Dorothy Walker tried to stop her Lime rental electric scooter during a ride in downtown Austin last summer, but something was wrong with the brakes, she alleges in a lawsuit filed last week against Lime.

The scooter then tipped over, sending Walker into an iron gate surrounding the Capitol grounds, the suit says, and leaving her with multiple facial fractures, a damaged tear duct, two broken ribs and her nose “nearly severed from her face.”

Walker is now at least the second person in Austin to sue Lime, one of a handful of companies behind dockless scooters in Austin, for a faulty brake issue. In February, 38-year-old Austin Community College student Jeremiah Mahoney similarly sued Lime after he flew off one of its scooters when the wheels locked.

Walker's suit, filed May 2, claims that Lime knew its scooters had issues that caused "sudden excessive braking." Austin-based attorney Jack Zinda said it is unclear what exactly happened in Walker's crash, because he and Walker have not been able to download data from the scooter she was riding.

"We're trying to figure that out still. Essentially, the brakes did not work as they should have worked. Her belief is that the brakes malfunctioned," Zinda said.

He said Walker is one of seven people Zinda Law Group is representing in scooter-related injury cases against multiple scooter companies.

A February statement from Lime said it had detected a glitch causing the front wheels of its scooters to brake, especially when the devices moved downhill at a high speed while hitting an obstacle like a pothole. The scooter could stop unexpectedly, the statement said.

Several people were injured by Lime scooters suddenly locking up in New Zealand, and that country's head of Transportation threatened in February to remove all the devices from the roads there, the Guardian newspaper reported.

A Lime spokesperson said the glitch has since been fixed and the company has not seen any more such issues.

"Lime continues to closely monitor the issue to ensure there are no additional causes of the malfunction and the issue remains categorically resolved," a Lime spokesperson said Tuesday. Its representatives said the safety of Lime's riders is the company's highest priority.

When Walker crashed Aug. 14, she was going to meet some friends after getting off work early, Zinda said. It was about 4 p.m., and she was riding a scooter for the first time, the lawsuit says. Walker was riding west on 11th Street, near the intersection with Congress Avenue, on the north sidewalk next to the Capitol, the lawsuit says.

Walker was in a hospital for three days after the crash and had to have emergency reconstructive surgery. She will need more reconstructive plastic surgery, the lawsuit says.

"She was catastrophically injured," Zinda said.

Walker is seeking more than $1 million in damages for her medical treatment, pain and suffering, physical disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of earning capacity and lost wages, the lawsuit says.

Walker’s injuries are among dozens recorded in Austin since scooters first began cropping up in April 2018. Austin health officials, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just wrapped up a study of scooter-related injuries reported over a three-month period and found that most were preventable.

The emergency room at Dell Seton Medical Center downtown has seen one to two scooter injuries every day since scooters arrived, and at least 97 people since May 2018 have been hospitalized with more severe injuries, said Dr. Christopher Ziebell, the hospital's emergency department medical director.

Other lawsuits have popped up in Austin about scooters. Mark Walters said he tripped over a Bird scooter that was lying on a sidewalk in November, and Michael Fuchs filed a petition in small claims court in August for $3,000 after he said a Lime scooter sideswiped his vehicle.