The owner of a limousine involved in a fatal crash at Schoharie, New York, has asked a state judge to dismiss the charges facing him, alleging there is “insufficient evidence of legal causation and foreseeability” to hold him responsible for the 20 resulting deaths.
Nauman Hussain, 28, manager of Prestige Limousine of Saratoga Springs, has pleaded not guilty to 20 counts of second-degree manslaughter and 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide for the crash that killed 17 passengers, two pedestrians and the limousine’s driver.
Multiple brake defects at all four wheels, resulting in “catastrophic failure,” have been blamed for the crash of the stretched 2001 Ford Excursion limousine on Oct. 6, 2018. The limousine sped through a stop sign and went off the road, through a parking lot and into a wooded area.
Police found no tire skid marks on the highway, where the speed limit was 55 mph. The limousine was carrying a birthday party to a brewery.
New York State Police reported that the limo had twice been ordered out of service last year during roadside inspections.
During the post-crash investigation, police found a “removed or peeled-off DOT sticker” that had been placed on the limousine’s windshield to label it as ordered out of service by the New York Department of Transportation. Police investigators found the wadded sticker in the door pocket of Hussain’s personal automobile after the accident.
Testing of DNA from Hussain’s saliva and cheek linings linked it to the removed sticker. The state police laboratory report said the chances of DNA on the sticker coming from someone else were “less than one in 320 billion.”
After the crash, state police found that the company somehow had obtained inspection stickers without submitting the vehicle to required New York Department of Transportation semi-annual inspections.
Hussain’s attorneys filed a motion Sept. 5 arguing that removal of the out-of-service sticker was not sufficient evidence to hold him responsible for the accident.
“The People’s theory of prosecution is that Mr. Hussain, who is alleged to have operated the company owning the limousine, acted recklessly or criminally negligently by disregarding or failing to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the fatal limousine accident would occur, so as to constitute a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation,” the motion stated.
“Given the facts of this case, the evidence of causation and foreseeability before the Grand Jury must have been legally insufficient, as there is no possible circumstance in which Mr. Hussain should have reasonably foreseen that this accident would occur in the ‘manner that it did.'”
The motion later stated that “the alleged removal of the sticker would have, in no way, shape or form, constituted a sufficient direct cause of the accident… At no point was the DOT sticker placed on the limo for anything that could have caused catastrophic brake failure… The People’s assertion ‘that the limousine simply was not permitted on the road,’ even if true, does not support the existence of legally sufficient causation.”
Pre-trial hearings are scheduled for Nov. 4. The trial is set to begin Jan. 6, 2020.
