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Bus workers file suit against diesel companies

By Matthew Sweeney, amNewYork Staff Writer | msweeney@am-ny.com

August 19, 2008

For 32 years, Connor Hartnett worked in bus depots throughout the city with little or no ventilation. Diesel fumes from hundreds of idling buses were so thick he often couldn't read the identification numbers on the vehicles.

"There were times you couldn't see the buses," said Hartnett, 73, who retired in 1992 and now has inoperable lung cancer and a heart condition.

Yesterday, Hartnett and 17 others filed suit against diesel engine manufacturers, claiming that exposure to the particulate matter in the emissions caused their severe illnesses. Hartnett's attorneys estimate that he was exposed for 42,960 hours during his time as a bus driver and shifter. Other in the case had more exposure, like mechanics Vincenzo Mancio and Joseph Ganz, who are now deceased from cancer and heart problems and are represented by family in the law suit.

The suit filed yesterday in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx names 13 companies that manufacture diesel engines used by NYC Transit, including General Motors, Detroit Diesel Corporation, and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

"They are going to have to do something to rectify what they have done to these gentlemen," said John Dearie, co-counsel for the bus workers.

Several companies reached yesterday declined to comment, saying either that they would not speak on litigation or had not yet seen the suit.

Lawyers for the workers said that a Washington, D.C. appeals court ruling made a causal link between exposure to diesel fumes and illness. Although medical studies had linked diesel emissions to illnesses, no legal link had been made until that decision, John Durst, co-counsel for the plaintiffs said. The ruling may open a new area of claims similar to asbestos and smoking lawsuits, Durst said..

"The repercussions from it will play out over the next decade or two," he aid.

The lawsuit seeks damages against the companies for negligence, wrongful death, and pain and suffering. The manufacturers should have known the dangers of their products and taken precautions in designing them.

If the companies had put particulate matter traps on their buses "we wouldn't have this problem," Durst said.

Over the last decade or so, bus companies have made buses with lower emissions and the Transit Authority's old depots -- many of them converted trolley barns -- have been replaced or upgraded with better ventilation. The Transit Authority, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the case.

Seven of the retired bus workers gathered to announce the suit at their lawyers' midtown office. They described windows that didn't open and garages where buses were kept idling all night in the winter because they wouldn't start in cold weather.

At the end of his shift Emidio DeStefano, 71, drove his bus into the back entrance of a depot he worked at for 20 years at 126th Street near the East River. He and the others then had to walk the length of the massive structure, some three blocks, to the other side. It was a slow walk because he often had to squeeze between the buses parked cheek by jowl. "There was no air whatsoever," he said. He said they complained to supervisors but nothing was ever changed.

Today he has throat cancer. All the doctors at the hospital ask him, how many packs a day do you smoke. "I never smoked in my life," he said.