Parents of 2 more band members sue Farmingdale school district, bus company over crash

Parents of two more Farmingdale High School band musicians have filed lawsuits over the 2023 bus crash that injured dozens of students and killed two adults.

The lawsuits, filed Friday in State Supreme Court in Nassau County, allege negligence by the Farmingdale school district, Nesconset-based charter bus company Regency Transportation and bus driver Lisa Schaffer in the Sept. 21, 2023, crash of a chartered bus that was carrying musicians and chaperones to a weekend band camp when it plunged down a highway median in upstate New York.

Roughly 37 lawsuits have now been filed on behalf of the 44 occupants of that bus.

The two latest suits were filed on behalf of Diana Prilook and her daughter, identified only by the initials KP, and on behalf of Kristi Crocitto and Robert Crocitto and their daughter, identified as AC. The suits allege that the Farmingdale school district failed to take reasonable precautions to safeguard the students on the trip and that the company was negligent in hiring Schaffer. They ask for unspecified damages.

Allegations against the school district include that it failed to ensure students were wearing seat belts. Newsday has reported that most of the bus occupants were not wearing seat belts at the time of the crash, according to a still ongoing National Transportation Safety Board investigation, but that seat belt use by charter bus passengers was not required by law at the time of the crash. A New York State law now requires their use.

Newsday reported in 2023 that the state Department of Transportation included Nesconset-based Regency on a list of “unacceptable” companies. Federal inspectors, however, listed the bus company’s safety record as “satisfactory” with better-than-average performance compared with national averages.

The two suits, both filed by the same Manhattan firm, use almost identical language to describe the girls’ physical injuries, down to the “left hip labral tear” each girl allegedly suffered in the crash. Additionally, according to the suits, each girl suffered “a severe shock to her nervous system,” as well as severe and lasting pain and mental anguish.

Lawyers for the defendants did not comment or did not respond to emailed requests for comment. A lawyer for Regency and Schaffer, Belinda Boone, when asked last week for comment about an earlier suit filed against her clients, said she could not comment on ongoing litigation but that “we extend our heartfelt sympathies to the families affected.”

A lawyer handling the lawsuits for Prilook and the Crocittos did not comment. School district officials, contacted through a spokesman, did not comment. Schaffer could not be reached. Prilook could not be reached. The Crocittos did not immediately respond to a message left with a relative. A man who answered the phone at a former number for Regency said he was a principal for another bus company, Tri-State, that had no connection to Regency.