Beauchamp v. New York City Tr. Auth.

Opinion

Beauchamp v New York City Tr. Auth.

2026 NY Slip Op 05364

September 17, 2026

Appellate Division, First Department

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.

This decision is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.

Aurora Beauchamp et al., Plaintiffs-Respondents,

v

New York City Transit Authority, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Decided and Entered: September 17, 2026

Index No. 159757/17|Appeal No. 7013|Case No. 2025-04736|

Before: Moulton, J.P., Mendez, Gesmer, O'Neill Levy, Michael, JJ.

Mauro Lilling Naparty, LLP, Woodbury (Jennifer B. Adler of counsel), for appellants.

Torgan Cooper & Aaron, P.C., New York (Edward T. Cooper of counsel), for Aurora Beauchamp, respondent.

[*1]

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Eric Schumacher, J.), entered May 30, 2025, which, upon a jury verdict, and to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, awarded plaintiff Aurora Beauchamp the principal sums of $25 million for past pain and suffering, $32 million for future pain and suffering, and $8.5 million for future medical expenses, and awarded plaintiff Saul Beauchamp the principal sums of $3 million for past loss of services and $4 million for future loss of services, unanimously modified, on the law and on the facts, without costs, to reduce the award for Aurora's future medical expenses to $8,238,345, and to vacate the awards for past and future pain and suffering and past and future loss of services, and to remand for a new trial of those issues, unless plaintiffs stipulate, within 30 days after entry of this order, to reduce the award for Aurora's past pain and suffering to $20,000,000, the award for Aurora's future pain and suffering to $17,000,000, the award for Saul's past loss of services to $1,500,000, and the award for Saul's future loss of services to $1,100,000, and otherwise affirmed, without costs.

This action stems from an accident that occurred on East Houston Street in Manhattan on March 6, 2017, when a bus owned by defendants struck Aurora, who was crossing the street in the crosswalk, as it was making a left turn. The front driver's side of the bus hit Aurora at a speed of eight miles per hour. Aurora was pulled under the bus, dragged some distance, and then pinned underneath the tire on the front passenger side of the bus for about 20 minutes, until first responders lifted the bus which weighed tens of thousands of pounds and extracted her from underneath it. She was 62 years old at the time of the accident. During the 20 minutes when she was pinned under the bus, she was conscious and sure that she was going to die.

After plaintiffs commenced suit, defendants conceded liability. The trial solely concerned Aurora's damages, and the loss of consortium damages of her husband Saul, who has been Aurora's principal caregiver since her discharge after her lengthy initial hospitalization and rehabilitation.

[*2]

The evidence at trial established that Aurora's injuries were profound. They included a complete lumbosacral plexus avulsion, numerous bone fractures in and about her pelvis, 19 rib fractures, a ruptured bladder, and crush and degloving injuries throughout her body. The evidence also established that her treatment was ongoing. During emergency surgery immediately after the accident, doctors inserted a 10-hole plate and multiple screws to reconstruct her pelvis, but an intraoperative bleed occurred, resulting in Aurora losing four liters of blood (about 80% of total volume) and requiring that the procedure be aborted. She then was placed in a medically induced coma as doctors addressed multiple life-threatening conditions. The internal degloving wound on Aurora's right thigh required twice-daily debridement. Aurora's ruptured bladder was repaired, but she remained incontinent. Forty-three days later, she was transferred from the hospital to a series of rehabilitation and nursing facilities, where she remained for the next 112 days. Her right thigh wound continued to require daily debridement, and wound infections sent her back to the hospital several times.

Plaintiffs' lives were radically altered by the accident. After being discharged from inpatient care, Aurora and Saul attempted to adjust to life in their two-level condo in Florida, but the bedroom and only bathroom were on the second floor, and thus inaccessible to Aurora. They attempted to cope in their own home for nine months, after which they moved into a family member's one-level condo several hours away. The jury heard extensive testimony about Aurora and Saul's active lives before the accident, and how their life had since turned into full-time treatment for Aurora and full-time caregiving for Saul. The degloving injury in Aurora's right leg has not healed and, according to plaintiffs' experts, will never heal. It remains a source of recurrent infections that have required Aurora to be hospitalized several times and will almost certainly require hospitalization periodically for the rest of her life.

