Wisner Baum has a long history of handling bus accident cases. The firm has handled 100 bus crash cases over the past 30 years for bus passengers, their families and pedestrians hit by buses, across the United States and in foreign tourist spots. In one case, the firm represented 27 passengers from a single bus accident.
We handle a wide variety of bus accidents:
Our firm has also handled bus accident cases against defendants such as Greyhound, Ford Motor Company, American Tour and Leasing Co., Bluebird, Sky Express, Inc., American Stage Lines, San Diego Metropolitan Transit, Mexico Transportacion Turista Peninsular, Windsor Inc., and Travellers Coach Company Limited.
If you’ve been the victim of a serious bus accident, contact our bus accident lawyers at Wisner Baum today to schedule a free initial consultation: (310) 207-3233.
In 2018, there were roughly 65,000 bus accidents in the U.S., according to data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). While most of these crashes resulted only in property damage, 234 caused deaths and 15,000 others caused injuries.
Source: https://cdan.nhtsa.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm
The lion’s share of bus accidents in the U.S. involve school buses. An estimated 25 million public school students ride over 450,000 school buses twice daily to go to and from school. Another 12 million students ride school buses to and from school-related activities each day. Between 2008 and 2018, school buses accounted for 40% of all fatal bus crashes in the U.S. During the same period, intercity buses accounted for 12% and transit buses accounted for 35% of all fatal bus crashes.
Some other bus crash statistics:
In the data below, you can see that California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, and Georgia saw the most fatal bus crashes in the NHTSA’s most recent statistical report.
Source: https://cdan.nhtsa.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm
Over the years, Wisner Baum has prevailed in many of the most highly-publicized commercial transportation cases in the nation, including more than 300 commercial trucking, train, and bus accident cases. Our firm has litigated wrongful death and serious injury cases for over 40 years and our attorneys have tried well over 200 cases in their careers.
Many of the cases the firm has litigated involve children riding school buses. Some of these accidents have occurred while transporting children to and from school or to events, while some have involved the bus driver running over the child after the child left the bus.
Among the many bus accident lawsuits handled by our firm is the Girl Scout bus crash near Palm Springs, California in 1991. Seven people were killed and 47 were injured in that crash. Wisner Baum represented 27 people, mostly children, from that accident in which a school-type bus, loaded with Girl Scouts, nose-dived into a gully, and ultimately resulted in the death of four girls when they were thrown through windows onto the rocky ground.
In that bus accident, the firm’s attorneys argued successfully in court that on side impact, unsecured students and passengers can be severely injured when hurled against unpadded walls or through weak windows.
In an effort to improve bus safety, after the resolution of a Kentucky bus crash, Wisner Baum created information packets, including a crash test video that reenacted the actual crash, and organized and funded a national campaign in all fifty states and Canada. The package urged school bus owners, operators and purchasers to relocate gas tanks positioned next to the front doors to an unexposed position inside the frame behind the rear axle, thus reducing the chance of a fire and permitting exiting the front doors if a fire erupts.
Ready to get started? Contact Wisner Baum today at (310) 207-3233. From our offices in Los Angeles, we serve clients nationwide.
Bus accident victims and their families have a right to seek personal injury and wrongful death damages against errant bus drivers and their companies. Any such lawsuit may well involve more than one state’s law or court system, and numerous complex choices and decisions may have to be made to maximize recovery or streamline procedures.
Those responsible for these accidents should be held accountable and safety improvements made. There are usually a number of weak links in the chain of events that lead up to an injury or death – negligent operators, negligent supervision, poor maintenance, design flaws, failed parts, or faulty reporting.
Each individual or group responsible for one or more factors may be called upon to pay a portion, or even all, of the compensation due to the injured person or family members. Each of those entities may be situated in a different state, and the harm may have occurred in yet another state.
Many bus accident victims or their families hire our firm because of our many years of experience handling bus accident litigation and other forms of commercial transportation liability.
Wisner Baum concentrates its practice on wrongful death and serious personal injury cases throughout the United States. The firm is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers, and maintains the highest AV® peer review rating, obtained through a rigorous process conducted by the leading international lawyer directory, Martindale-Hubbell.
Some reasons to consider our firm for your case:
"Wisner Baum gave exceptional attention to all aspects of the case, detailed inquiry, and tenacious overview of all the information submitted. The paralegals are efficient and diligent. I was completely surprised to find an empathic personal message to take care of my own health during the challenging time of being a full-time caretaker.*"
In May of 2019, the jury in the case of Pilliod et al. v, Monsanto Company ordered the agrochemical giant to pay $2.055 billion in damages to the plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a Bay Area couple in their 70s. R. Brent Wisner served as co-lead trial attorney for the Pilliods, delivering the opening and closing statements and cross-examining several of Monsanto’s experts. Wisner Baum managing shareholder, Michael Baum and attorney Pedram Esfandiary also served on the trial team in the Pilliod case.
The judge later reduced their award to $87M. Monsanto appealed the Pilliod’s verdict which the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District denied on August 9, 2021. Monsanto then requested the California Supreme Court review the appeal’s court decision, which the court denied on Nov. 17, 2021. Monsanto (Bayer) then submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court which SCOTUS denied on June 27, 2022, allowing the final judgment of $87M to remain intact.
$289.2 million jury verdict in Monsanto Roundup trial
Wisner Baum co-represented Dewayne “Lee” Johnson in the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. On Aug. 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $39.25 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages to Mr. Johnson, a former groundskeeper who alleged exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides caused him to develop terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Months after the jury verdict, the judge overseeing the trial reduced the punitive damages to $39.25 million. Mr. Johnson decided to accept the remittitur, bringing the adjusted amount awarded to Mr. Johnson $78.5 million.
Monsanto (Bayer) appealed the verdict and Johnson cross appealed. On July 20, 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against Monsanto but reduced Mr. Johnson’s award to $20.5 million. The company chose not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the litigation.
In 2016, Wisner Baum attorney Timothy A. Loranger and six other attorneys in the Plaintiffs’ Management Committee were able to secure a $265 million settlement for victims of the 2015 Amtrak 188 derailment in Philadelphia, one of the largest in the U.S. for 2016.
