Pioneer Settles Suit $195K

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From SILive.com
Published: May. 23, 2022, 6:30 a.m.
By Frank Donnelly


STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Four years ago, a young Eltingville public school student was found dehydrated inside a hot school bus when the driver failed to check the vehicle at the end of his shift.

The frightened 4-year-old had been left alone inside the bus in a Charleston depot for over an hour, court papers said.

The disturbing incident sparked a lawsuit by the child's family against Pioneer Transportation Corp. and the bus driver, alleging negligent infliction of emotional distress.

Recently, the family settled the case for $195,000 with Pioneer.

The settlement came almost a year after a Staten Island justice tore into the defendants while granting the family's motion for summary judgment on the issue of liability.

"The defendants' actions regarding the alleged incident, is considered, by this court, to be atrocious," state Supreme Court Justice Ralph J. Porzio wrote last June. "For the defendant driver to skip a school bus stop, not check the bus for children, and allow several hours to lapse between when the child was reported missing and subsequently found, on the defendants' bus, in the defendants' bus depot, is intolerable behavior."

The boy, Porzio wrote, was found "soaked in sweat."

"This court will not speculate what could have happened had the child not been found when he was," said the judge. "This type of business, in a civilized community, had a duty to the entire family, including the child's parents and grandmother, not to permit this negligent behavior."

Porzio left it for a jury to decide the issue of damages. The settlement, which the judge recently approved, rendered that issue moot.

The incident occurred on Sept. 6, 2018, at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

The boy, an Eltingville resident listed in court papers by the initials "J.C.," was a student at PS 42, said the civil complaint filed by the child's family, including Sai Hua Lu and You Juang Zhang, his mother and father.

He was 4 years old then. He is now 8, court documents said.

Ricardo R. Morel, the family's Queens-based lawyer, previously told the Advance/SILive.com he believed the child was in kindergarten.

The events unfolded when the boy's grandmother went to his assigned bus stop in Eltingville around 2:40 p.m., a civil complaint said. She waited for him to be dropped off at the end of the school day.

However, the bus did not come, said the complaint.

About two hours later, the child was found "sweaty" and "dehydrated" inside the bus, which was parked at Pioneer's bus depot in Charleston, the complaint said.

He was taken to Staten Island University Hospital where he was treated and released, said the complaint.

Medical follow-up was recommended.

"The child suffered dehydration and fear and was recklessly put in danger of physical injury," the complaint alleged.

His parents and grandmother suffered "extreme distress, fear and emotional pain and suffering" when the school bus and boy failed to show up, contended the complaint.

Authorities said the driver was required to count students as they boarded and exited the bus.

He was also obliged to walk to the back of the bus after the last stop and look on and under the seats to make sure no children were still there, said officials.

Afterward, he was to place a sign in the bus's rear window stating it had been checked for sleeping children.

However, surveillance videotape showed the driver didn't count the students as they entered and left the bus, said authorities.

And while the driver placed the sign at the back of the bus after the last stop saying it had been checked for children, he hadn't looked under the seats, officials said.

The driver exited the bus and closed it around 3:06 p.m., said officials.

A Pioneer employee found the boy inside the bus about 70 minutes later at 4:14 p.m., authorities said.

The child was "sweating profusely and had a red, flushed face," said officials.

The temperature inside the bus was over 90 degrees.

Morel, the plaintiffs' lawyer, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the settlement.

Spokeswoman Carolyn Daly said Pioneer takes safety issues very seriously and has actively done so for half a century.

"The company has a strict zero tolerance policy that requires our drivers and matrons to do a thorough check of their vehicles, seat by seat, to ensure that no child is ever left unattended on one of our vehicles," said Daly. "In our decades of operation, this was an isolated incident."

"Pioneer's number one priority is always the safety of the children we transport," she added. "We have extensive, comprehensive training and protocols in place for our drivers and employees to ensure everyone on board is safe and secure at all times. We are proud of our long and excellent reputation of efficiently and responsibly transporting millions of school children on Staten Island since 1972."