Blind Woman’s Lawsuit Against RTD Tossed Out

A lawsuit brought by a blind woman who said she was knocked down and trampled by passengers during an incident aboard an RTD bus has been dismissed, attorneys said Wednesday.

Millicent Collinsworth sought unspecified damages in her suit charging that the Southern California Rapid Transit District was negligent in operating an overcrowded bus and not providing a safe place for passengers.

Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Robert W. Zakon ruled Monday in a pretrial hearing that the suit contained “no tryable issues of fact”--a decision that led to its dismissal, said RTD attorney Jerry Ramsey.

“The commissioner ruled that the bus company didn’t have a duty to protect (Collinsworth),” said Janet Gullixson, the blind woman’s attorney. Gullixson said she will appeal the dismissal.

The suit grew out of a 1987 incident that later became the basis for a television movie. Collinsworth, accompanied by her guide dog, was returning to her Hollywood home on a bus she had boarded in Westwood. Investigators said a passenger wearing a backpack and standing on the crowded bus “went berserk” and began flailing his arms and demanding to be let off.

In the commotion, the man’s backpack apparently struck Collinsworth in the face, cutting her lip. Gullixson said the disturbed passenger also stepped on Collinsworth’s dog, a Labrador retriever, and knocked the woman to the floor.

Collinsworth said she pushed her way off the bus with her guide dog and walked more than 15 blocks to her home without anyone offering to help her.

She said that, at first, she did not know her lip had been cut in the scuffle. She said she mistook the blood from her nose and mouth for tears, and realized she was hurt only when she arrived home and reached for her keys and discovered her hands were sticky with blood.

Ramsey said Collinsworth reported no injuries to the bus driver. “If we had been told that there was a passenger hurt, we could have stopped,” he said. “What can we do to help her if we had no knowledge that she was hurt?”

Gullixson countered that the RTD “has rules that blind people should sit behind the bus driver--obviously so the drivers can watch them.”