Local News in Brief : Reseda Church Settles Suits Over Bus Crash

The families of two teen-agers killed and six others injured in a 1982 bus accident near Big Bear Mountain during a Reseda church’s outing will receive $1.3 million in damages under an out-of-court settlement.

The settlement, reached in early December, calls upon the First Baptist Church of Reseda to pay more than $442,000 to the families and for the church’s insurance company to pay the rest.

The families filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court after a February, 1982, accident in which a church bus driver lost control of the vehicle while traveling the area’s tortuous roads. After caroming off mountain ledges for more the a mile, the bus went off the highway and over a small cliff.

The two dead teen-agers, Kristin Knepp, 18, and Tony Viso, 16, were students at Calabasas High School. In all, 15 people were injured, but only eight families sued the church.

“There was some question whether the shell of the bus rendered it crashworthy,” said Superior Court Judge Ronald M. George, who mediated settlement talks for three days. “But the basic premise of the cause of the accident was driver error.”

The families should receive their shares of the settlement within a few weeks, said Jay D. Gould, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Monday.

The settlement avoided what was expected to be a nine-month trial involving 19 attorneys, the judge said. “It usually takes that many lawyers to clear their throats, let alone get going,” he said.

The agreement was approved by the church’s congregation, 252 to 0, last month, George said.