Lawsuit Filed Against Estate Of Teacher Fatally Injured In Crash
The family of two children who were struck by a sport-utility vehicle driven by a longtime local teacher have filed a lawsuit against her estate.Marsha Eppert, 63, Yorktown, suffered fatal injuries in the September 2006 accident along Delaware County Road 500-N that severely injured Jalyn Bird, at the time seven years old, and also hurt her brother, Jeffrey Bird Jr., then 10.
Authorities said Eppert, who taught in local schools for 40 years, was on her way to work at Royerton Elementary School on Sept. 21, 2006, when she was involved in what appeared to be a minor traffic accident at county roads 500-N and 450-W. The teacher’s SUV continued to travel eastward after that collision, however, careening through several yards before striking the Bird children as they waited for a school bus outside their home, then crashing into a tree.
In the days following the accident, investigators said they could not determine what had caused the teacher’s car to continue traveling after the initial collision until they had interviewed Eppert. However, she died a week after the accident in Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, after undergoing surgery for internal injuries.
Jalyn Bird suffered two broken legs, a broken pelvis and injuries to her head, spleen and lungs, and spent five weeks in Methodist Hospital after the accident. Her brother was treated at Ball Memorial Hospital for a broken hand and two cracked vertebrae.
In a lawsuit filed this month in Delaware Circuit Court 3, the Bird family — the two children and their parents, Jeffrey Bird Sr. and April Bird — alleges both children suffered “severe and permanent injuries and impairment” as a result of Eppert’s “negligence and carelessness.”
The suit suggests Eppert failed to “take evasive action to avoid the collision” and was driving “while unreasonably limited by health and physical state.”
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Eppert’s husband, J. Larry Eppert, and one of her sons, Ryan, identified as “co-personal representatives” of her estate.
In their lawsuit — filed by Indianapolis attorney D. Bruce Kehoe — the Birds request the case be heard by a jury. Judge Robert Barnet Jr. has not yet set a trial date.