$132 million awarded in crash lawsuit against Los Paisanos bus company
by Ramon Bracamontes \ El Paso Times
Posted: 12/04/2010 12:00:00 AM MST

An El Paso jury on Friday ordered a local bus company to pay more than $132 million to the victims of a fatal crash on a snowy Colorado road in 2005.
The jury found that the van the passengers were in had bald tires and no safety belts.
Two people died, and several others were injured in the crash.
The judgment against Los Paisanos bus lines and its owner, Uriel Chavira, was reached after a four-day trial.
Chavira did not react as the jury's decision was read. He left immediately after the jury was dismissed and could not be reached for comment.
His lawyer, Mannie Kal man, said an appeal will be filed.
"There are multiple errors in the verdict," he said. "This will case will take another four to five years to resolve."
The case has been pending in state court since 2005, when a Los Paisanos van carrying 11 people slid off a highway just outside Denver.
"Los Paisanos treated these poor people like cattle," said Craig M. Sico, the lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs. "The van, without seat belts, was driven over 188,000 miles in two years in the furtherance of an illegal interstate operation to move Mexican citizens across state lines."
According to the lawsuit, 33 people from El Paso and Juárez boarded a Los Pai sanos bus in El Paso and headed for Denver in October 2005. Once the bus reached Denver, 11 of the passengers, all from Juárez, were transferred to a 15-passenger van owned by Los Paisanos. They were headed to Nebraska.
According to testimony, the van was on a highway just outside Denver when the driver, Heriberto Flores-Garcia, began speeding and eating at the same time. He lost control of the van, which went over an embankment and rolled, according to testimony.
Passengers Teresa Lozano Acevedo and Ascencion Ra mirez Caraveo died of injuries received in the crash. Five others were injured but survived the accident; they are Roberto Pacheco, Ariosto Manriquez, Manuel Parra, Maria Aguilar and Magdaleno Borrego-Lares.
The survivors joined with the family members of the deceased to file a civil lawsuit against Los Paisanos.
Testimony began Tuesday and ended Friday. District Court Judge Linda Yee Chew presided over the trial.
The jury took fewer than three hours to reach a verdict.
Reagan Sahadi, one of of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said the survivors and family members are happy with the verdict even though they understand that the case is not over and they may not see any money right away.
"This validates everything we were trying to do, and that was to send a message to Los Paisanos that you have to comply with federal motor-carrier standards and you have to take into consideration the safety of the people they are transporting," he said.
During the trial, the lawyers for the victims argued that Los Paisanos was responsible for the accident because the company owned the van and it was being driven by one of its employees.
"They had an obligation to get them there safely and they didn't," said Sico, of Corpus Christi.
Kalman argued that Los Paisanos was not responsible for the actions of the driver.
"The reason this accident occurred has nothing to do with the maintenance and care of the vehicle," Kalman told the jury. "It was human error. The driver, an individual that made a decision on his own that resulted in mayhem, chaos, death."
Kalman encouraged the jury to find the driver responsible for the accident and to fine him, not Los Paisanos.
Flores-Garcia was also named in the civil lawsuit, but he did not show up to defend himself and did not hire a lawyer. According to testimony, Flores-Garcia left the country.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_16773568
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the type of shuttle operation that we see in El Paso on a daily basis.
Not once have I ever seen them stopped, questioned, searched or anything else.