Cole County Jury Awards Church Chaperone $500,000 After Charter Bus Crash
After trial: Defense counsel Steven Hughes of Hughes Lawyers filed a motion for new trial after the April 23, 2025 verdict, arguing that seatbelt evidence was improperly admitted and may have inflated the award, and said Cavalier Coaches was pursuing post-verdict remedies. No ruling on that motion has been reported and no appeal appears in Missouri appellate records as of September 2026, so the $500,000 verdict is recorded as standing. The Cole County trial docket is not machine accessible, so the disposition of the motion could not be confirmed directly. The defense was funded by Cavalier Coaches' insurer, Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Insurance Company; payment of the verdict is not a matter of public record.
A Cole County jury awarded Ronette Schulte $500,000 after the driver of a charter bus carrying her church's youth group fell asleep at the wheel and crashed in 2022. Schulte, an adult chaperone, suffered a nasal injury that left her unable to breathe through her nose for about eight months, reinjured a shoulder that had recently been through rotator cuff surgery, and came away with acute stress disorder from watching the children in her care thrown around the bus. The verdict was returned on April 23, 2025, before Judge Cotton Walker. Cavalier Coaches, Inc. did not dispute that its driver fell asleep, but argued at trial that Schulte's injuries beyond the nasal injury were not caused by the crash.
What happened
In 2022, Ronette Schulte was riding as an adult chaperone on a charter bus carrying her church's youth group when the driver, working for Cavalier Coaches, Inc., fell asleep at the wheel. The bus crashed, and children on board were thrown around the cabin. Schulte, the adult responsible for keeping them safe, could do nothing while it happened. The case was filed in Cole County Circuit Court as Ronette Schulte v. Cavalier Coaches, Inc., case number 23AC-CC05502.
Schulte's nose took the worst of the impact. Her attorney described the cartilage as ripped off the bone, leaving her unable to breathe through her nose for about eight months. The crash also reinjured a shoulder that had recently been through rotator cuff surgery, undoing part of that repair. Beyond the physical injuries, Schulte was diagnosed with acute stress disorder. There was no claim of PTSD. Her attorneys told the jury the harm ran through what she had watched happen to the children in her care and her helplessness to stop it.
Cavalier Coaches did not contest that its driver had fallen asleep. At trial, defense attorney Steven Hughes of Hughes Lawyers conceded that point but argued there was "a lack of evidence of proximate cause of virtually any injuries other than as to her nose," and stressed to the jury that Schulte's rotator cuff had already had a recent surgery. Plaintiff's counsel answered that the earlier repair was itself what the crash reinjured. The trial turned on how much of Schulte's condition the crash, rather than her medical history, actually caused.
The jury sided with Schulte. On April 23, 2025, before Judge Cotton Walker, it returned a $500,000 verdict. Kari Schulte, who tried the case, said she had deliberately not built the case around medical bills, focusing instead on the effect of the crash on her client, which is part of why the number is notable in a case with no catastrophic physical injury. Schulte was represented by Kari Schulte, Matthew Clement and Josh Moore of Clement, Van Ronzelen & Schulte of Jefferson City. Cavalier Coaches was insured by Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Insurance Company and defended by Steven Hughes and Claire Hughes of Hughes Lawyers in Ballwin.
After the verdict, Hughes filed a motion for new trial, arguing that evidence about the driver's failure to wear a seatbelt should not have been admissible under Missouri law and may have driven up the award. He said the defense was pursuing post-verdict remedies and intended to pursue them as far as they would go, citing what he called numerous significant evidentiary issues. No ruling on that motion has been reported, and no appeal in the case appears in Missouri appellate records.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Clement, Van Ronzelen & Schulte LLC
All Clement, Van Ronzelen & Schulte LLC proven verdicts →A Cole County jury returned $1.56 billion in November 2023 across four plaintiffs whose claims were consolidated for one trial: three Roundup users who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the wife of one of them on a loss of consortium claim. The trial court later cut the punitive awards to roughly nine times each plaintiff's compensatory damages, bringing the judgment down to about $611 million, and the Missouri appellate courts left that judgment standing.
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