A bus driver involved in a gruesome 2011 crash on Interstate 95 in the Bronx that killed 15 people avoided a criminal conviction after arguing that a truck cut him off in traffic, but the judge in the ensuing civil litigation regarding the accident has ruled that the driver's version of events is not credible.

While the ruling by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Karen Rothenberg to grant summary judgment to Webster Trucking Corp., which owns the tractor-trailer that bus driver Ophadell Williams, also a defendant in the case, says cut him off, casts doubts on Williams' credibility, the ruling is a blow to the plaintiffs in the case, as it significantly reduces the amount of money they could recover through insurance.

Webster Trucking has a $25 million insurance policy for the tractor-trailer that allegedly caused Williams to lose control of a bus owned by World Wide Tours, which has a $5 million policy.

David Kownacki, a Manhattan solo attorney serving as lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the consolidated civil case, said Rothenberg's ruling was “devastating” for the plaintiffs but said on Thursday that he and other plaintiffs counsel had yet to determine if they will appeal.

In the early morning hours of March 12, 2011, Williams was driving 32 passengers in a so-called Chinatown bus, discount intercity buses generally available in Chinatowns in East Coast cities that have raised safety concerns in the past, from the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, to Manhattan's Chinatown.

As it passed through the Bronx, the bus struck a guardrail, overturned, then struck a signpost that ripped through the cabin of the bus.

Thirteen passengers died at the scene, two more died in hospitals and 17 were injured, including a man represented by Kownacki whose arms were ripped off when he tried to protect his head.

The Bronx District Attorney's Office went after Williams, bringing 54 charges that included manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault.

While Williams' lawyer argued that Webster Trucking's tractor-trailer was to blame for the crash, prosecutors argued that Williams was too sleep-deprived to be behind the wheel, a condition that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says was responsible for 846 traffic deaths in 2014.

For prosecutors, “drowsy driving” is harder to prove than cases in which drivers are accused of being impaired by alcohol or narcotics or distracted by their mobile devices, and the challenge of doing so in Williams' case proved to be too much for the Bronx DA: in 2012, a Bronx jury acquitted Williams of all but one charge, a misdemeanor related to his failure to pay numerous tickets.

Meanwhile, the estates of the 15 passengers killed in the crash and the injured passengers filed suit in several counties related to the crash, and the New York Litigation Coordinating Panel ordered that all claims rising from the crash be consolidated in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

In the civil litigation, the plaintiffs, World Wide Tours and Williams have depended on Williams' account of how the accident occurred, but Webster Trucking and Joshua Alphonso Reid, the tractor-trailer driver alleged to have caused the accident, submitted what they deemed a “mountain of evidence” to refute Williams' story.

Specifically, Webster and Reid submitted expert testimony from Ashley Dunn, an accident reconstruction expert, who said that Williams did not apply his brakes before the collision and that the tire marks the bus left on the roadway were more consistent with the driver nodding off at the wheel than the driver turning sharply to avoid another vehicle.

Additionally, Dunn said, the event data recorder on the bus indicated that the vehicle was traveling slightly faster than the tractor-trailer in roughly 100 seconds before the crash, which would have made it physically impossible for the bus to have been cut off by the truck.

Webster and Reid also submitted reports from the New York State Police and other motorists driving near the scene of the accident indicating that it was a one-vehicle crash.

And Williams himself gave conflicting accounts of the crash, Webster and Reid argue: he told both the state police and the National Transportation Safety Board that Reid's truck came in contact with the bus just before the accident, but Williams has said in depositions in the related civil cases that the two vehicles didn't touch.

In an order issued on Wednesday to grant summary judgment dismissing Webster and Reid from the case, Rothenberg said that Williams' testimony is not credible as a matter of law, noting the inconsistencies between the account he gave to police following the crash and what he said during deposition testimony and that his story isn't corroborated by witnesses.

Timothy Capowski, a partner at Shaub, Ahmuty, Citrin & Spratt, represents Webster and Reid.
James Burke, a partner at Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, represents Williams and the bus company. He said he disagrees with portions of Rothenberg's decision and says Williams' story has remained consistent throughout the case.

“Mr. Williams has consistently claimed from the moment that the accident occurred that he was cut off,” Burke said.