The family of a man who died in 2017 after falling from a moving party bus has reached a settlement with the company, lawyers said on Friday.
The accident happened on June 3, 2017, while James “Jimmy” Larsen, 27, was riding the bus between Gurnee and Rosemont to celebrate a birthday with about 20 friends, according to family lawyers.
On the return trip, Larsen was standing and controlling the music for the bus when it fell and hit the passenger door. It opened and Larsen fell onto Interstate 294.
“This tragedy changed our family forever and no settlement will bring Jimmy back,” his mother Kimberly Larsen said in a statement. “He was an aspiring comedy writer with his whole life ahead of him. He missed being the best man at his brother’s wedding and the birth of his first niece.”
Select Limousine, the bus’s owner, never inspected the door with misaligned locks, law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a statement. The bus driver also does not have a commercial driver’s license and is not qualified to drive a passenger vehicle, they added.
“Jimmy did nothing wrong,” Joseph Kolar, a partner at Romanucci & Blandin, told the Sun-Times. “He’s standing where the bus was designed for one person … just doing what any other kid would have done on the bus at the time.”
The company operated out of the owner’s Chicago home and had no employees inspecting the bus, Kolar said. “He should never have had the chance to fall off the bus,” he said. “There’s no way that door should ever have been opened if you’re properly maintaining your bus.”
Details of the settlement were not disclosed, but the Larsens said they wanted to raise awareness of their son’s death in hopes such an accident will not happen to any other family.
“We want to spread the word about the lack of safety regulations at both the federal and state levels,” Larsen’s mother wrote. “No family should ever have to suffer a senseless loss because of that kind of negligence.”