A charter bus was taking a group of senior citizens from DFW to the casino owned by the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.
Lloyd Rieve, who worked for Cardinal Coach, lost control of the bus in Irving. It flipped over and landed on its side. Sue Taylor, who had organized the trip, and two women, Alice Stanley and Paula Hahn, sustained fatal injuries.
Family representatives filed a lawsuit for the wrongful deaths of Ms. Stanley and Ms. Hahn. The plaintiffs settled with Mr. Rieve and Cardinal before trial and proceeded against the Choctow Nation, which denied any liability. It blamed Rieve and Cardinal for the crash.
The plaintiffs argued that the casino derived most of its income from bus trips like this, with most of them from here in North Texans. Cardinal had apparently failed to perform the required safety background check on its employee, Mr. Rieve, who had a bad driving record.
The trial took two weeks. The jury deliberated for four days.
The verdict awarded the Hahn family approximately $6 million and the Stanley family $5 million.
The irony is that this tragedy probably would have been avoided if the cash-rich casino had helped secure a better qualified, higher paid driver and and a safer, more reputable bus company to transport its customers.
As Dallas attorney Frank Branson, who represented the Stanley family, observed, “casino operators cannot escape responsibility when they negotiate contracts based on the absolute lowest bid without considering the safety of their passengers.”
Hopefully this huge verdict being affirmed will serve as a wake-up call to the casino and transportation industries to increase its screening of drivers and enforcement of safety procedures.
As dangerous as taking a bus trip can be, you can search the safety and inspection record maintained by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration by downloading this app.
The Dallas case is Choctaw Nation v. Linda Sewell et al., 05-16-01011-CV.
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