Justice vs. MTA

Family gets $12M for fatal bus hit

The MTA has been ordered to cough up $12 million to the family of an 85year-old Brooklyn man who was fatally hit by one of its buses. The jury took just 45 minutes to bring back its verdict Feb. 4. The family of victim Rong Xing Wu — including his 94-year-old widow — attended the civil trial and were relieved by the judgment, their lawyer said. “It was so beautiful — they were crying and hugging me and hugging each other,” said the attorney, Benedict Morelli. “They wanted to feel that the patriarch of the family didn’t die in vain.”

Wu (left), who worked at a garment factory before he retired, had been oout running errands and wwas on his way home on May 29, 2013, when he was struck as he stood on the f irst stripe of the crosswalk at Bay Parkway and 86th Street in Brooklyn.

“[The bus driver] had failed to yield to two red lights when she entered tthe crosswalk where Mr. Wu was standing,” Morelli said.

Video taken from a cameera mounted on the MTA bbus showed Wu about to cross the street just before the vehicle struck him.

He died four months later from his injuries.

The bus driver, Gail Lee, stayed at the scene.

Even though the driver admitted that she had “hit a pedestrian,” the MTA still brought the case to trial and attempted to argue that Wu’s death was his own fault, according to the lawyer.

“To say Mr. Wu caused his own accident is preposterous,” Morelli said.

The jury found the MTA 100 percent liable in Wu’s death, he added.

Lee never faced any charges in the case, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

She also did not received a summons.

But “she never said she was sorry,” Morelli said of the driver, who retired from the MTA four months after the accident.

Lee did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Morelli said he was “upset with the Transit Authority’s attitude’’ about the case.

He noted that he had reached out to the agency for almost two years to try to settle the dispute.

Yet the agency insisted on taking the case to court, setting itself up for the huge verdict against it, Morelli said.

Wu and his wife moved from China to Brooklyn in 1992 and had been married for 60 years.

“We’re reviewing the jury’s verdict and are exploring our legal options,” an MTA spokesman said.