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A divided Indiana Supreme Court on Monday reversed an appeals court decision and upheld a $700,000 judgment in favor of the estate of an intoxicated Indianapolis man who died in 2018 after being run over by an IndyGo bus.
The 3-2 ruling sided with the trial court in the case, affirming the jury’s finding that Michael Fergerson was not negligent in the accident which killed him even though he had been taken to the hospital earlier in the day after being found intoxicated on the sidewalk.
The jury returned a verdict in favor of the estate and awarded $6 million in damages, but because of statutory limits on damages, the final judgment was $700,000.
IndyGo appealed that verdict. Last year, a divided Indiana Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s decision, with appellate Judge Peter Foley writing in the opinion that Fergerson was negligent to some degree.
Chief Justice Loretta Rush, writing for the majority on the state’s high court, made clear that this was a “close case” but reinforced that the court’s role is “not to stand in the place of the factfinder.”
“Both the trial court and a judge of our Court of Appeals found that IndyGo did not establish Fergerson was contributorily negligent as a matter of law,” Rush wrote. “Because the evidence presented to the jury does not support a sole inference to the contrary, we cannot find these conclusions unreasonable.”
Justices Geoffrey Slaughter and Mark Massa dissented with a separate opinion.
Attorneys for neither Ferguson’s estate nor IndyGo immediately responded to a request for comment.
According to court documents, 63-year-old Fergerson had been found intoxicated on a sidewalk on Sept. 29, 2018, after drinking a half-pint of vodka. He was taken to a hospital around 11 a.m. and was described as “confused” and “uncoordinated,” and he performed poorly on dexterity tests.
He told hospital staff that he would typically drink a pint to a pint and a half of vodka a day. After his confusion and disorientation cleared, he was released from the hospital later that day, but was still “mildly intoxicated,” the court record shows.
Fergerson, who was living with his elderly mother at the time, walked from the grocery store to a nearby IndyGo bus stop.
Just before 7 p.m., a bus arrived, but the driver did not allow Fergerson on because she saw him holding a liquor bottle.
About 35 minutes later, another IndyGo bus arrived at the same stop. According to court documents, the driver did not see Fergerson sitting on the bench. The driver did not remember whether he had checked that his mirrors were properly aligned or whether he approached the stop at the IndyGo policy-required distances.
As two passengers exited the bus, Fergerson slowly got up from the bench with his groceries and walked toward the front door of the bus. But before he could reach it, the driver began to pull away. Fergerson reached toward the bus and made contact, but that caused him to get spun around and fall into the bus’s path, court documents show.
Fergerson died from his injuries about two weeks later.
About a year later, Fergerson’s mother filed a lawsuit against IndyGo.
During the trial in April 2023, IndyGo asserted that it was “completely undisputable that Mr. Fergerson was contributorily negligent for his own demise” by reaching toward a moving bus while intoxicated.
However, testimony from an expert witness at the trial noted that alcoholics can have a high tolerance for large amounts of alcohol. And the jury ruled in favor of Fergerson’s estate.
IndyGo then filed a motion to correct error, saying the verdict was “clearly erroneous as contrary to the evidence” and asked the court to “vacate the jury verdict and enter judgment” in its favor; the court denied that motion.
So, IndyGo appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court’s decision, saying that based on the video evidence, “only a single inference can reasonably be drawn: Fergerson was negligent to some degree” by “reaching out toward a moving bus,” and that “was at least one of the proximate causes of his injury.”
Following the estate’s petition to the state supreme court, the high court determined that the evidence supported reasonable inferences that Fergerson was not contributorily negligent, so the court agreed with the trial court’s denial of IndyGo’s motion to correct error.
Justice Slaughter, along with Massa, dissented, writing that contributory negligence is an “exceedingly low bar” for a defendant to meet and a “high bar” for a plaintiff to clear.
“Here, the evidence shows that Fergerson approached a departing bus while heavily intoxicated, struggling with balance problems, and carrying groceries,” Slaughter wrote. “His resulting fall and death are tragic. But to hold that he was not even slightly at fault for his injuries is unreasonable as a matter of law.”
The case is Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation d/b/a IndyGo Public Transportation v. Norma Jean Bush, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Michael Rex Fergerson.
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