TOLEDO, OH (AP) -- Attorneys want a federal court to determine whether members of a university baseball team involved in a deadly bus crash earlier this year are entitled to insurance money.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of Bluffton University's players and coaches seeks to confirm the bus driver and the busing company were covered in the March accident.
A charter bus carrying the team to spring training in Florida plunged off an overpass in Atlanta early on March 2. Five students from the Mennonite school and the bus driver and his wife were killed. Twenty-eight other people were injured.
The Oct. 31 filing in U.S. District Court said the driver and bus company were insured under three policies issued to the university and that the victims are entitled to coverage for injuries. According to the lawsuit, the insurance companies - Hartford Fire Insurance Co., American Alternative Insurance Corp., and Federal Insurance Co. - have refused to acknowledge the driver and bus company were covered under the policies, which total about $21 million.
The is the second lawsuit filed since the bus crash.
The mother of one of the players killed, Tyler Williams, filed another lawsuit in September against the university, the company that made the bus, the city of Atlanta and the company that provided the bus and driver for the team. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Investigators have said the bus driver apparently mistook an exit ramp for a highway lane, but the National Transportation Safety Board has not made any finding on the crash's cause. The board's final accident report is expected next spring, the NTSB has said.
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