WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a New Orleans judge's ruling that the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development shares half the blame for the 1999 Mother's Day bus crash that killed 22 senior citizens and injured 19 others on their way to a Mississippi Gulf Coast casino.

The high court denied the state agency's request to review and overturn Civil District Judge Rosemary Ledet's apportionment of fault for the infamous crash.

The bus, owned by Custom Bus Charters, ran off the road on Interstate 610 near New Orleans, plowed through a guardrail and landed nose-first against an embankment.

Early in 2007, Judge Ledet concluded that because the I-610 guardrails were inadequate, the highway department was as much to blame for the fatal accident as driver Frank Bedell, whom she found negligent.

Bedell, 46, a drug user in chronically poor health, died of a heart-related ailment three months after the crash.

Attorneys for the state highway department went to the federal court after the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal last summer upheld Ledet's decision, and in November the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the matter. (See Aug. 1 and Dec. 1, 2008 issues of Bus & Motorcoach News.)

Attorney Daniel Becnel, one of the plaintiff attorneys, said the U.S. Supreme Court action settles the question of liability in the case, which now returns to Ledet to determine how much money should be awarded from the state and its insurers in each of 38 lawsuits filed in connection with the crash.

In November, Becnel sent letters demanding the state pay its $5 million insurance limit, plus interest and costs, and the state's insurers pay their $70 million policy limit.

Survivors of the crash and the families of those killed in the incident reportedly have settled with Custom Bus Charters insurer, Motor Coach Industries, Casino Magic, which paid part of the cost of the trip, and a Tenet Health Systems internist who cleared Bedell in 1998 to continue driving even though he was suffering from congestive heart failure.