Joseph Sepesi, the survivor of a fatal crash on Route 28 that killed fellow Kingston High School juniors Dillon Gokey and Jack Noble is suing the driver of the tractor-trailer who hit the car they were driving in on their way to school earlier this year.
Noble was driving Gokey and Sepesi on the morning of Monday, January 8 when their car was involved in a four-vehicle crash after being hit by a tractor-trailer driven by Bronx resident Ramon Luna Luna. According to a police report, Luna said he was driving eastbound on Route 28 in Mount Tremper and was unable to stop after seeing a Honda attempting to turn left onto Route 212. Police maintain that Luna’s truck struck the Honda from behind, then crossed into the westbound lane and struck the Hyundai Santa Fe driven by Noble head on, the impact causing the tractor-trailer to turn onto its side.
Noble and Gokey were pronounced dead on the scene of the accident, while Sepesi was airlifted to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla. Sepesi suffered a severe facial fracture, significant damage to both femurs and was only recently released from the hospital.
According to a 113-page complaint received by Ulster County Court on Tuesday, February 27, Sepesi is seeking damages for “severe, permanent and disabling injuries” suffered in the “negligent, wanton, reckless and careless acts” of Luna. Also named in the complaint are JNDL Logistics Corp., JZ Distributors Corp, Best Choice Trucking Delivery Services LLC, EZY Trucking Inc., Mountainside Farms, Worcester Creameries Corp., Dora’s Naturals Inc., Golden Flow Dairy Farms Inc., Upstate Dairy Farms Corp. and K-1 Logistics LLC; some of the companies named in the suit are dairy producers who allegedly engaged Luna to transport their goods.
Sepesi and his mother, Christine Sepesi, are represented by Joseph O’Connor of O’Connor Partners, PLLC.
“Our client was horribly, horribly injured and traumatized,” said O’Connor last week.
O’Connor said the lawsuit will consider many different angles as it comes together and will proceed deliberately.
“Our focus now, since we started lawsuit, is looking at the driver, the motor carrier and what mistakes they made both in the hiring process and in the actual operation of the motor carrier,” he said, adding that the collision was captured on video by a business near the intersection. “We’ve had an inspection of the trucks, the tractor, and the trailer by our expert actual reconstruction folks. And we’ve done our preliminary background on the driver, both his driving history and criminal history.”
O’Connor said his office will follow the police investigation as it continues to unfold as well.
“I don’t think the police have charged him and finished their investigation,” O’Connor said. “I don’t believe they’ve charged him with any traffic infractions and/or commercial vehicle infractions we believe are also going to be involved in that. So we’re kind of waiting to see that and we really need to see that information before we move too much further.”
In the suit, it’s claimed that Luna was driving at an unsafe speed and did not fully assess the road ahead. It further states that Luna’s tractor-trailer was “carelessly and negligently managed, operated and controlled, and being negligently operated over its allowable weight capacity, was improperly and unsafely loaded.”
The police reports will be critical to how the lawsuit filed on behalf of Sepesi will proceed. “They were there on the scene, they took a lot of measurements and took statements presumably from the driver, and that’ll be something that they eventually will share with us, as well as the body cameras of the officers that responded,” O’Connor said. “There’s a lot of things that are important.”
O’Connor added that they are also waiting to see whether the families of Gokey and Noble plan lawsuits of their own.
“There could be two other lawsuits filed by the estates of the poor boys that were killed,” O’Connor said. “I think we would kind of wait for that to catch up, if at all. And then we’ll do discovery.”
O’Connor also said that he plans to file suit against the New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) over the design of the intersection where the crash occurred.
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