Farmingdale High School bus crash: The latest on the lawsuits
Farmingdale High School students at a campus memorial after a bus carrying members of the marching band crashed upstate on Sept. 21, 2023. Credit: Newsday / Steve Pfost
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by families of the student musicians and educators aboard a Farmingdale High School band charter bus that crashed Sept. 21, 2023.
The crash in Orange County injured many of the 40 students aboard and killed two educators. Most of the lawsuits have been filed in Nassau County Supreme Court and name defendants including Lisa Schaffer, the bus driver; Regency Transportation, the charter company that employed Schaffer and supplied the bus; Bridgestone Americas, the tire manufacturer; and the Farmingdale School District.
A National Transportation Safety Board report, released in September, found that the failure of the left steering axle tire on the bus led to the crash. It did not assign responsibility for the crash. The NTSB investigation is ongoing.
Regency has also sued four Long Island school districts and New York State over bus trips that were canceled after the crash.
Many of the families’ lawsuits have been assigned to Mineola-based Judge Eileen Daly-Sapraicone, who has set a Jan. 29 conference for lawyers representing plaintiffs and defendants, according to court documents. Judges can use pretrial conferences to monitor the exchange of documents like medical records between parties to a lawsuit, to explore potential settlement, or to set deadlines as a case moves toward trial.
Most of the lawsuits allege negligence, a basic concept of civil law. Negligence is the "failure to behave with the level of care that a reasonable person would have exercised under the same circumstances," according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute.
There are several distinct elements to legal negligence, including a defendant’s duty of care, but to build any case on a negligence claim, "you have to show harm and you have to show a causal connection between the negligence and the harm," said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School in Manhattan.
A typical argument, made in a Nov. 19 filing by personal injury giant Jacoby & Meyers on behalf of a student identified only by the initials C.C., alleges harm — "permanent effects of pain, disability, disfigurement and loss of body function" — along with no fewer than 13 instances of negligence by Schaffer in connection with the crash, from permitting the bus to veer off the roadway to failing to sound its horn.
Anthony Sebok, a torts expert at Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, said the volume of claims may reflect a basic legal strategy.
"Lawyers want to be cautious, and they want to make sure they don’t miss any opportunity to survive a motion" to dismiss, Sebok said. "The more claims they can make, the more chances they have to survive those motions."
The Nov. 19 suit and most others also name Regency as a defendant. Besides alleging that the company’s maintenance failures contributed to the crash, it repeatedly highlights that Schaffer was acting "in the scope of her employment." That could be intended to lay the ground for claims against the bus company under a legal theory called vicarious liability. Whatever an employer’s direct involvement may be, "employers are responsible for the torts of employees that occur within the scope of their employment," said Gabriel Weil, an assistant professor at Touro Law Center in Central Islip.
Many suits also name the Farmingdale School District as a defendant, arguing it was negligent in caring for its students. One such suit, filed in March on behalf of a student identified as M.O., alleges that the district failed to adequately review Regency’s safety record before contracting with the company and failed to take reasonable steps to ensure safety on the trip by requiring seat belt use. Newsday has previously reported that in 2023 state Department of Transportation officials put Regency on a list of "unacceptable" companies after safety inspections put some of its buses out of service. Federal inspectors, though, listed its safety record as "satisfactory." New York did not require charter bus passengers to use seat belts at the time of the crash, though it now does.
School districts routinely contract with charter bus companies, experts said. Howard Miller, a lawyer with Bond, Schoeneck & King whose practice includes advising school districts, said that "in normal circumstances, when a district hires an independent bus company and there’s an accident, the district would ordinarily not be liable ... What's alleged here is that the district should have known the bus company wasn't reputable."
Some of the suits make product liability claims against the tiremaker, arguing that the company bears blame because its tire caused or contributed to the crash. In general, product liability claims relate to defects in manufacturing, design and warning or information about a product, said Touro Law Center's Weil.
While some suits allege the company was negligent, if a plaintiff can "prove there was a problem in a tire of Bridgestone’s, and that’s what caused [the crash]," that would be enough to establish liability, Zipursky said. In that case, he added, "we don’t really care much, in the legal system, whether you can actually prove the company was negligent in failing to catch this defect."
Lawyers for defendants have generally declined to comment, citing pending litigation, and did not comment or did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Their legal filings generally assert that their clients were acting within the law and deny all allegations of wrongdoing. Filings on behalf of Schaffer, Regency and the district that Newsday reviewed argued that the plaintiffs’ alleged failure to wear seat belts should mitigate any damages.
In a statement on Friday, Farmingdale schools Superintendent Paul Defendini said that district officials could not comment on pending litigation, on the advice of the district's lawyers. "Since the devastating tragedy that our community experienced last September, the District has been steadfast in our focus on helping our students and staff deal with the aftermath and supporting our community as we all continue to heal," he wrote.
