December 03, 2010, 9:26 PM EST
By Margaret Cronin Fisk
(originally posted on BusinessWeek.com)

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A state court jury in El Paso, Texas, ordered a bus company to pay about $126 million over a 2005 van crash that killed two Mexican citizens and injured five others, a lawyer said.

The jury found Autobuses Los Paisanos Inc., an El Paso- based company, liable for the deaths of Teresa Lozano Acevedo and Ascension Ramirez Caraveo and the injuries of the other passengers, said their attorney, David Harris, in a phone interview. The seven were in a van that flipped over on a snowy Denver highway and struck an overpass, Harris said.

The company failed to protect its customers and the driver was responsible for the accident, according to the lawsuit. The driver was traveling 70 miles an hour through "snowy conditions" before he lost control of the van, said Harris, of the law firm Sico, White, Hoelscher & Braugh in Corpus Christi, Texas.

"Los Paisanos treated these poor people like cattle," Craig M. Sico, a lawyer at the same firm, said in a statement. "The van without seat belts, was driven over 188,000 miles in two years."

"Los Paisanos treated these poor people like cattle," Craig M. Sico, a lawyer at the same firm, said in a statement. "The van without seat belts, was driven over 188,000 miles in two years."

Roger Braugh, another lawyer at the firm, said the passengers were migrant farm workers headed to Nebraska.

The verdict is the 12th-largest jury award in the U.S. this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"It will be appealed and it will be reversed," defense attorney Mannie Kalman said of the verdict. He said he couldn't confirm the amount.

The van wasn't owned by Los Paisanos and the company wasn't responsible for the accident, Kalman said in a phone interview.

"That was an argument they tried to use at trial and it didn't work with the jury," Harris said. The van "was owned by the owner of the company," who also owns the Los Paisanos buses, he said.

The lawsuit is Pina v. Chavira, 2005-8265, District Court, El Paso County, Texas (El Paso).

--Editors: Michael Hytha, Peter Blumberg.