The Nebraska Supreme Court is being asked to rule that the state was negligent in designing the route through a construction zone where two serious accidents occurred. One of them was the 2001 school bus crash that killed four people and injured 27.

The high court will hear arguments June 3 in a case brought by James Malolepszy of Elkhorn, who was injured in a crash along a stretch of U.S. Route 6 in west Omaha five months before the bus crash.

At the time of the crash, the highway was under construction, narrowing the roadway on a bridge.

Malolepszy was eastbound on May 23, 2001, in his Jeep Cherokee when he came upon a pickup truck driven by Charles Atkins, which was stopped on the eastbound shoulder.

As Malolepszy tried to pull around the truck, Atkins drove onto the road and the two vehicles collided.

Malolepszy's lawyer, James Schaefer, said the construction zone was poorly designed and confusing to drivers.

Schaefer said the 45 mph speed limit was too high and that the state failed to adequately warn motorists of the difficulty in maneuvering through the site, among other things.

Douglas County District Judge John Hartigan Jr. ruled that Atkins, not the construction zone design, was the cause of the accident.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Gaffey said: "The claimed state negligence, even if proven at trial, would do nothing to explain, excuse or justify Atkin's failure to observe and yield the right-of-way," he said.

The bus crash happened in October 2001.

The Seward High School bus was on its way back from a band competition at Burke High School in Omaha. The driver swerved to avoid an oncoming school bus from Norfolk, went off the road and broke through a guardrail that had been damaged months earlier, but not repaired completely, an investigative report showed.

It came to rest on its side in the creek below the bridge.

The National Transportation Safety Board later said the lanes at the construction zone were so narrow they offered no margin of error for two approaching buses.

After the bus crash, the Nebraska Department of Roads issued a statement saying that the work zone "met or exceeded safety guidelines required for safe travel through a construction project."

The safety board said a contributing cause of the accident was the driver's unfamiliarity with the bus. The driver, Joshua Smith of Seward, usually drove a conventional school bus rather than the transit-style bus carrying the students and chaperones.

In all, 23 claims against the state totaling $37 million were filed over the bus crash.

The state has settled 20 of the claims.

Two were withdrawn. One more is pending.

Killed were Ben Prescott 14; Ian Koehler, 14; Eric Bader, 17; and Tracey Kohlmeier, 40.

Families of all four filed lawsuits against the state and others, alleging they failed to ensure motorists' safety in the construction zone.

The Norfolk school district and Charles Vrana & Sons Construction Co., which was doing the road work for the state, also reached settlements with the victims and their families.