On July 28, 2009, Kristen Kenny was crossing the street in a marked crosswalk in Salt Lake City, Utah, when a Utah Transit Authority “UTA” bus driver made a left-hand turn into her. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Kristen Kenny, now 25 years old, was a Salt Lake Community College student at the time that this Utah bus-pedestrian accident almost ended her life. Among her injuries were a broken femur, fractured jaw, lacerated kidney and spleen, broken ribs, and the worst of the lot, a subdural hematoma, which later required a craniotomy, presumptively to relieve internal pressure caused by swelling. Because of her injuries, doctors induced coma. They did not expect her to live. Miraculously, she did. Things, however, are far from being back to normal for her and her family.
The lasting injury for Kristen is her brain injury. She reportedly has trouble with memory and her recall. Her ability to multi task has been compromised. Another common, lasting problem for brain injury survivors, is a change in personality. Prior to this accident, she was said to be mild mannered. She is now reported to be “feisty” and gets frustrated easily. She may have other brain injury “sequelae” common to brain injury survivors. These can include: cognitive deficits, mood disorders, major depression, mania, anxiety disorder, psychosis, apathy, behavior or dyscontrol disorder, sleep disturbances and lingering headaches.
Kristen’s medical bills at this point are huge: a reported $420,000, not including expected future surgeries and procedures that she will need. According to Utah Administrative Code R37-4-2, liability against UTA, a Utah governmental entity, is capped at $620,700 for incidents occurring after July 1, 2008. Under this cap, the amount of available money given Kristen’s injuries is nowhere near where it needs to be to fully compensate her for the injury that has been forced upon her. While her lawyers are expected to challenge this cap, they face a difficult road since the cap against UTA was upheld by the Utah Supreme Court in the 2002 case of Parks v. Utah Transit Auth., 2002 UT 55.
Finally, I want to say that I’m disgusted by the failure of the Salt Lake City Police Department to issue a citation to this UTA bus driver. Ms. Kenny was hit in a crosswalk, where she presumptively had a legal right to be. The bus driver was turning on a green light (not a green arrow) when she struck this pedestrian. Under the Utah Code, section 41-6a-1008: “The operator of a vehicle crossing a sidewalk shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian and all other traffic on the sidewalk.” Clearly, this bus driver failed in her duty to “yield the right-of-way” to Ms. Kenny. I think the only reason this bus operator didn’t get a ticket was because she happened to work for UTA.
I offer my best wishes to Ms. Kenny and her Utah bus accident attorneys as they deal with the aftermath of this terrible bus-pedestrian crosswalk accident.