Driver, company sentenced in fatal crash

The criminal case against the sanitation company and driver whose truck crushed a woman on her way to work two years ago ended Wednesday, setting the stage for a higher-stakes civil case.

The brakes on Robert Moore's garbage truck failed on June 29, 2009, as he headed downhill on Pulaski Road in East Northport. His overloaded 2008 Mack truck overturned, crushing Deborah Shavalier, 56, in her car.

Suffolk County Court Judge James Hudson sentenced Jet Sanitation of Islandia to the maximum for misdemeanor assault, a $5,000 fine. He sentenced the driver, Moore, 51, of Ridge, to 3 years of probation.

"The criminal courts are not designed for corporations," said Shavalier's husband, David James, expressing his dissatisfaction with Jet's sentence.

He said after his wife's death, he couldn't stay in their home in Fort Salonga. Their younger child had just graduated from high school, so he moved to Colorado.

"It was just too painful to stay here every day," he said.

In a statement on behalf of her family, attorney Christopher McGrath of Garden City said that although Moore could have taken steps to lessen the odds of an accident, such as lowering the truck's fourth axle to give it additional stability and stopping power, he did repeatedly turn in the truck for brake maintenance.

"We can easily imagine Mr. Moore as another victim of Jet Sanitation, his own company," McGrath said. He said Jet, on the other hand, had no regard for the community it served.

"Deborah is probably dead because the punishments were so low that 28 brake and weight violations in six months were simply everyday business expenses for Jet Sanitation," McGrath said.

In the civil case filed in State Supreme Court, the Shavalier family is seeking $10 million from Jet Sanitation.

Jet's attorney, Ray Perini, said in court that a manufacturing defect in the brake system was to blame. "This was not corporate greed" or shoddy maintenance, he said. He said an identical truck used by the New York City Sanitation Department had suffered a similar failure.

McGrath dismissed Jet's attempt to shift blame for the crash to a manufacturer.

"Jet Sanitation fixed these brakes, or failed to," he said.

Moore apologized to Shavalier's family in court. His attorney, Francis Fineo, said Moore has not returned to work since the accident. He, too, blamed Jet. The company should have replaced the brakes instead of trying to repair or adjust them, he said.