A Dallas County jury has ordered the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to pay $11 million to the families of two women from Fort Worth and North Richland Hills who were killed in 2013 when a chartered bus crashed on the way to a casino.
The families of Paula Hahn, 69, of Fort Worth and Alice Stanley, 83 of North Richland Hills are to get $6 million and $4.9 million in the suit, respectively. The women were on a trip to the Choctaw Casino Resort the morning of April 11, 2013, when the bus, northbound on the George Bush Turnpike, veered into guard barrels, swerved across multiple lanes, hit a concrete barrier and flipped over, the Star-Telegram has reported.
Hahn was pronounced dead at the scene. Her family was represented by Dallas attorney Spencer Browne, who could not be reached Monday night. Dallas attorney Frank Branson represented Stanley, who died 10 days after the crash at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas from complications of blunt force trauma, according to a suit filed against the Choctaw Nation.
“She was awake, alert, able to interact, and experiencing pain during most of the 10-day period that she was in Parkland before her death,” according to the lawsuit.
Witnesses testified last week that driver Loyd Rieve, now 68, of Dallas, was distracted before the crash when Sue Taylor, the woman who organized the trip, spoke with him right before the crash about whether to take the tollway, Branson said.
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