Family pursues lawsuit alleging Handi-Van fault

Handi-Van vehicles make more than 1 million trips a year. Most of those trips go smoothly, if you don’t count the delays that the service’s senior and disabled passengers often face.

But Marylyn Robello’s Sept. 12, 2012, Handi-Van trip was a notable exception.

For reasons that still aren’t clear, Robello’s wheelchair was not secured and her seat belt not fastened for that morning Handi-Van ride through downtown. During the trip, Robello, a 70-year-old Oahu native, was thrown from the chair and down the van’s front stairwell.

She hit her head against the passenger door and a handrail. She would spend most of the next seven months in a hospital before dying in April 2013.

While Robello did suffer from other health issues such as Type 2 diabetes, her family asserts that the Handi-Van injuries she suffered to her face, head, neck, back and other parts of her body led to her death.

Robello’s death certificate lists "head injury" along with several other ailments, including kidney and liver disease, as the causes of her death. But her family maintains that the head injury was the main cause that worsened all her other existing conditions.

"She never got better — she got worse," said Kelli Keawe, one of Robello’s six children.

In 2013, Keawe, along with her sister Jaime Mahaulu, sued Oahu Transit Services, which manages TheBus and the Handi-Van fleet for the city, alleging negligence and wrongful death on their mother’s behalf.

An attempt at arbitration was unsuccessful, with the family rejecting a proposed $62,000 settlement.

Now a trial seems increasingly likely, with the latest pretrial hearing set for Monday before Circuit Judge Virginia Crandall.

The legal action comes at a tumultuous time for the Handi-Van. The islandwide paratransit system sees the highest demand for service per-capita in the nation, federal figures show, and OTS has struggled to keep up.

The long-documented delays that many riders endure have not improved despite new scheduling software installed months ago. Some riders insist the waiting times are even worse than the official numbers indicate.

The city is now auditing the Handi-Van. OTS in April reassigned its vice president overseeing the system.

Also, transit officials acknowledge that because of the system overload, the Han­di-Van "may" not always comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Keawe contends that those strains were a factor in the accident involving her mother. Before Robello died, she told her daughter that the Handi-Van driver was speeding when the accident happened, Keawe said.

"Because of the tight schedule, the drivers feel like they’re pressured and they got to rush people here and there," Keawe said last week.

OTS maintains that it was not responsible for Robello’s death. In court documents the company also states that the negligence of "other parties" caused the accident.

City and transit officials declined to comment specifically on the lawsuit because of the pending litigation.

However, OTS President Roger Morton and other top company officials say that drivers are trained to always put safety above schedule.

"I understand the drivers’ point of view. They want to please the customer. They want to be on time," said Roy Dunlap, OTS’ training manager.

Nonetheless, OTS stresses to them that they need to put safety first, he said. In that context, "schedule is last on our list," Dunlap added.

ACCORDING to Keawe, Robello was herself a retired bus driver who used to drive special-needs students to school. She hailed from a family of entertainers as the daughter of popular falsetto singer Joe Keawe.

"She knows how important it is that everyone be buckled up," Kelli Keawe said.

Keawe said her mother was seated behind the driver heading to an appointment at the Queen’s Medical Center when the accident occurred. She was thrown from her wheelchair when the Handi-Van driver, who’s not identified in court documents, veered sharply to avoid another car that cut him off while heading mauka on Nuuanu Avenue near Kukui Street, Keawe said.

The family’s suit alleges that the Handi-Van driver initially tried to pretend as though the incident had not happened.

Robello blacked out from hitting her head, and when she came to, the driver was sitting in the back of the van crying and saying he would lose his job, court documents state. Keawe said no other passengers were aboard at the time.

A passerby who saw the incident from the street helped the driver get Robello back in her chair, and the driver resumed the route to Queen’s without reporting the accident to Handi-Van dispatch, the suit alleges.

But Robello called her daughters to tell them what happened, Keawe said. They contacted dispatch, who radioed the driver, and he then acknowledged the accident, court documents state.

Dispatchers instructed him to pull over and wait for paramedics to intercept Robello to rush her to the Queen’s emergency room.

"If the dispatcher had not called and stopped the Handi-Van … the driver would have dropped off Robello as if nothing had happened," the court complaint further states.

Why Robello wasn’t strapped in remains unclear. The official Handi-Van user’s manual states that "operators will assist you in and out of the van, on and off the wheelchair lift, and will fasten and unfasten the securement straps (tie-downs) inside the van."

OTS officials say there are only a few exceptions in which a van could transport someone unsecured. If the seat belt strap will aggravate a medical condition, for example, the driver might opt to proceed without fastening the passenger, they say.

"She mentioned before she passed, she said the driver refused to seat-belt her down. He was in a rush because of the scheduling," Keawe said last week. The lawsuit eventually went to arbitration, but the driver "didn’t comment on it" when asked why Robello wasn’t fastened, she added.

Keawe said they were awarded $62,000 through arbitration but feels that’s far too little for what happened to her mother, so they’re proceeding with the suit.

Most of Robello’s nearly $1 million in subsequent medical bills were covered by Medicare, she added.

"The city’s trying to sweep it under the floor, cover it up. They should have taken more responsibility," Keawe said. "She was worth more than $62,000. How do you put a price tag on someone?"

A SIGN displayed prominently for the new drivers trained at OTS’ Middle Street headquarters reads "Kina‘ole," which roughly translates to "doing the right thing, at the right time, to the right person and for the right reason."

Last week, as the latest group of new drivers for TheBus completed their training, OTS officials reminded them to never let "schedule compromise safety." Such messages dominate the training process, Morton said.

"I can assure we do everything we can" to provide the best training possible, Dunlap added. However, with about 1,300 drivers for TheBus and Handi-Van combined, and those vehicles logging about 85,000 miles a day across the island, driver accidents that could have been prevented inevitably happen, OTS officials say.

Once the drivers are on the road, TheBus drivers are subject to spot "safety audits" where safety officials board and assess their performance. But so far, Handi-Van drivers haven’t been subject to those checks, said Eric Nakashima, OTS’ director of safety and security.

We "just needed more manpower" before Handi-Van drivers could be included, and those checks will be added in the coming months, Nakashima added.

Handi-Van drivers are subject to ride-alongs by supervisors to make sure they’re doing OK after three months and six months on the job, OTS officials said. They also have to take an annual eight-hour retraining course.

Meanwhile, Keawe and Mahaulu aim to press on with their suit — largely, they say, for Robello’s 12 grandchildren and six great-grandkids.

"She won’t be able to see them graduate or anything because she passed away at such a young age," Keawe said. "My mother was the driving force of our family. She held us together as one family. Ohana was very important to her."