The City of New Orleans and two contractors are being sued by seven victims of the New Year’s Day truck attack that killed 14 people and injured dozens of others on Bourbon Street.
Morris Bart, LLC filed the suit on behalf of Alexis Windham, Corian Evans, Jalen Lilly, Justin Brown, Shara Frison, Gregory Townsend and the family of Brandon Taylor, one of the 14 killed in the attack. It names the City of New Mott MacDonald, LLC and Hard Rock Construction, LLC as defendants.
Lawyers filed the suit with the Orleans Parish Civil District Court on Thursday, and said they would seek damages deemed reasonable with legal interest and costs, but did not give an amount.
The suit claims the plaintiffs suffered serious physical and emotional injuries, including gunshot wounds, fractures, permanent impairments and loss of earnings among other damages. They’re seeking damages for past and future suffering, medical expenses, loss income, disfigurement, the loss of companionship and support. Joseph Taylor is seeking additional damages for the death of his son, Brandon.
It’s the first legal case filed since the incident on Jan. 1, when Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street while engaging in a gun battle with police.
The lawsuit accuses the city of ignoring warnings that predicted this chain of events, and contractors of not meeting their obligations by fixing the bollards on Bourbon Street as planned.
In 2019, city officials were warned that the bollards—steel pillars designed to deter vehicle attacks—were not effective.
The bollard system
The bollards were installed in 2017 as part of the city’s $40 million safety plan, which came after several vehicle ramming incidents, including one involving a gunman who drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France in July 2016, killing 86 people.
Some of that money was used to acquire 48 portable bollards that can be put on sidewalks or streets with little notice, and also portable “wedge” barriers that block access to streets. The portable bollards had been used for traffic control as early as the 2017 Mardi Gras season, the lawsuit claims.
The $40 million safety initiative included the reconstruction of Bourbon Street between Canal and St. Louis Street. Engineering, management and development consultancy Mott MacDonald designed the project.
By 2018, the Mott MacDonald bollard design had been fully implemented on Bourbon Street. The design consisted of a baseplate with two fixed bollards on each side of a central sliding bollard that moved to allow for vehicle access. But it only protected the street, not the sidewalk, according to the lawsuit.
The city said the bollards, clogged with beads, containers and fluids, began to malfunction.
Suit alleges poor security planning
In 2019, the French Quarter Management District commissioned Interfor International to evaluate the bollard system and identify other vulnerabilities. Their report said the risk of terrorism, particularly mass shootings and vehicle attacks, was highly possible and moderately probable with the lack of traffic control in the area, the suit says.
“The current bollard system on Bourbon Street does not appear to work,” Interfor International said in the report.
In May 2020, engineers with Mott MacDonald acknowledged that vehicles had been driving on the sidewalk along Conti Street illegally, partly due to the lack of bollards, and noted that the wider sidewalks in the Quarter provided ample space for vehicles. They said the bollards, both fixed and portable, were the best way to prevent an attack in the Quarter, according to the lawsuit.
“That was their opinion for the area around Conti Street, except for Bourbon Street,” the suit noted.
In April 2024, the firm presented an analysis on new bollards and security barriers on Bourbon Street. It evaluated nine attack scenarios, but none considered vehicles driving onto the sidewalk, according to the suit.
“This is particularly nonsensical given the simultaneous efforts of Mott MacDonald engineers to recommend sidewalk bollards in other sections of the French Quarter in the vicinity of Conti Street to deal with the problems and dangers of vehicles driving on to the sidewalk in those areas,” the suit adds.
One scenario showed a Ford F-150 truck turning right onto Bourbon from Canal Street, something eerily similar to the Jan. 1 incident. The report detailed potential vehicle speeds of 50 to 70 mph and showed that an F-150 could turn from Canal to Bourbon Street at speeds between 12 and 20 mph. But the firm ultimately recommended a cheaper bollard system from 1-800-Bollards, which failed to address those threats, and their plan did not include any bollard protections for sidewalks along Bourbon, the suit said.
Mott MacDonald’s design was incorporated into the Bourbon Street project, but it lacked fixed bollards or any bollard capable of withstanding a vehicle traveling at 12 mph, the suit claims.
According to the suit, Mott MacDonald instructed a contractor to remove the existing bollard system, leaving only bare asphalt until the cheaper bollards were installed. They did not plan to replace the bollards with temporary or mobile ones while the system was being repaired or add any additional barriers or fencing.
“The design standards prepared by Mott MacDonald had one common theme: strip away all existing protections and leave nothing in its place until the inferior 1-800-Bollard system was in place. This should have prompted any reasonable designer to implement an interim barrier system during construction,” the suit states. “Mott MacDonald seemingly did not think it prudent—or negligently failed to recommend—a system that would protect the sidewalks of Bourbon Street from a vehicle attack.”
The suit said Mott MacDonald turned to a professional engineer, licensed by the State of Louisiana, who specialized in traffic flow and control. The firm placed significant responsibility on this engineer to ensure the project was completed accordingly. Under the standard terms from the City of New Orleans General Specifications for Street Paving, contractors are required to implement safety measures like barriers, restrict access, redirect traffic, install temporary barricades, and request street closures if needed. However, the suit notes Mott MacDonald retained overall responsibility for designing and managing the project.
During a video conferencing call in September, engineers with Mott MacDonald confirmed that they would only place bollards in the same general area as the existing ones, with no permanent bollard installation on the sidewalks, but said there would be sidewalk replacement work. Mott MacDonald also noted that a contractor would need to develop a plan for barricades at the site, the suit says. Hard Rock Construction, LLC was selected as the contractor for the bollard replacement project, the suit said.
Under the terms of the project, the first bollard system should have been installed at the intersection of Bourbon and Canal, likely due to its significance as a big entry point into the Quarter.
Construction on the project began on Nov. 18, but instead of starting at the Canal Street intersection, Hard Rock began work at the 300 and 750 blocks of Bourbon Street.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day, Jabbar turned his vehicle into an active construction zone, where bollards had been removed or disabled. A police vehicle was parked at the entrance to the street, but no appropriate barriers, temporary or otherwise, were put in place, leaving the intersection vulnerable. He was able to travel approximately three blocks down the street without being stopped, the suit says.
The suit says both Mott MacDonald and Hard Rock knew they could use portable bollards to protect the site, and that there was at least one wedge barrier at the construction zone when the incident occurred.
“As such, the subject incident on January 1, 2025 was the fault of, and proximately caused by the negligence of Defendants Mott MacDonald and Hard Rock,” the suit states. “Given Mott MacDonald's reputation as a global leader in urban infrastructure design and threat mitigation, it was reasonable for the city to rely on them to develop and supervise efforts against vehicle ramming attacks in the French Quarter. However, despite the urgency, Hard Rock did not begin work at the intersection of Canal Street and Bourbon Street until over a month into the project, with initial updates showing construction starting at other blocks of Bourbon Street and later moving to the Canal Street intersection by Dec. 19, 2024.”
WWNO has reached out to the city, Mott MacDonald and Hard Rock for comment.
