LAND O’ LAKES, Fla. — A 2006 Pasco County bus crash is now at the center of a bill Florida Legislators will debate in the coming weeks.
The crash happened in September 2006, and severely injured then 16-year-old Marcus Button.
He was the passenger in a car when a Pasco County bus pulled out in front of them.
Today, at 33 years old, Button suffers from a number of mental and physical disabilities, short-term memory loss and the ability to make judgements.
He isn’t able to work, or drive, and his mother, Robin Button, says the crash changed her son’s life forever.
“It would seem to me, at least going through what I went through, that they kind of wish he would have just died,” Button said. “I mean, I hate to say it that way because they have not done anything to help him.
If they actually cared, why haven’t they?”
Button is talking about a judgement against the school district in 2010 for the crash that awarded Marcus Button $1.65 million, money to go toward his lifelong medical care.
Instead, the family attorney, Steele Olmstead, says the district only paid what they had to under Florida’s legislative cap, $163,000.
Marcus Button suffered severe injuries in this 2016 crash in Pasco County. (Courtesy of Button family)
Olmstead says the Pasco School District doesn’t carry private insurance for its fleet of buses, which means if there is an accident like Marcus Button’s, the school district is only legislatively responsible to pay up to a $200,000 claim.
“I don’t understand why the legislature hasn’t brought this up,” Olmstead said. “I don’t understand why Pasco County has not decided to be responsible, or accountable for what their actions were and accept the judgment of, you know, the verdict of the jury.”
Under the verdict, Pasco County was responsible to pay an award of $1.65 million with 6% interest.
To date, that award totals around $3.2 million, an award that is now the subject of a bill that would lift the legislative cap for Marcus Button, forcing Pasco Schools to pay the full amount of the jury verdict.
The bill has gone before legislators more than 10 times since 2010, and according to the family’s attorney, has never passed.
Spectrum Bay News 9 reached out to Pasco County School District, and it said it had nothing to add as the bill is prepared for debate.