A federal appeals court upheld an eight million dollar verdict against Greyhound Lines for a woman injured when another passenger cut the driver’s neck and the bus crashed, just after the September eleventh terrorist attacks made her afraid to fly.
Sharon Surles, a retired auto worker, said, “Wouldn’t you have been afraid to fly? I used to feel safe in the United States. I don’t feel safe anymore.”
Surles, of Saginaw, Michigan, was traveling to visit her daughter in Georgia when the bus crashed on rural Interstate 24 between Chattanooga and Nashville.
Six passengers, including the attacker, were killed.
A seventh died later at a hospital and 34
others on board were injured.
Surles suffered a spinal cord injury in the october third, 2001 crash that left her a Paraplegic.
The Sixth U-S Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday upheld a jury’s August 2005 verdict awarding eight million dollars in compensatory damages to Surles after a seven day trial.
The bus was traveling from Chicago to Orlando, Florida, when Damir Igric, a 29-year-old Croatian, attacked driver Garfield Sands around 4 a-m as the bus was passing through Manchester, Tennessee.
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