The BusPatrol lawsuit landscape spans at least half a dozen active or recently decided cases in Florida and New York, most of them class actions filed by drivers who say the school bus stop-arm camera program issued them faulty citations and then denied them a fair way to fight back. Plaintiffs accuse BusPatrol America, LLC and its municipal partners of due-process violations, fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and enforcement in districts that never authorized the program. Some claims have survived motions to dismiss and moved into discovery. Others have been thrown out. Two states have rewritten their laws in response.
What Drivers Are Actually Suing Over
The through-line in nearly every case is the appeals process. BusPatrol’s cameras capture footage, an AI system builds an evidence package, a police officer signs off, and a ticket goes out to the registered owner. Drivers who want to contest the ticket then run into a hearing system that plaintiffs describe as rigged: hearings held far from the county where the citation was issued, presumptions built into the law that shift the burden onto the driver, backlogs so long that no meaningful review happens at all, and financial arrangements in which the entity running the appeals also takes a cut of the fine.
Fines typically run $200 to $250 per violation, with appeal fees pushing the total higher. In one Florida case the driver’s total cost after a losing appeal came to $270. Suffolk County’s program alone generated more than $21 million in 2023, and BusPatrol kept 45 percent of it. Those revenue shares vary — 70 percent in Miami-Dade, 60 percent in Allentown — and plaintiffs point to them as the motive for issuing as many citations as possible.
The Florida Class Actions
Schultz v. BusPatrol (Hillsborough County)
Plant City resident Stanley Schultz filed a class action in 2026 in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit against BusPatrol America and Hillsborough County Public Schools. Schultz had been fined $225 for passing a school bus with its stop arm deployed. He argued the bus’s warning lights never flashed before the arm swung out. A judge sitting in Tallahassee upheld the fine anyway.
The suit’s central claim is that Hillsborough County and BusPatrol violated Florida Statute 316.173 by routing contested citations to administrative law judges at the Division of Administrative Hearings in Tallahassee instead of the “local hearing officers” the statute requires. The complaint says these out-of-county decision-makers had no local appointment, no community connection, and no statutory authority to hear the cases. According to the filing, roughly 82 to 90 percent of contested citations were upheld. Schultz called the process a “kangaroo court” where he felt “guilty before even going into the hearing.” The suit asks the court to declare the DOAH determinations void and to order restitution of fines and costs to class members. BusPatrol has called the case “baseless.”
Olmea v. BusPatrol (Miami-Dade)
Miami-Dade driver Jorge Juan Rizo Olmea filed a federal class action on March 5, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, naming BusPatrol, Miami-Dade County, and the Miami-Dade County School Board. The complaint alleges the program violated procedural due-process rights by failing to give drivers a meaningful way to contest $225 fines, improperly delegated enforcement authority to a private vendor, and lacked adequate judicial oversight. As of June 2026 the case remains active before Judge Darrin P. Gayles, with plaintiffs seeking leave to file a second amended complaint.
The Miami-Dade program itself was suspended in April 2025 after the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office flagged “significant errors,” including incorrect citation numbers and amounts, and a backlog of more than 8,600 contested citations that drivers had no way to challenge before a judge. The school board declined to revive the contract in October 2025 and only voted to restart the program in April 2026, after state lawmakers passed SB 462.
Florida’s Legislative Response
The 2023 law that authorized the cameras, House Bill 741, required hearings to be run by local hearing officers with “due process” observed. Counties could not deliver. In Polk County, drivers had to wait for a $225 civil violation to be upgraded to a $329 uniform traffic citation before they could even request a court date. SB 462, passed in 2025, extended the contest window from 30 to 60 days, shifted responsibility for hearings from local courts to school districts using appointed hearing officers, and allowed virtual hearings. Critics have pointed out a built-in conflict: districts now run the appeals for a program from which they collect revenue.
The New York Cases
Kadinsky v. Town of Hempstead
Sergey Kadinsky filed a class action in Nassau County Supreme Court in November 2023 alleging that the Town of Hempstead issued school bus camera tickets in school districts that had not authorized the program. In October 2024, Acting Justice Philippe Solages Jr. denied dismissal on the fraud and negligent misrepresentation claims, ruling that plaintiffs adequately alleged the town “knowingly misrepresented the sufficiency of its evidence in notices of liability.” Unjust enrichment and constitutional claims were dismissed. The surviving claims are in discovery. Three additional driver suits against Hempstead and BusPatrol were consolidated and moved to federal court, where both defendants have moved to dismiss.
