A jury yesterday decided that the Port Authority intentionally discriminated against a paraplegic man who uses a wheelchair by failing to provide him with bus service that accommodated his disability.

The jury, which voted 10-2, tried to award Melvin Kramer $10,000 plus a bus pass for life.

When Common Pleas Judge Ronald W. Folino told jurors that they would have to put a dollar value on the bus pass, they abandoned their initial plan and just awarded Kramer $10,000.

That was the same award that Kramer won by a 2-1 vote of an arbitration board in 2002. He was not able to collect that award, however, because the Port Authority appealed the decision to Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Port Authority spokeswoman Judi McNeil had no comment on yesterday's verdict and didn't know whether the agency would appeal the verdict.

Kramer, 32, of Moon, who has been in a wheelchair since a traffic accident in 1998, kept a logbook detailing at least 160 times when subway elevators malfunctioned or buses failed to pick him up because their wheelchair ramps and lifts were inoperable. His attorney, Noah Fardo, argued that he had been passed up an estimated 300 times between 1999 and last year.

Daniel DeBone, the Port Authority's assistant director of road operations, testified that the transit agency had only five documented complaints from Kramer.

Acknowledging that wheelchair equipment does fail, DeBone told the jury that the Port Authority is in the process of replacing its old buses with new ones that have better equipment and has a "safety net" in place to handle situations when a handicapped person fails to receive service.

Fardo said he doesn't think the $10,000 award sends much of a message to the Port Authority, but he hopes the jury's decision did.

"It was a high burden of proof for us to reach," Fardo said, explaining that the jury agreed with his contention that the Port Authority had intentionally allowed buses with inoperable lifts to leave the garages when buses with functioning equipment were available.