Filings on behalf of Bridgestone argued that the company’s tires were "reasonably safe" during design, manufacture and distribution. Tires that were "substantially altered" by normal wear should have been removed from service, the filings said.
Again, this may be a matter of strategy, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director of the New York State School Boards Association. "It’s not at all uncommon that a suit would include multiple parties," he said. "It’s not necessarily because the law firms believe everyone is liable. They’re just making sure their clients are protected and not out of luck with respect to the statute of limitations."
While Schaffer may be the "easiest target, legally, she might be what we call judgment-proof, meaning she might not have the ability to pay," Weil said. That is less likely to be the case for Regency, the school district and Bridgestone. School districts are backed by taxpayer dollars and generally well insured, experts said. Bridgestone Americas' parent company, Bridgestone Corp., has a market capitalization of roughly $25 billion.
None of the suits Newsday reviewed named Schaffer alone as a defendant. Some named her and Regency. Others named both, along with the school district and the tiremaker.
Unknown. Newsday has only found one court filing that details a specific damages claim: $12 million, in a notice of claim filed in October 2023 on behalf of a girl identified as V.E. Other filings do not specify damages, though generally, the Supreme Court in Nassau handles civil matters seeking more than $25,000.
Farmingdale officials did not respond Friday to a question about the district's insurance coverage. The district’s 2024 budget includes $983,614 in line items for a general "multi-peril" policy, along with umbrella, student accident and board legal liability coverage.
In general, said Robert Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, district officials "will take out insurance to cover damages that can be sustained on a wide-scale basis ... You should be covered by insurance, as long as there’s no malfeasance by the district."
Miller, the lawyer, said that a number of factors could affect the district's exposure. Liability must be proved and sometimes it is apportioned between defendants. Given those uncertainties, many cases involving school districts end in settlement before trial, he said.
"Part of that is optics," with parties unwilling to enter into a public legal battle over a tragedy involving children, and "part is risk" for parties on both sides of a suit, he said. "There's a risk that there's a finding of no liability and a risk that if you lose, the verdict can be very large."
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by families of the student musicians and educators aboard a Farmingdale High School band charter bus that crashed Sept. 21, 2023.
The crash in Orange County injured many of the 40 students aboard and killed two educators. Most of the lawsuits have been filed in Nassau County Supreme Court and name defendants including Lisa Schaffer, the bus driver; Regency Transportation, the charter company that employed Schaffer and supplied the bus; Bridgestone Americas, the tire manufacturer; and the Farmingdale School District.
A National Transportation Safety Board report, released in September, found that the failure of the left steering axle tire on the bus led to the crash. It did not assign responsibility for the crash. The NTSB investigation is ongoing.
Regency has also sued four Long Island school districts and New York State over bus trips that were canceled after the crash.
Many of the families’ lawsuits have been assigned to Mineola-based Judge Eileen Daly-Sapraicone, who has set a Jan. 29 conference for lawyers representing plaintiffs and defendants, according to court documents. Judges can use pretrial conferences to monitor the exchange of documents like medical records between parties to a lawsuit, to explore potential settlement, or to set deadlines as a case moves toward trial.
What do the suits allege?
Most of the lawsuits allege negligence, a basic concept of civil law. Negligence is the "failure to behave with the level of care that a reasonable person would have exercised under the same circumstances," according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute.
There are several distinct elements to legal negligence, including a defendant’s duty of care, but to build any case on a negligence claim, "you have to show harm and you have to show a causal connection between the negligence and the harm," said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School in Manhattan.
A typical argument, made in a Nov. 19 filing by personal injury giant Jacoby & Meyers on behalf of a student identified only by the initials C.C., alleges harm — "permanent effects of pain, disability, disfigurement and loss of body function" — along with no fewer than 13 instances of negligence by Schaffer in connection with the crash, from permitting the bus to veer off the roadway to failing to sound its horn.
Anthony Sebok, a torts expert at Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, said the volume of claims may reflect a basic legal strategy.
"Lawyers want to be cautious, and they want to make sure they don’t miss any opportunity to survive a motion" to dismiss, Sebok said. "The more claims they can make, the more chances they have to survive those motions."
The Nov. 19 suit and most others also name Regency as a defendant. Besides alleging that the company’s maintenance failures contributed to the crash, it repeatedly highlights that Schaffer was acting "in the scope of her employment." That could be intended to lay the ground for claims against the bus company under a legal theory called vicarious liability. Whatever an employer’s direct involvement may be, "employers are responsible for the torts of employees that occur within the scope of their employment," said Gabriel Weil, an assistant professor at Touro Law Center in Central Islip.
What about the district?
