Grieving families want expanded right to sue

Seek passage of bill for lost affection and companionship

Families of the victims of the 2018 limo crash in Schoharie and others who lost loved ones in wrongful-death cases were at the state Capitol on Tuesday calling for lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow them to sue over the loss of affection and companionship.

According to the Albanybased consumer rights group NYPIRG, New York’s wrongfuldeath law is one of only a handful in the country that doesn’t allow families to sue over lost companionship and affection.

Passage of the Grieving Families Act would update the state’s wrongful-death litigation laws for the first time since before the Civil War.

The bill is sponsored by state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Senate’s judiciary committee, and Assembly member Helene Weinstein, a Brooklyn Democrat who previously chaired the Assembly’s judiciary committee.

While families of victims in wrongful-death cases can sue those allegedly responsible for the death of their loved ones in New York civil courts over economic loss, they cannot sue over loss of companionship. The law as it currently stands is tilted in favor of those who lost family members, usually men, who were breadwinners at the time of the death, not younger victims or senior citizens.

The Grieving Families Act would also allow for nontraditional family members to sue in wrongful-death suits as well, according to NYPIRG.

“It is well known that New York’s antiquated wrongfuldeath law has had a disproportionate effect upon women, children and senior citizens by valuing their lives at a fraction of the worth of others,” Weinstein said.

Seventeen of the victims of the Schoharie crash were friends from the Amsterdam area in their 20s and 30s who had just started out in their careers and had just started families. The death of some couples left their children to be raised by grandparents.

Those 17 friends were in the limo at the time that it crashed into the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store & Cafe, located at the intersection of Route 30 and Route 30A. The brakes on the 34-foot stretch Ford Excursion limo had failed on a steep section of Route 30 as the limo approached the intersection going more than 100 mph.

“New York’s wrongful-death law is not only archaic ... it’s a gut punch,” said Kevin Cushing of Amsterdam, whose son Patrick was among those killed. Patrick worked in the state Senate, Cushing noted. “Our pain, our loss, our grieving is palpable.”

The driver of the limo and two bystanders in the parking lot of the restaurant were also killed. The two bystanders were Jim Schnurr and his son-in-law Brian Hough, who lived in Cayuga County; they were in the area for a wedding.

The families of the Schoharie crash victims are suing members of the Hussain family of Wilton, who owned the limo, along with Mavis Discount Tire, which serviced the Excursion’s brakes. The brakes had been cited as defective in a March 2019 inspection by the state Department of Transportation, and the limo was ordered off the road. The families are also suing the DOT and Department of Motor Vehicles in the Court of Claims in Albany for not doing enough to crack down on the Hussains, who did not have permission from the state to rent out the Excursion.

Jackie Schnurr, who lost her husband, Brian, and dad, Jim, in the crash, said in a letter to state legislators that the current law does not value her loss or the loss experienced by her son adequately.

“My son has been robbed of his father and grandfather. I have been robbed of my partner and my advice giver, and currently our only recourse is to have their lives measured in terms of their future earnings,” Schnurr wrote. “The loss of a person’s life is so much more devastating than only how much money they missed out on making.”

NYPIRG’S legislative counsel Russ Haven said New York’s wrongful-death laws date from the state’s early history, when the husband was typically a family’s sole breadwinner. If a farmhand, for instance, died due to an accident, his family needed to seek recourse in the courts or face destitution. But the law has never been modernized to account for the loss of companionship. Forty-seven other states have updated their laws over the years, Haven said.

“New York’s statute is woefully outdated,” he said.