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Deadly bus accident generates lawsuits

Oct 14, 2009 | Joseph Kellard | Herald Community

The City of Long Beach and the school district have been slapped with a lawsuit over a fatal accident that involved a bicyclist and a bus driver last summer.

Attorney Ed Paltzik of the Garden City-based Thomas Liotti law firm filed the wrongful-death suit for the family of Joseph Shannon, a 76-year-old Florida man who collided with a school bus while riding his bicycle on Monroe Boulevard at East Olive Street last July 28. Shannon suffered traumatic head injuries and died two days later.
Shannon was riding his bike in the northbound lane of Monroe Boulevard just before 9 a.m. when he was struck by the bus, which was traveling west on East Olive, according to police. Shannon was taken to South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside and put on life support, but died on July 30. The bus driver, Debra Hodge, 50, of Oceanside, an employee of the Long Beach school district, had three passengers, including two children under age 15, at the time of the accident, police said. The suit charges the city with negligence for "no properly installed stop sign, traffic control device or other form of proper warning to bicyclists or pedestrians" at the Monroe-East Olive intersection.
"There was a stop sign for [the bus's] direction," said Paltzik, who hired an investigator to examine at the accident scene. "There was no stop sign in the direction [Shannon] was going, north, crossing the street."
The suit also states that the city and the City Council were "repeatedly put on notice of the dangerous and defective conditions" at the intersection by residents.
Paltzik mentioned two residents, Richard Boodman, who lives near the intersection, and Bob Shanley, who wrote letters to the city and addressed the City Council about traffic conditions at Monroe and East Olive. Boodman argued that the city's placement of stop signs in the area is confusing and that the City Council has neglected to address the safety issues. "There's no consistency in the way the signs are put up," Boodman said last summer.
The city's corporation counsel, Corey Klein, said that while the accident was tragic, the city is not liable. "There is already a stop sign at East Olive that controls traffic at that intersection," Klein said. "... There's no questions here involving the proper signage as far as we're concerned."
The suit also charges the Long Beach school district with negligence for "failing to properly control, direct, manage and train Hodge."
"We believe that after she was either picking up or dropping off a child," Paltzik said, "she drove off and didn't look."
Schools superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg declined to comment on the pending suit.
The suit also includes a charge of conscious pain and suffering. Paltzik said that Shannon was thrown 20 feet by the bus, but remained conscious for a time. Asked if Shannon was wearing a helmet, Paltzik said, "No, but he wasn't required to, and he would have died anyway." Paltzik said that Shannon was in good health and might have lived into his 90s. "To us, it's worth in the millions," he said about the suit's potential dollar amount, which will remain undetermined until a trial is set.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.