Rochester Business Journal

The widow of a Michigan truck driver who died in a fiery Seneca County crash last year after rear-ending a Canadian tour bus is suing the tour bus driver, the bus line and its insurance company, claiming wrongful death.

Stephanie Hume of Dryden, Mich., filed a complaint July 13 in U.S. District Court in Rochester accusing the bus driver, Rene Bisson of Ontario, Canada, Farr’s Coach Lines Ltd. and the London Insurance Co. of negligent, wanton and careless conduct in the July 22, 2011, death of her husband, Timothy Hume.

Hume filed as executrix of her husband’s estate. She is represented by Eleanor Polimeni of Finkelstein & Partners LLP in Newburgh, Orange County.

According to a November 2011 CBS New York radio network report detailing results of a State Police investigation of the July accident, Bisson told investigators the tour bus was experiencing transmission problems. His New York license to drive a bus was suspended when the crash occurred, although he had a valid Canadian license. The suspension came because Bisson had failed to file paperwork after getting and paying fines for speeding tickets he had received in 2003 and 2006.

Farr’s Coach line was negligent in failing to properly check the bus driver’s credentials, Stephanie Hume claims in court papers. 

Timothy Hume, 59, was the only person to die in the crash, which occurred on a stretch of the Thruway near Waterloo, Seneca County. Thirty of the 52 passengers on the tour bus reportedly were injured.

A trucker who witnessed the accident told a State Police investigator the bus had pulled into traffic and was traveling at some 25 miles an hour with its flashers on. The trucker said he had observed the tour bus from a quarter of a mile away, had ample time to avoid the crippled vehicle and had done so by pulling into the passing lane, CBS New York reported last year. 

According to the investigator, the trucker theorized Hume, who the trucker said passed his vehicle traveling in the right lane, might not have seen the bus and could have fallen asleep or been incapacitated.

Bisson drove the bus in a wanton manner, failed to sound his horn, take heed of traffic conditions and negligently had pulled out in front of Hume’s semi, the complaint alleges. 

 “(Hume) sustained multiple injuries in, to and about his body (and) from the time of the accident and for a period thereafter lived and was suffering excruciating pain and agony,” the court brief adds.

Damages Stephanie Hume seeks are not clear. The action asks for at least $75,000, the minimum required to file such suits.

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