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A federal judge has sent a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a SEPTA bus accident, in which one pedestrian was killed and her son seriously injured, to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

U.S. District Judge Juan R. Sanchez of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's motion for summary judgment on the plaintiffs' sole federal law claim, but held that he could not decide the remaining state law claims, which would have to be adjudicated in the court of common pleas.

According to the decision, in the early evening of Sept. 26, 2014, Sheena White and her son, referred to by the court as K.W., were struck by a New Flyer-manufactured SEPTA bus in the crosswalk at the intersection of 15th Street and Washington Avenue in Philadelphia. White was killed after she was caught under the bus's undercarriage, and K.W. was badly injured, Sanchez said.

Delores White, Sheena White's mother, and the administrator of Sheena White's estate, William A. Love, sued SEPTA, its officers, the bus driver and New Flyer for wrongful death. The plaintiffs claimed the driver's-side mirror on the bus obstructed his view of the road, and argued both SEPTA and New Flyer knew of the allegedly dangerous conditions. They also sued Rosco, the manufacturer of the mirror.

The plaintiffs also claimed White and K.W.'s 14th Amendment rights were violated because they were deprived of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law, pointing to SEPTA as the offending government agency.

They advanced their claim through the state-created danger theory. Sanchez said in order to prevail, the plaintiffs would have to prove that the danger was limited to a “discrete” class of people, which the plaintiffs claimed were people on the left-hand side of a turning bus.

Sanchez said the plaintiffs failed to prove that such a discrete class existed.

“By plaintiffs' account, the mirror configuration poses a risk of harm to any pedestrian crossing a street in a crosswalk in the same direction of travel as a left-hand turning New Flyer bus along any bus route,” Sanchez said.

“While plaintiffs assert the immediate threat of harm presented by the mirror configuration is limited in scope and duration in that the mirrors cause a view obstruction only briefly during any individual left-hand turning motion,” he continued, “this momentary risk potentially recurs during every left-hand turn along every bus route serviced by a New Flyer bus equipped with a Rosco model 715F mirror. The overall risk of harm from the mirror configuration is thus limited neither in scope nor in duration, but is diffuse, existing whenever—and wherever—buses with the view-obstructing mirrors are in service.”

Patricia M. Hoban represents the plaintiffs; William Pillsbury represents SEPTA; Wesley R. Payne of White and Williams represents New Flyer; and John C. Farrell of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin represents Rosco. None responded to requests for comment.