Public Transportation

Video Transcript:
Cindy Speaker: If you use public transportation whether it be buses, trains, or airplanes, you should understand your legal rights regarding accidents and injuries. My guest today is Texas Personal Injury Attorney, Gregg Anderson of the Law Offices of Terry Bryant and he’s going to talk to with us about this topic. So Gregg Thanks for being here.

Gregg Anderson: Thank you, Cindy.

Cindy Speaker: Well Gregg, in talking with Terry Bryant over the last few years it seems to me that your firm has handled quite a few of these public transportation accidents, especially buses. Tell us about some of those from a legal perspective.

Gregg Anderson: We have handled quite a few bus cases. In Texas, buses are held to particularly stringent standard called the Common Carrier Standard. If for instance you’re involved in a car wreck as a driver, private driver, you’re held to the standard of ordinary care just being as careful as an ordinary person would be.

Bus companies have a different standard. It’s a higher degree of care where they’re called common carriers who carry passengers for hire. And they’re required to go beyond what an ordinary person just driving a private vehicle would do. They are required to anticipate and foresee every possible danger or hazard and protect their passengers from.

Cindy Speaker: Okay, now Gregg, in your experience, do you find that most of these accidents involve some sort of safety violations such as texting and driving? Or are they more likely to be mechanical failures?

Gregg Anderson: A combination of the two. I’m not sure we’ve not had a case exactly involving texting but for instance here in Texas there’s a lot of back and forth across the boarder into Mexico and we’ve handled several cases involving Mexican bus companies that don’t comply with American safety standards, and they run their buses with mechanical problems, they force drivers to drive longer than they should be, and would be allowed to under American law, and we run into quite a bit of that here in the state of Texas.

Cindy Speaker: Gregg, let me ask you about the Hudson River plane crash that occurred back in January of 2009. Pilot Sully and his crew are true heroes and luckily that incident ended without any significant injuries or loss of life. Nevertheless, the people on that plane were traumatized were no fault if their own. What happens in a case like that? Is there any liability on the part of the airlines and similarly in other situations involving public transportation?

Gregg Anderson: Sure, yes there is. That particular case that you sight as you say Captain Sully was a true hero in bringing that plane down with just little harm to the passengers as occurred. On the other hand, there were some folks who suffered some serious injuries and they do have the course of action against the airlines. That was a domestic flight between New York City and Charlotte, North Carolina.

That plane took off from New York and crashed in New York, so New York law would govern in that particular situation and they would have the passengers do have courses of action against the US Airways for any negligence on the part of the company in causing that plane to go down.

Cindy Speaker: Now in the case where maybe a bus driver was negligent and there’s clear liability. Why is it important that a victim consult with an experienced personal injury attorney? And secondly, how important is timing in a manner like this?

Gregg Anderson: Timing is important and here’s why. The bus companies have their safety people, their insurance people out at the scene right away. Their investigation begins immediately and frankly, their job of trying to limit recovery by injured passengers, that begins right away.

So if somebody is hurt and waits months or longer to contact a competent attorney then they’ve allowed the bus company a huge head start in investigating and working on the case. So it is important to hire an attorney as quickly as you can to protect your rights.

Cindy Speaker: Well Gregg, if someone wants more information, how can they reach the Law Offices of Terry Bryant.

Gregg Anderson: They can call us here at 800-444-5000.

Cindy Speaker: Gregg, thank you for being with us today.

Gregg Anderson: Thank you, Cindy.

Cindy Speaker: This is Cindy Speaker for State Law TV.