The Wake County school district recently agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by a student’s family for $75,000. According to the lawsuit, the student, Michael Burgess was an 11-year-old student at West Lake Middle School in 2014 when he was “struck by a car while trying to catch a school bus” and “suffered multiple serious injuries.” As a result, the family sued the school district, accusing it of “putting the bus stop in an unsafe location.” However, despite it’s agreement to settle the suit, the Wake County school district made “no admission of responsibility.”In a statement regarding the settlement agreement, Jonathan Blumberg, an attorney for the school board, said:“The district emphatically denies any negligence, and this denial is included in the settlement agreement. The school district settled the matter to avoid the cost of protracted litigation and in recognition of the fact the plaintiff did suffer serious injuries.”

Wake County Courthouse; image courtesy of
Daderot via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org

The family is pleased with the agreement and glad that the district “stepped up to settle the lawsuit.” T. Shawn Howard, the attorney representing the Burgess family, said, “We’re pleased with the result for Michael. It was a difficult case for the school system.” He added, “It was a tragic, tragic event, and Michael fortunately bounced back better than I expected.”But what happened, exactly? Well, the incident occurred four years ago. While trying to catch his school bus, Burgess crossed Johnson Pond Road and was hit “by a vehicle driven by Lindsey Tight,” who was 16-years-old at the time.According to the suit, Burgess’ “foot and ankle were caught underneath Tight’s vehicle before he was propelled into the air and landed in a drainage ditch.” As a result, he “suffered physical and psychological injuries, including an orbital right bone fracture, multiple right ankle fractures, a concussion, closed head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.”At the time, Tight “entered a plea of responsible for failure to reduce speed,” though a “charge of failing to stop for a school bus was dismissed.” That didn't stop the Burgess family from naming Tight, as well a handful of school officials and the Wake County school district as defendants in the suit, which was filed in Wake County Superior Court back in April 2017.The allegations in the suit included claims that the district had a shortage of bus drivers, forcing the district to “make multiple changes in recent years, including reducing the number of buses on the road and changing routes and stop locations.”Since the incident, however, the district has been able to get “enough bus drivers for every bus on the road,” largely because it conducted an “aggressive recruiting campaign” and raised the pay for bus drivers.

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Wake school system pays $75,000 to student who was hit by a car while catching the busNC District to Pay $75K to Student Hit Trying to Catch Bus