Teen awarded $100K in assault case

Staff report

WARREN

A jury has awarded a 17-year-old Cortland girl $100,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages, finding that Community Bus Service of Warren was negligent on claims made by the girl that she suffered sexual assaults while riding the company’s buses in 2006.

The girl was 11 years old when a male student sexually assaulted her multiple times on a bus she rode from a Trumbull County school in Champion to her home in November 2006, a lawsuit said.

She attended the school because she is deaf. The boy was never charged criminally.

The case was heard by Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

The girl and her parents sued Community Bus Service in 2009. The attorney for the family was Andrew S. Goldwasser of Cleveland. The attorney for Community Bus Service, 1976 Niles Road SE, was David Engler of Canfield.