Word: transitions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Mass transit is on the move. Baltimore's sparkling Metro is just the most recent result of a boom in urban rail-system construction. "There is more development going on now than in the past 100 years," exults Jack Gilstrap, executive vice president of the American Public Transit Association (A.P.T.A.). Since 1972, when San Francisco cut the ribbon on its high-tech headache, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), six other U.S. cities have opened new rail systems. Six cities currently have lines under construction. Thirteen other systems either have been proposed or are on the drawing boards...
...train as it pulled into a station on Manhattan's East Side. One of the cars ran over him, severing a leg, one arm and part of the other. Several months later his family retained Aaron Broder, an enterprising personal-injury lawyer, who sued the New York City Transit Authority for negligence. Broder acknowledged that Stephens had put himself at risk by jumping, but he was prepared to try to prove that the motorman had been negligently slow in stopping. "He certainly didn't do this intentionally," says Broder, "but sometimes people do not react quickly enough...
That is what worried Richard Bernard, general counsel for the Transit Authority...
Stephens' injuries, based on other recent jury awards, "would have justified a verdict of, say, $3.5 million," observes Bernard. If the jury then found that Stephens was only 75% responsible for the accident, the Transit Authority might have been liable for $875,000, plus the cost of going to trial, thus making a $650,000 settlement "favorable from our point of view...
Stephens' personal story has a bizarre postcript: in 1982 he again managed to hurl himself in front of a moving subway train. But the Transit Authority need not fear another large lawsuit; this time he was not seriously injured...