[*3]

Since the accident, Aurora remains in chronic pain, which consistently has been exacerbated every time she simply is touched for such tasks as turning her in bed, cleaning her, or helping her in or out of bed. She has been diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Aurora also has flashbacks and nightmares and continues to be treated for a host of psychological conditions, including post traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation. After being discharged from the hospital, she attempted to wean herself off of narcotic pain medication. However, she suffered withdrawal symptoms and also found that the pain could not be managed by any other means. The jury heard testimony that although Aurora might benefit from the implantation of a spinal cord stimulator and a total hip replacement, these procedures were inadvisable because of the high risk of infection from her right leg wound. Plaintiffs' experts testified that there is no viable option for improving Aurora's condition, and that future treatment is limited to preventing her condition from deteriorating further.

On Saul's loss of consortium claim, there was unrebutted evidence that his life has been fundamentally altered by his assumption of caregiving duties for his wife.

Plaintiffs argue that there are no comparable awards that could provide guidance to this court (see generally Donlon v City of New York, 284 AD2d 13, 15-16, 18 [1st Dept 2001]). While we acknowledge the difficulty in arriving at a dollar figure to compensate plaintiffs for their respective past and future pain and suffering and loss of services, there is precedent to guide us in that task and we find the jury's awards excessive to the extent indicated (see e.g. Yvonne Y. v City of New York, 199 AD3d 551 [1st Dept 2021]; Gregware v City of New York, 132 AD3d 51 [1st Dept 2015]; Aguilar v New York City Tr. Auth., 81 AD3d 509 [1st Dept 2011]).

Plaintiffs established Aurora's future medical expenses in the amount of $8,238,345 — the amount calculated by plaintiffs' experts and requested by plaintiffs' counsel in summation — "with the requisite degree of reasonable certainty through the testimony of" their experts, "who testified to each of the treatments that [Aurora] would require, explained why [s]he would require them, and approximated their costs[.] " This testimony "was within the jury's province to credit . . . in making its award" (Lewis v Ganesh, 242 AD3d 548, 549 [1st Dept 2025][internal quotation marks omitted]). The jury's award should not have exceeded that amount. We reject plaintiffs' argument that the difference can be justified by the costs of a proposed spinal cord stimulator implantation and a proposed total hip replacement, given the testimony that those procedures are ill advised because of Aurora's high risk of infection, and consequently, are by no means certain to ever be performed.

[*4]

We are mindful that the total award that plaintiffs will receive is substantial, and perhaps among the largest personal injury awards ever approved by an Appellate Division. However, as reduced, we do not believe that it is manifestly excessive but rather constitutes reasonable compensation for the pain and disabilities caused by the extraordinary injuries suffered by Aurora. Counsel for defendants did not cite to any personal injury case in New York where the plaintiff suffered comparable injuries but received a lesser award. Being dragged by the bus tore Aurora's lumbosacral plexus off her spinal cord, leaving her left leg virtually paralyzed and insensate, and causes her unremitting and excruciating pain. At trial, she described her typical leg pain as an eight or nine on a scale of ten; she said that she did not tell her doctors that the pain was really a ten because they would have sent her to the emergency room. Her pain is exacerbated by CRPS, which cannot be controlled because the only effective treatments are precluded by her continuing risk of cellulitis infections, which have caused her to be hospitalized in each of the three years preceding the trial. Each hospitalization has caused her to regress in her motor strength and in her ability to walk and perform daily functions. Her pain has increased over time and often causes her to wake up screaming. She has become hopeless and suicidal.

As a result of the complex interplay of her injuries, none of the cases cited by defendants provide a close analogy to this case. For example, appellants argue that we should look to Gregware v City of New York (132 AD3d 51 [1st Dept 2015]) and Wynter v Transdev Services, Inc. (207 AD3d 785 [2d Dept 2022]) for an appropriate measure of damages. However, in both of those cases, the Appellate Division rejected the request for a decrease in the award and thus did not establish that the jury's award fully compensated the plaintiff. In addition, the plaintiffs in both of those cases were walking by the time of trial, while Aurora may never walk unaided. Defendants also called our attention to Matter of Steam Pipe Explosion at 41st St. & Lexington Ave. (147 AD3d 421 [1st Dept 2017]), the only case they cited in which this court actually reduced a jury award. However, in that case, by the time of trial, the plaintiff was living independently and performing all of the functions of daily living, a luxury that Aurora cannot even aspire to.

THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.

ENTERED: September 17, 2026