Mother took on system and won

Juile Pagliarulo of Peters Court has just received a check from an insurance company. The 4-foot, 11-inch mother of 16-year-old Timothy Pagliarulo took on “the system” — and won.

Last September 29, at 7:10 a.m., Timothy was involved in a motor vehicle accident with a local school bus in an area very close to his house. He was leaving his home to head to Belmont High School, where he is a student, driving a 1996 Dodge Intrepid — his first car. He had owned it for less than three days.

Peters Court, which is on Ladd Hill, is an unusual street with a decline at one end that turns into a circle road. It can be difficult to navigate for those not familiar with it, Julie Pagliarulo said.

Somehow moments after Timothy left his driveway, his vehicle collided with a school bus driven by Billy-Jo Sweeney of First Student, Inc., which services students in the Shaker Regional School District.

“Tim got out of the car and said to the bus driver, I’m getting my mom,” Julie Pagliarulo reported. “We both came running back, and I’d grabbed my digital camera.”

Although no one on the bus appeared to be seriously injured, the Belmont Police and Fire Departments responded rapidly with a number of apparatus, as they normally would do for any report of a school bus accident. Later Shaker School Superintendent Michael Cozort confessed to feeling somewhat overwhelmed by what he saw on the scene. “I got there, and it looked like a mass casualty situation. There were more trucks and emergency vehicles — I thought, oh, my God what have we got here?”

Fire Chief Rick Siegel reported that of the 35 middle school students who were on the bus when the accident occurred, two reported ankle problems and seven others complained about back problems. “As a precautionary measure, we always put someone complaining of back or neck pains on the long backboards and transport them to the hospital,” Chief Siegel related.

But at the accident scene, Julie Pagliarulo saw something else. She saw skid marks on the street that she believed clearly indicated that the bus driver, and not her son, was at fault. “What the skid marks showed, it was pretty haunting to me. I couldn’t let it go,” she said. “It was like a flyswatter hitting a fly. (The bus) pushed him up a hill 75 feet. It threw (his car) and you could tell that his tires were locked.”

Julie drove her son to Lakes Region General Hospital while Belmont Police worked on the accident investigation. Timothy was never issued a summons. Insurance officials later declared his car a “total loss.”

But the bus company’s insurance representatives disputed the boy’s claim that the bus driver was at fault.

Even more disturbing to Julie Pagliarulo was that the next day’s newspaper stories somehow made it look like her son — a 16-year-old boy driving to school for the third day in his new car — was somehow at fault. “That’s why I went for it (the fight),” Julie said. “I said, it can’t be left like this.”

Julie’s first big challenge was getting the official report from the Belmont Police. When she finally received it, it clearly showed that Timothy had been on his side of the road and the bus rammed into his vehicle — twice. “She (the bus driver) didn’t even mention that she had hit him two times,” Julie said. “She may have been too rattled.”

Even Tim didn’t mention the second collision until his mother asked him directly about it. Julie now says the bus driver may have been trying to pull back for hitting Tim’s car and, in the process, may have overcompensated and hit his vehicle again with the rear end of the bus.

The Belmont Police report also included the names of several youngsters who had been on the bus. Julie decided to see if she could contact some to see if they would collaborate her son’s version of the accident. “I called every number with children and some of them weren’t listed,” she said. “It was hard, like when there are seven Smiths in town. It was well over 100 phone calls, trying to connect or reconnect with someone. But one of the parents even wrote a letter, describing what their child had told him that very day.”

When Julie had six firm witnesses, her son’s testimony, the police report and the photographs of the road skid marks, she spoke to a local attorney. He advised her to go to Small Claims Court to settle the dispute.

In January, Julie paid the $60 court fee to make a claim. “I didn’t understand a lot of this because it’s all new to me,” she said. “But we had an original court date, a hearing on the merits. I didn’t understand that, I didn’t understand any of the lingo in this court action. I thought, we’ve got the court date and that was when I was going before the judge. I got confused.”

Instead the court ruled that the case would move forward. The bus company’s lawyers tried to have the case dismissed, but the court turned down their request.

Finally on March 24, Julie and Timothy Pagliarulo came to the Laconia District Courthouse ready to appear before a judge. They were asking for $4,990; the figure must be lower than $5,000 to be eligible for a Small Claims Court claim.

But before the case began, a court mediator asked the family to consider trying to resolve the case by mediation. She advised Mrs. Pagliarulo that even with all her evidence, justice can sometimes be unpredictable and she might still lose.

“These people felt they had an edge on me because they were trying to scare me,” Julie said. “But I had the police report. I had the fact that Tim never got a ticket. I had all these witnesses that verified Tim’s story. I had the police report diagram. It was kind of intimidating but we didn’t want to be without anything.

“So we went from $4,990 to $3,500,” she concluded. “I guess I agreed with Tim. At least he’d get a new car out of it.”

Last week, Julie Pagliarulo received a $3,500 check from the company that insures the First Student Inc., the bus company used by the Shaker Regional School District. The figure may not seem like much, but Pagliarulo says it will allow her son to replace his car and restore his reputation.

On Saturday night, Timothy took a short break from his job at Patrick’s Pub in Gilford to talk about the ordeal. “I’m relieved that I’m going to have a car finally,” he said. “I’m happy my mom got it all figured out.”