Use Of Aircraft In Violation Of Lease Results In Loss Of Indemnification
In National Union Fire Insurance Co. v. Care Flight Air Ambulance Service, Inc., 18 F.3d 323 (5th Cir.), cert denied, 115 S.Ct. 293 (1994), the court held that when an aircraft is used in violation of a lease the user is not entitled to indemnifications. Thus, where the aircraft was used by a sublessee, who was not authorized under the plane lease, the insured's hull policy carrier was not liable.
The matter of Spring v. United States, 833 F. Supp. 575 (E.D. Va. 1993), concerned the application of conflict of law rules in a federal tort claims act wrongful death action where the negligence was alleged to have been caused by the air traffic controllers at Dulles and BWI.
The pilot took off in Kentucky, then strayed off course and crashed in Maryland. The defendants asked the Virginia federal court to apply Maryland law as its wrongful death statute limited recovery by parents for the death of adult children to pecuniary losses, while the Virginia statute did not. After finding that both Virginia and Maryland follow the rule of lex loci delicti in tort actions for substantive law purposes, and lex fori for procedural law, the court determined that the "place of the wrong" was Maryland and therefore, held that the Maryland wrongful death statute would be applied.
The court also considered the issue of whether the damages of the wrongful death statute should be considered as a matter of substantive or procedural law, as the lawsuit had been filed in Virginia. The court ruled that the limitation of a parent's right to recover for the death of an adult child was properly deemed as substantive law.
In In Re Air Disaster at Ramstein Air Base, Germany on August 29, 1990, MDL No. 919 (W.D.Tex. Nov. 23, 1993), an issue arose concerning the applicable law arising from a C-5A Galaxy crash in Germany, which killed thirteen persons.
In response to the filing of seven wrongful death suits, defendants Lockheed and General Electric had six suits removed to the Southern District of Florida and one removed to Western District Court of Texas. Defendants then successfully moved the judicial panel on multi-district litigation for transfer of the Florida cases to Texas.
Before the Florida Court, the defendants moved the court for an order that Georgia law, which would bar plaintiff's claims on the basis of the ten year statute of repose, would apply to liability issues. Plaintiffs, who favored Texas law, opposed.
Both Texas and Florida employed the "most significant relationship" approach of the Restatement on Conflicts. Thus, the court ruled that Georgia liability law would apply because the airplane was designed and manufactured in Georgia, entered into the stream of commerce in Georgia, and the injury-causing conduct occurred there. The court also noted that Lockheed's principal place of business was in Georgia, while General Electric's was New York. In addition, the court stated that "to hold that a manufacturer must defend itself against the law of the state simply because an injured plaintiff is a citizen of that state circumscribes the Restatement's objectivity of certainty, predictability, and uniformity of results.
Commander Properties v. FAA, 11 F.3d 204 (D.C.Cir. 1993), involved a class action lawsuit against Beech Aircraft Corp. and its owner Raytheon, based on an alleged defective wing design requiring costly modifications.
Plaintiffs obtained a stay of the trial, until the FAA could make a determination of whether the design was defective. After the FAA determined that there was no defect, the plaintiffs sought to appeal the determination to the D.C. Circuit Court. The Circuit Court declined to hear the action on the basis that the FAA had merely found that the aircraft at issue had passed initial certification testing and were currently considered airworthy after compliance with the airworthiness directives.
In Farley v. Cessna, No. 93-6948, 1994 WL 396479(E.D. Pa. July 22, 1994), Cessna obtained a protective order from plaintiff's discovery requests.
Plaintiff sought documents relating to design specifications and engineering drawings for components of Cessna aircraft and other high-wing Cessna aircraft. The court held that these documents, which contained proprietary information, were subject to protection.
In Engebretsen & Hartford insurance Co. v. Fairchild, 21 F.3d 721 (6th Cir. 1994), the plaintiff pilot injured his back when plane landed too quickly, allegedly as a result of problems with the automatic stall avoidance system. Plaintiff sued the manufacturer of the stall avoidance system and the jury found in favor of the manufacturer.
Plaintiff appealed from the district court's denial of his motion for a new trial. Plaintiff argued that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence two reports by defendant's accident reconstruction experts after the jury instructions had been read. Further, plaintiff objected that the reports were hearsay and irrelevant since according to plaintiff they were conducted under circumstances that were not sufficiently similar to the accident.
