA bus crashed into the truck with enough force to crush the cab. The impact fractured his cervical spine at C5-6, causing tetraplegia. Doctors performed an anterior discectomy and fusion to try to stabilize the fracture, but the neurological damage from the spinal cord injury was permanent. Before the crash, he was a working man surrounded by loved ones and living an independent life. After the crash, he required 24 hour medical care for the rest of his life.
MTA's central defense theory rested entirely on our client's intoxication. His blood alcohol content was 0.17, and the defense pushed that fact hard, arguing it should overshadow everything the bus driver did. MTA argued that intoxication, not its bus operator, caused the wreck. Rather than let the intoxication argument dominate the case, our team built the trial around what MTA's own video and safety materials proved: excessive speed, one-handed and distracted driving, and a documented violation of the agency's internal safety standards.
The case was not built on competing memories or guesswork about speed after the fact. It was MTA's own equipment, recording MTA's own driver, breaking MTA's own safety rules in real time.
MTA buses carry interior surveillance cameras. Here the camera preserved footage of the driver going 35 to 40 mph in a posted 25 mph zone while steering with one hand, a direct violation of MTA's protocols requiring both hands on the wheel and adherence to posted speed limits. The jury saw it frame by frame, timestamped.
Even MTA's own defense accident-reconstruction expert conceded on the record that the bus was traveling 35 to 39 mph, and that it could have stopped in time to avoid the collision entirely had it been traveling at or below the posted limit.
MTA's Safety Manual, introduced against the transit agency at trial, states that at 40 mph a bus needs 156 feet to come to a complete stop. A 15 ton bus does not behave like a passenger car, and the agency's own training materials proved it.
Reconstruction compared the safe speed of 15 to 20 mph against the bus's actual 38.7 mph. An alternate reconstruction showed that had the bus been at the posted 25 mph limit, our client could have completed backing out safely and the collision would never have happened.
Shown the video alongside the defense expert's concession, the jury found the bus operator's conduct so far outside acceptable safety standards that the harm was independently caused by her driving.
California law treats common carriers, including public transit agencies like MTA, differently from ordinary drivers. A common carrier must exercise the utmost care and diligence for safety, and this heightened duty extends to pedestrians and other motorists near the bus, as set out in California Civil Code section 2100. MTA cannot defend a case by treating its driver as just another driver on the road. MTA, the public entity employer, was held responsible for its driver's conduct under respondeat superior and Government Code section 815.2, which makes a public entity vicariously liable for the negligent acts of employees acting within the scope of employment. The driver was on duty, on her assigned route, at the time of the collision.
On August 2, 2005, a Los Angeles County jury sitting at the Norwalk courthouse returned a gross verdict of $11,907,000 after an 11 day trial and two days of deliberation. The jury vote was 11-1. Even after weighing MTA's comparative fault argument based on intoxication, the jurors found the bus operator's conduct independently caused the harm. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The Homampour Law Firm handles cases on a contingency fee basis, advancing the costs of the case, so there is no fee unless there is a recovery.
The breakdowns below cover the common carrier standard under Civil Code 2100, same-day MTA video preservation, using bus driver training records at trial, and the six month government tort claim clock.
Common carrier duty under Civil Code 2100
Same-day bus video preservation demands
Training records as trial exhibits
The six month government claim clock
We try catastrophic injury cases against transit agencies and other common carriers as counsel or co-counsel and pay statutory referral fees.
Refer a caseOur client, a 61 year old construction worker, was struck by an MTA bus while backing his pickup truck out of his driveway. The bus interior video, preserved and admitted at trial, showed the driver going 35 to 40 mph in a posted 25 mph zone while steering one handed. He suffered a C5-6 cervical fracture resulting in tetraplegia, permanent paralysis of all four limbs.
Yes. Under California law, a common carrier, including a public transit agency like MTA, owes passengers and people in the vicinity of its vehicles the utmost care and diligence, a substantially higher standard than the ordinary reasonable care owed by an average motorist.
Yes. California allows recovery even when you share some fault, as long as the other party was also negligent. Here, the jury awarded the full $11,907,000 verdict despite our client's blood alcohol content, because the evidence showed the bus driver was substantially at fault regardless of his condition.
