Bus accidents can be traumatic for victims. They have the potential to not only leave you with lasting injuries, but also force you to navigate a complicated legal process when pursuing justice. If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus crash, The NYC Trial Lawyers Group is prepared to ensure that your legal rights are protected and that those responsible will be held accountable for your injuries. Our dedicated attorneys are experienced in bus accident litigation and have a strong track record of successful results.
If you were injured in an accident involving a privately-owned bus, you will have three years from the date of your accident to file a lawsuit. However, if you were injured by a publicly-owned bus, you will have just 90 days—about three months—to file a notice of claim, and one year and 90 days—about fifteen months—to file a lawsuit.
While only an experienced attorney can offer you legal perspective pertaining to bus ownership in your case, the following guidelines may give you a rough idea of what to expect.
The attorneys at The NYC Trial Lawyers Group believe that early—if possible, immediate—investigation is critical in every personal injury case, but it is especially critical after a motor vehicle accident. Bus accidents—particularly those that occur in urban areas, such as New York City—tend to draw large crowds, meaning that swift investigation improves your chances of locating witnesses. We always request the paperwork from police and transit authority investigations to determine who, if anyone, was interviewed. But we also seek witnesses ourselves.
People’s routines tend to remain the same from day to day but may shift over longer periods of time. Our attorneys, and the investigators they retain, have had great success locating accident witnesses by interviewing people who are near the accident scene on the same day of the week and at the same time of day as the accident.
This strategy becomes less effective after just a few weeks. The hours and circumstances of a person’s commute might vary, or a drop in temperature as the seasons change could cause a worker to start packing lunch rather than take her usual walk to a favorite coffee shop. Even if you manage to find a witness weeks or months after the accident, his or her memory of the crash will be much less clear and therefore less reliable.
Other crucial sources of evidence are similarly fleeting, requiring us to act quickly. When examining an accident scene, our first order of business is to search for nearby security cameras so that we can request any available footage of the accident. Many of our firm’s successful bus accident resolutions have depended on securing evidence, such as camera footage, that would have otherwise been automatically deleted or taped over. Such deletion can occur as early as 48 hours after an accident.
So a good lawyer will promptly send notices to the bus owner to preserve any such footage.
Injured bus passengers have an additional reason to take action quickly: many face the challenge of proving that they were present on the bus at the time of the accident. Typically, following a bus accident, the driver or some other authority will ask passengers to remain in place while waiting for a police investigation or an MTA supervisor to arrive on the scene.
Understandably, however, passengers often want to leave an accident scene as soon as possible, for reasons ranging from pain or discomfort following injury to personal responsibilities—the need, for example, to get to a job on time or to pick up a child from school. In some cases, passengers may even be encouraged to leave by other parties.
If your presence on the bus was not documented in any way, a good attorney will strive to establish your presence by other means. Tickets and receipts, eyewitness testimony, records of phone calls, emails and text messages, video taken inside the bus, and other types of evidence can be effective ways of proving that you were on board. Make an effort to preserve any such evidence that you may have, and be clear with your lawyer about the timeline of events in your case.
Bus accidents can be traumatic for victims. They have the potential to not only leave you with lasting injuries, but also force you to navigate a complicated legal process when pursuing justice. If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus crash, The NYC Trial Lawyers Group is prepared to ensure that your legal rights are protected and that those responsible will be held accountable for your injuries. Our dedicated attorneys are experienced in bus accident litigation and have a strong track record of successful results.
While only an experienced attorney can offer you legal perspective pertaining to bus ownership in your case, the following guidelines may give you a rough idea of what to expect.
so a good lawyer will promptly send notices to the bus owner to preserve any such footage.
Injured bus passengers have an additional reason to take action quickly: many face the challenge of proving that they were present on the bus at the time of the accident. Typically, following a bus accident, the driver or some other authority will ask passengers to remain in place while waiting for a police investigation or an MTA supervisor to arrive on the scene.
Understandably, however, passengers often want to leave an accident scene as soon as possible, for reasons ranging from pain or discomfort following injury to personal responsibilities—the need, for example, to get to a job on time or to pick up a child from school. In some cases, passengers may even be encouraged to leave by other parties.
If your presence on the bus was not documented in any way, a good attorney will strive to establish your presence by other means. Tickets and receipts, eyewitness testimony, records of phone calls, emails and text messages, video taken inside the bus, and other types of evidence can be effective ways of proving that you were on board. Make an effort to preserve any such evidence that you may have, and be clear with your lawyer about the timeline of events in your case.
There are various forms of compensation that you may be entitled to after you slip and fall on a sidewalk:
Coverage for emergency room visits, surgeries, and long-term physical therapy
Compensation for time off work and any future income lost due to injury.
Monetary relief for physical and emotional trauma endured.
Compensation for lasting impacts, like reduced mobility or necessary medical devices.