Greyhound is without a doubt one of the classiest ways to travel across the country, which is probably why so many classy people choose to ride it. Like that one guy in Louisiana who serenaded his seatmate, from memory, with the entire soundtrack of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode or that one transgendered individual whose extremely loud cell phone ring tone was some woman having a porn star orgasm.
That's why it must have been a surprise when Garrett Scott, driving the Greyhound route from Dallas to Houston on June 28, was sucker-punched by passenger Edward Darnell Reed as the bus passed through Conroe, Texas.
Scott includes few details about the scuffle in the lawsuit he filed last week in Dallas County against Reed, bus manufacturer Prevost, and Bentech, a Pennsylvania pipe manufacturer, saying only that Reed was able to reach through a plexiglass partition and repeatedly punch -- the lawsuit uses the term "pummel" -- Scott as he drove.
Reed, as the attacker, is liable for the mental and physical trauma suffered by Scott, the suit argues, but so are Prevost and Bentech. The companies marketed a partition intended to shielding driver from irate passengers that, as evidenced by Scott's injuries, did nothing of the sort. Scott argues they should have known better, given the prevalence of passenger-on-bus driver violence and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks which involved hijacked airplanes but highlighted the need to protect bus drivers too.
