ALBANY & SHOHARIE – An Albany State Supreme Court judge has dismissed Mavis Discount Tire’s efforts to be exempt from legal liability for the 20 deaths resulting from the October 2018 Schoharie limo accident that the company is accused of having no problems Having tackled the vehicles with brakes.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Denise A. Hartman on April 2 dismissed the company’s efforts to dismiss the victims’ unlawful estate claims against limo company Prestige Limousine and Chauffer Services of Wilton, members of the Hussain family The company was owned, to be dismissed, from Limousine, Mavis and several Mavis affiliates.
Given that the lawsuits are in the early stages, Hartman said her decision must assume that the allegations against Mavis may be true. The cases allege that the Mavis Saratoga Springs store failed to properly repair the sedan’s brakes and issued the sedan with a State Department of Motor Vehicles inspection sticker, although such large capacity vehicles should be known to a more stringent State Department are subject to the transport inspection.
“The plaintiffs here allege negligent behavior that caused or exacerbated the dangerous condition, as well as reckless and willful behavior that was” started “as a passenger car for renting a limousine with defective brakes that was not authorized to inspect the required duty give reasons to plaintiffs in support of their tort and unjustified death claims, ”the judge wrote.
The practical implication for now is that Mavis is required by law to work with attorneys’ efforts to gather evidence.
In the crash at the intersection of State Roads 30 and 30A on October 6, 2018, 17 young adults were killed on their way to a birthday party, the driver and two pedestrians in the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store. It was the deadliest surface accident in the United States in more than a decade.
Authorities believe the aging 2001 Ford Excursion stretch limo suffered a catastrophic brake failure while driving down a mile-long hill on Route 30 that afternoon. It sped through a stop sign on Route 30A, hit a parked vehicle at the Apple Barrel, and stopped in a small ravine.
Victims’ estates – many of them from the Amsterdam area – have filed lawsuits in various counties, but the 12 cases have been consolidated in the Albany Supreme Court for court action and evidence.
In court files, Mavis lawyers alleged that the company was not liable because it had not signed a contract between the limo company and its passengers, and because work on the limo took place a few months before the fatal crash could not have been the cause of the crash.
Hartman noted, however, that given the number of potentially liable parties and the likelihood that efforts will be made to shift responsibility between them, it is too early to remove one party or exclude them from the evidence-gathering process known as discovery.
“At this stage of the lawsuit, plaintiffs accuse multiple perpetrators – the Hussain defendants, the Mavis defendants, the driver (Scott) Lisinicchia, the Apple Barrel Country Store, and New York State. It would be premature to cut off any factual findings regarding the immediate cause at this early stage of the litigation, ”Hartman wrote.
New York State is facing separate lawsuits in the State Court of Claims alleging that DMV and DOT did not keep the vehicle off the road despite knowing it was unsafe and that the design was T-shaped Intersection at the end of the long Route 30 hill contributed to the crash. Due to previous accidents, DOT had banned large trucks from going down the mountain, but not passenger cars.
A National Transportation Safety Board, which last fall concluded that a brake failure caused the crash, found that Mavis “knowingly” inspected the excursion even though he knew it was improper. But it made the Husseins and state agencies hardest to blame for not acting more confidently to get the vehicle off the road.
The Times Union first reported on the judge’s decision.
Hartman also enacted a number of other civil procedural rules of procedure last week, which are evolving despite the fact that the criminal case against Nauman Hussain, 31, in Schoharie County has been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hussain, who has been responsible for running the limousine on a daily basis since his father’s trip to Pakistan in March 2018, faces 20 second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges based on the theory that he knowingly registered a vehicle with unsafe security has brakes on the road. Ahead of a pre-pandemic trial, a Hussain attorney said the defense will try to blame Mavis for the crash for not doing a job that Hussain believed was done on the brakes.
Based on their April 2 ruling, Hartman ordered Mavis attorneys to file additional responses to the lawsuit by May 21 and to set a schedule for Mavis to respond to requests for evidence by June 21.
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