The court rejected plaintiff's arguments holding: (i) that the reports were admissible because plaintiff had referred to them in the cross-examination of the experts; (ii) that the hearsay exception was inapplicable because the information was of the type relied on by experts in the field; and (iii) that the tests were conducted under sufficiently similar circumstances to be probative.
In JetCraft Corp. v. Flight Safety International, 16 F.3d 362 (10th Cir. 1993), plaintiff was a trainee pilot on board aircraft which crashed. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that instructor pilot of plane was a bailee who under Kansas' law of negligence owed plaintiff a duty of ordinary care.
Plaintiff also argued that under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur the plaintiff was entitled to a rebuttable presumption of negligence because the aircraft was under the instructor pilot's exclusive possession and control.
The court rejected both of plaintiff's arguments. The court held that the instructor pilot was not a bailee because bailment only applies when an entire item of property, not just the flight controls, is entrusted to the bailee. Further, the court found that res ipsa loquitur did not apply because plaintiff had not established that the instructor pilot had exclusive control over the aircraft.
In McGlivra v. National Transportation safety board, 840 F. Supp. 100 (D. Colo. 1993), the NTSB denied a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the cockpit voice recorder tape recovered from an air crash of a commercial jetliner. Plaintiff, a relative, sought the tape for a wrongful death action.
The court held that the tapes are barred by statute from public disclosure and that the NTSB could not be forced to release the tapes. According to the statute, NTSB can only release pertinent portions of the tape transcripts and not the tapes themselves. The court noted that a party to a litigation arising from an accident, as opposed to a party in a FOIA enforcement action, could possibly have access to the tapes under a protective order.
In Broin v. Philip Morris Companies, 641 So.2d 888 (Fla. Ct. App. 1994), flight attendants filed a class action suit against tobacco manufacturers alleging damages from second hand smoke. The trial court dismissed the action holding that the issues raised by the class representatives might not be shared by the entire class.
The appeals court overruled the trial court holding that the necessary elements for certifying a class existed. The class was distinct and numerous. Also, the claims of the class members were sufficiently common in that they were all passive inhalers of second-hand smoke and all were allegedly treated in the same manner by the manufacturers.
In Lear v. Upali (USA), Inc., 613 N.Y.S.2d 367 (N.Y. 1994), a manufacturer of a plane was sued for negligence after the unexplained in-flight disappearance of one of its business jets.
The court noted that the plaintiff met the "exclusive control" element of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. The court found that the defendant manufactured the airplane, provided the training for the pilot, and that either the defendant or its distributor maintained the airplane. The court thus concluded that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applied because the defendant had control of all the relevant instrumentalities
In Johnson v. Pratt & Whitney Canada, Inc., 34 Cal. Rptr.2d 26 (Cal. Ct. App. 1994), defendants failed to produce documents despite over fifty court orders to do so. Further, documents claimed by defendants to be destroyed were later found to exist. Court granted issue and evidentiary sanctions against defendants for their failure to comply with discovery. As an additional sanction, the court struck defendants' answers to the complaint. Consequently, plaintiffs were awarded 4.9 million in damages for the wrongful death of two marine's in a plane crash.
Defendants argued on appeal that they should not be sanctioned because the objectionable conduct was the result of their former counsel. The court of appeals rejected this argument holding that the trial court has great discretion in imposing sanctions and the evidence of the client's misbehavior was substantial.
In Craig v. Atlantic-Richfield, 19 F.3d 472 (9th cir. 1994) cert. denied 115 S.Ct. 203 (1994), decedent was being flown by his employer to work on an off-shore oil platform that was leased by defendant when he died in an air crash.
Plaintiff's counsel relied on the defendant's original demand for a jury trial in deciding not to make his own request. The court, however, ruled that the defendant did not have standing to request a jury trial. Accordingly, the judge proceeded to try the case and found that the defendant was not liable for the decedent's death.
The appeals court upheld the decision of the lower court noting that the court may remove a case from the jury docket if it finds that the right to a jury trial did not exist under a statute or the constitution.
In Holmes v. Cessna Aircraft Co, 11 F.3d 63 (5th Cir. 1994), appellant challenged various aspects of costs award granted to Cessna.
The appellate court found that the witness travel costs were necessary but that the costs for expert witnesses and photocopying were excessive and remanded for a recalculation.
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