Manslaughter Reduced to a Civil Violation After the Rockland, Knox County, Maine School Bus Fatality That Killed 12-Year-Old Brayden Callahan — the Family’s Wrongful Death Claim Survives the Plea: Attorney911 Brings Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, We Pursue the School Bus Operating Entity, Public District or Private Contractor, for the At-Fault Driver’s Negligence in November Afternoon Darkness on Narrow Midcoast Streets and for Negligent Hiring, Training and Retention, We Pull the Bus Camera Footage, EDR Telematics and Driver Personnel File Before the Overwrite Cycle Erases Them, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Denies These Cases, Maine’s Wrongful Death Act and Modified Comparative Negligence Rule Protect a 12-Year-Old Pedestrian Under the Reasonable-Child Standard, the Maine Tort Claims Act’s Notice Deadlines and Damage Caps Apply If a Public District Operated the Bus, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911
Rockland School Bus Fatality: Your Family’s Civil Rights After the Manslaughter Plea Deal You are watching the criminal system do something that feels like a door closing. A school bus driver was charged with manslaughter — the criminal charge that means a death was caused by a gross deviation from the standard of conduct a reasonable and prudent person would observe. Now that charge is being reduced to a civil violation. The driver may avoid incarceration. The headlines say the case is resolving. And you are left at a kitchen table in the dark, asking the question that keeps you awake: if the criminal system will not hold this driver accountable, who will? We will. Not in the criminal courthouse — in the civil one. And the civil system plays by entirely different rules. The criminal system reduced this charge because prosecutors face a burden that is the highest in American law: proof beyond a reasonable doubt, of a gross deviation from the standard of conduct, with the specific mental state our criminal code requires. The civil system asks none of that. Civil negligence is proved by a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not — and it…