Many suits also name the Farmingdale School District as a defendant, arguing it was negligent in caring for its students. One such suit, filed in March on behalf of a student identified as M.O., alleges that the district failed to adequately review Regency’s safety record before contracting with the company and failed to take reasonable steps to ensure safety on the trip by requiring seat belt use. Newsday has previously reported that in 2023 state Department of Transportation officials put Regency on a list of "unacceptable" companies after safety inspections put some of its buses out of service. Federal inspectors, though, listed its safety record as "satisfactory." New York did not require charter bus passengers to use seat belts at the time of the crash, though it now does.
School districts routinely contract with charter bus companies, experts said. Howard Miller, a lawyer with Bond, Schoeneck & King whose practice includes advising school districts, said that "in normal circumstances, when a district hires an independent bus company and there’s an accident, the district would ordinarily not be liable ... What's alleged here is that the district should have known the bus company wasn't reputable."
What’s Bridgestone’s role?
Some of the suits make product liability claims against the tiremaker, arguing that the company bears blame because its tire caused or contributed to the crash. In general, product liability claims relate to defects in manufacturing, design and warning or information about a product, said Touro Law Center's Weil.
While some suits allege the company was negligent, if a plaintiff can "prove there was a problem in a tire of Bridgestone’s, and that’s what caused [the crash]," that would be enough to establish liability, Zipursky said. In that case, he added, "we don’t really care much, in the legal system, whether you can actually prove the company was negligent in failing to catch this defect."
What do the defendants say?
Lawyers for defendants have generally declined to comment, citing pending litigation, and did not comment or did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Their legal filings generally assert that their clients were acting within the law and deny all allegations of wrongdoing. Filings on behalf of Schaffer, Regency and the district that Newsday reviewed argued that the plaintiffs’ alleged failure to wear seat belts should mitigate any damages.
In a statement on Friday, Farmingdale schools Superintendent Paul Defendini said that district officials could not comment on pending litigation, on the advice of the district's lawyers. "Since the devastating tragedy that our community experienced last September, the District has been steadfast in our focus on helping our students and staff deal with the aftermath and supporting our community as we all continue to heal," he wrote.
Filings on behalf of Bridgestone argued that the company’s tires were "reasonably safe" during design, manufacture and distribution. Tires that were "substantially altered" by normal wear should have been removed from service, the filings said.
Why do these suits name multiple defendants?
Again, this may be a matter of strategy, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director of the New York State School Boards Association. "It’s not at all uncommon that a suit would include multiple parties," he said. "It’s not necessarily because the law firms believe everyone is liable. They’re just making sure their clients are protected and not out of luck with respect to the statute of limitations."
While Schaffer may be the "easiest target, legally, she might be what we call judgment-proof, meaning she might not have the ability to pay," Weil said. That is less likely to be the case for Regency, the school district and Bridgestone. School districts are backed by taxpayer dollars and generally well insured, experts said. Bridgestone Americas' parent company, Bridgestone Corp., has a market capitalization of roughly $25 billion.
None of the suits Newsday reviewed named Schaffer alone as a defendant. Some named her and Regency. Others named both, along with the school district and the tiremaker.
What is Farmingdale School District's exposure?
Unknown. Newsday has only found one court filing that details a specific damages claim: $12 million, in a notice of claim filed in October 2023 on behalf of a girl identified as V.E. Other filings do not specify damages, though generally, the Supreme Court in Nassau handles civil matters seeking more than $25,000.
Farmingdale officials did not respond Friday to a question about the district's insurance coverage. The district’s 2024 budget includes $983,614 in line items for a general "multi-peril" policy, along with umbrella, student accident and board legal liability coverage.
In general, said Robert Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, district officials "will take out insurance to cover damages that can be sustained on a wide-scale basis ... You should be covered by insurance, as long as there’s no malfeasance by the district."
Miller, the lawyer, said that a number of factors could affect the district's exposure. Liability must be proved and sometimes it is apportioned between defendants. Given those uncertainties, many cases involving school districts end in settlement before trial, he said.
"Part of that is optics," with parties unwilling to enter into a public legal battle over a tragedy involving children, and "part is risk" for parties on both sides of a suit, he said. "There's a risk that there's a finding of no liability and a risk that if you lose, the verdict can be very large."
'It's disappointing and it's unfortunate' Suffolk Police Officer David Mascarella is back on the job after causing a 2020 crash that severely injured Riordan Cavooris, then 2. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger and Newsday investigative reporter Paul LaRocco have the story.
'It's disappointing and it's unfortunate' Suffolk Police Officer David Mascarella is back on the job after causing a 2020 crash that severely injured Riordan Cavooris, then 2. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger and Newsday investigative reporter Paul LaRocco have the story.
