A Florida truck driver admitted that he was on his cell phone yesterday when he slammed into a school bus, killing a 13-year-old student. According to a report by Austin Miller of the Ocala Star-Banner, the school bus, which had stopped to let children off , had its warning lights on and stop signs out. The truck driver said he never saw the bus. He  failed to stop for it and rammed the school bus forward 294 feet. The bus was fully engulfed in flames. 

See our recent posts on cell phone distractions and the absence of seat belts on busses.

Ken Shigley has served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute, co-sponsored by the Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina Trial Lawyers Associations.  He is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and is actively involved in the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. A member of the Million Dollar Advocates, he has successfully tried truck, bus and passenger van accident cases with multimillion dollar verdicts and settlements.  He has lectured on truck and bus litigation topics at  continuing legal education programs both at home in Georgia and in Nashville, New Orleans and St. Louis, and is scheduled to do so in Chicago this fall. A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he is also a Master of the Lamar Inn of Court at Emory Law School, a faculty member for ten years at the Emory University Law School Trial Techniques Program, and was recently elected Secretary of the 39,000 member State Bar of Georgia.