47.0°,
Mostly Cloudy LIRR's 'Summer of Hell' for commuters
A pair of commuters from Wantagh and Uniondale won a court decision allowing them to proceed with a lawsuit against the LIRR, MTA and New York City Transportation Authority. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of an entire class of regular commuters, is suing over “breach of contract,” “negligence” and “unfair treatment” inflicted on them during a period in 2017 when the number of train delays and cancellations were exceptionally high.
The LIRR/MTA had filed a motion to dismiss the 2017 lawsuit, claiming the plaintiffs failed to timely file a notice of claim, which is a prerequisite to bringing a suit.
On July 9, Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Antonio Brandveen ruled against the railroad’s motion to dismiss. In his ruling, the judge created a “public interest exception” to the notice of claim requirement since the purported class action case seeks to vindicate a public interest and that the disposition of that claim will directly affect the rights of the public.
While the ruling allows the lawsuit filed by Meredith Jacobs of Wantagh and Fred Lee of Uniondale to proceed, the MTA did file an appeal of the decision late in the afternoon on Friday, July 20.
Jacobs and Lee said they represented a class of monthly commuting ticket-holders, when commencing this action against the LIRR in June 2017. According to court documents, the suit alleges “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” and seeks redress for “all persons who paid Defendants for a monthly transportation pass, up and until the present time period in which there were numerous delays and cancellations,” according to court documents.
The above-mentioned passengers of the LIRR allegedly suffered during the so-called ‘summer of hell’ in 2017, as well as in January 2018, as a “consequence of extensive infrastructure problems which needed emergency repair and construction work.”
The plaintiff’s attorney, Paul Liggieri of Manhattan, said he believes “the people will vote in favor of Jacobs and Lee” and he was happy to represent the public in this case.
Liggieri pointed out that when train cars are overcrowded, people are spilling out of the cars onto the tracks, and there are no MTA police seen nearby — the passengers are at risk.
“To me the public safety is in danger,” Liggieri said. “It’s my job to protect the public interest.”
The judge scheduled a court conference for the case on Aug. 20.
In court papers, Jacobs says she has relied on the Long Island Railroad for the last 24 years, and that the last four years have been miserable.
The lawsuit questions whether defendants breached their duty to “provide passengers with comfort and safety in their travels . . . deliver passengers to their destinations without unreasonable delay or detention. . . provide the services it is capable of providing with their purchased equipment . . . failed to adequately keep their equipment in working order. . . failed to secure the necessary changes, modifications or spare parts to properly operate their equipment.”
The court papers document multiple instances of delays and cancellations at Penn Station, including ones where hundreds of commuters were stranded, without a way home, “and at the mercy of the MTA LIRR;” one where passengers were stuck underground for more than three hours when two Long Island Rail Road trains stalled inside an East River tunnel; another where cancellations forced the plaintiffs onto train platforms that were so overcrowded, they had to stand on the very edge of the platform, mere inches away from incoming trains; and several times where patrons complained that they had almost fallen onto the train tracks due to the unregulated overcrowding on LIRR platforms.
Plaintiffs filed this suit to address the “extreme and outrageous behavior, which should not be tolerated in a civilized society,” court papers stated.
The Long Island Railroad (LIRR), which is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), has 700 miles of track and provides service to more than 300,000 daily weekday riders — many of which are daily weekday riders, employed in New York City and depend on the LIRR to travel between Long Island and Penn Station.
