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Atlanta school bus runs over & kills kindergartner

Handling bus and truck liability cases in my Atlanta law practice, I have seen way too many kids killed or seriously injured in bus accidents. Recently I had represented several of the young men who were on the Bluffton University baseball team bus that crashed in Atlanta.

Yesterday in Atlanta, a school bus driver lost track of a kindergarten student who had exited the bus, and ran over the child. According to an article by Alexis Stevens in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Usher Elementary 5-year-old pupil was one of six kids to get off at the bus stop, located near the intersection of Vanderbilt Court and Hobart Drive, just north of I-20.

The bus driver has been charged with second degree vehicular homicide and failure to use due regard for school bus driver safety procedure, according to the Atlanta Police Department.

While Georgia law provides broad immunity to public school systems, there is liability to the extent of insurance coverage for negligence in operation of school buses. The immunity issues do not apply to privately operated school buses.

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute, is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Treasurer of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

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