Morgulis v. BusPatrol America
Not every New York case has survived. In August 2024, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos dismissed all 13 claims in Morgulis v. BusPatrol America LLC. When the plaintiff filed an amended complaint arguing BusPatrol was liable for “aiding and abetting” municipalities, defense attorneys at Nixon Peabody threatened a Rule 11 sanctions motion if the amended complaint was not withdrawn.
The Croce Ruling and What It Changed
Suffolk County resident Alfred Croce III appealed a $250 stop-arm citation and won. The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court found that Suffolk County had not proved the bus was a properly marked school bus actually loading or unloading students. Camera footage alone could not establish those statutory requirements. Suffolk County paused prosecution on more than 9,000 citations and ultimately dismissed over 8,000, forfeiting up to $2 million in potential revenue.
The New York Legislature responded in the April 2024 state budget with an amendment creating a “rebuttable presumption” that a vehicle captured on camera is a properly marked school bus (as long as it holds valid inspection certification), and that students are loading or unloading whenever the footage shows flashing red lights and an activated stop arm. The practical effect was to move the burden of proof onto contesting drivers.
Accuracy and Oversight Problems Feeding the Suits
The lawsuits do not exist in a vacuum. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, police approved 96 percent of all citations reviewed between September 2024 and October 2025, well above rates in neighboring departments: Salisbury approved 42 percent, Bethlehem 58 percent, and Easton 76 percent. Residents raised questions about buses deploying stop arms while parked at curbs with no children boarding. The Allentown School District had no designated program manager and required no independent audits of citation revenue. BusPatrol and the district fought for months to keep contract and revenue data confidential; it was released only after state Office of Open Records rulings.
In Rockland County, New York, a citation issued in October 2025 was dismissed in Nyack Justice Court after video showed the vehicle passed the bus seconds before the stop sign deployed. A county attorney appeared during the same session to dismiss several other citations with similar problems. In the Hempstead area, reporting has alleged that more than 80,000 citations were issued in four school districts that had never authorized the program.
The Force Multiplier Solutions History
BusPatrol’s corporate lineage traces to Force Multiplier Solutions, a company at the center of what a federal prosecutor called one of the largest domestic public corruption cases in U.S. history. FMS CEO Robert Leonard pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, admitting he paid more than $450,000 in bribes to Dallas City Council Member Dwaine Caraway and more than $3 million to former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells in exchange for $70 million in school bus camera contracts.
FMS surrendered its Virginia business license on May 31, 2017. BusPatrol registered to do business in July 2017 from the same Lorton, Virginia, address. A 2019 Montgomery County, Maryland, Inspector General report found the two entities operated from the same address and phone number, used the same equipment, and held the same contracts. Former FMS president David Poirier became president of BusPatrol. Jean Souliere, listed as a Force Multiplier Solutions director, became a director of BusPatrol Inc.
BusPatrol has sought to distance itself from FMS. In 2023 testimony to the Maryland General Assembly, the company described the transition as a routine acquisition of intellectual property and some technology employees from the “now-defunct” FMS, and stated that Souliere “was never an employee at FMS or otherwise related to FMS in any way.” Canadian business records and reporting contradict that characterization. BusPatrol says its current CEO, Karoon Monfared, joined well after the transition and that no one on its current board or executive team has ties to FMS.
Where Things Stand
The Hillsborough and Miami-Dade class actions remain active, as do the surviving Hempstead claims in Nassau County and the consolidated federal case. The Morgulis dismissal shows the courts will throw out claims they view as overreaching. Croce shows an appellate court will vacate a citation the evidence cannot sustain. Both states have since amended their statutes in ways that make it harder for drivers to win on the merits Croce and Schultz raised: New York by creating a presumption in favor of the camera evidence, Florida by moving the hearings inside the school districts that share the revenue. BusPatrol has said it will defend the pending cases vigorously.