Posts by user "DaveReidUK" [Posts: 25 Total up-votes: 53 Page: 2 of 2]¶

Originally Posted by BFSGrad

Without willing plaintiffs, there is no lawsuit.

Originally Posted by WillowRun 6-3

There is one lawsuit pending in federal district court in Washington, D.C. - although I am fairly certain that it is a consolidation of claims arising from the accident brought by some different groupings of plaintiffs represented, in each instance, by different attorneys. This imprecision of my knowledge of the actual litigation at present, for which I am making no excuses, is another reason why I will have to shift some attention away from other pursuits and spend some time reading court filings on the Pacer U.S. court systems web portal. More on the first reason, later. (And among my other pursuits is actual legal work, and it happens to be in the aerospace domain - transactional, not litigation, however.)

I want to draw three distinctions about the lawsuit arising from the accident. First, insofar as deriding (and mocking, and disliking or worse) the legal profession in general and particular individual lawyers is concerned, I will say in advance that I will shake my head in disbelief if anyone in this forum community believes that litigation against the U.S. federal government relating to this accident is improper or just about lawyers enriching themselves. Essentially every single post here, or at the very least every line of inquiry or analysis or interpretation of the facts as they have emerged, points a very straight finger of blame at the FAA's way of doing things.

Related to that, secondly, in my reference to the advocacy by the parents of Bluestreak 5342's F/O I was not trying to highlight their grief or the grieving process. The point was - and in my mind (capable of being derided because it sometimes is a legal mind to some extent) still is - that although obviously connected to their grief, these survivors also appear to be on a quest to exonerate the F/O's conduct on the final approach in question. I suppose I could hope to have learned more aviation history and be able to recite some, maybe most, of the significant previous accidents in which survivors of aviators, when those aviators were blamed for accidents in which they were killed, sought to clear their names. I don't think the instance of 5342's F/O's parents is unique. I do think it is very relevant to the impact, the implications, of the lawsuit and the Board's report. (More on this also later.)

Soon after the accident, I read about two young attorneys who were passengers on Bluestreak 5342. From memory, they were mid-level associates (maybe four or five years in practice, not yet partners in the firm) in a comparatively small law firm. They were returning to D.C. from taking depositions. I realize no one (or probably no one) on this forum who qualifies for the first Papa letter in the forum title will care much about the travails of young lawyers doing the equivalent of building hours. I will just say that it is hard work, and often far more thankless than digs at the legal profession would have a reasonable person conclude. And ..... I mention these two particular victims of the accident because I could - when I read that news report soon after 29 January - largely relate to where they were in their careers. Say what you will, and say it with as much vitriol as forum rules will allow - their deaths in the accident deserve their day in court, despite digs at lawyers and the profession. Discussion of what is wrong with the court system and the legal process in the United States - well, this isn't Scotus blog or something; that's all another subject. But: I maintain strongly that the attorneys who represent accident victims' families and other survivors of those victims have as much right to attack the responsible parties in court as attorney-bashers do to make fun of their profit motive. I haven't done that kind of legal work. I have met very fine, very excellent attorneys who do, and I think it behooves aviation professionals to recognize that bringing their clients' claims forward to that ultimate day in court is honorable, and necessary work. (This is not to defend jackpot justice awards, or bad-attorney behavior, as if I need to make that clear.)

Third, and the "first reason" I'll need to start eating more time on Pacer, is that I continue to believe that the aviators of Bluestreak 5342 are being taken advantage of by an otherwise respectable legal process. If one believes that they did nothing wrong, then why is it that their estates are not represented in the courtroom in order to defend them? Aren't they implied or implicit defendants, though obviously not named as such? And as I said in an earlier post, one could argue, 'well, the Army pilots aren't there to defend themselves, and they're getting pretty seriously wrung out as having primary responsibility - in addition to the systemic factors of course - and these three deceased U.S. Army aviators, they don't have an active defense in the courtroom either, do they? So why should the airline pilots have one?" Pretty simple answer: the U.S. federal government admitted liability, so the Army pilots - admittedly indirectly - have had their possible defense as pilots waived out from under them.

But since I haven't been delving into all the various court filings which by now presumably have piled up during pre-trial discovery, it is possible that the Bluestreak 5342 aviators' estates have retained their own counsel and are seeking to intervene in the case. I'll find out. Though I should apologize for repeating myself, and while admitting that intense study of intracacies of federal procedure was something I left behind when I picked up the J.D. (after all, reading Advisory Committee Notes about amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence, it's fascinating stuff, amiright?), the gross unfairness of alleging negligence against the pilots who do not have their own legal representation in the case strikes me as an error and an injustice. And I am not a stranger to dealing with insurance carriers who want to settle, while the client wants to fight on - if the pilots' estates had separate representation, their lawyers would need to make sure their cowboy or hiking boots are on snuggly - the stuff to be thrown at them by the airline's corporate types and the insurance carrier attorneys who mostly call the shots, would seem likely to be intense.

Almost last, with mega-billions coming out of Congress for a totally new ATC system, it continues to seem obvious to yours truly that in designing it, and then doing all the many steps of implementing it, the lessons learned from the Board report will have a window of opportunity not usually present in the U.S. NAS. It should not go to the same fate of being ignored or shrugged off as so many Board reports have suffered. If the litigation - though of course separate from the Board work - creates leverage for such a beneficial outcome, I would say "Who wants it?" (with apologies to WSJ sportswriter extraordinaire, Jason Gay - about the U.S. Women's Hockey Team and the Wisconsin Badgers Women's Hockey Team as well). Or in less cryptic terms, Go fo It.

Last, Uberlingen. One of the Skyguide officials who was deeply involved with the aftermath of the accident delivered several presentations about it, most all of which went into some depth, during my academic residence at that certain Air and Space Law graduate law degree program located in Montreal, Quebec. Those presentations, as the old saying goes, "left a mark."

Originally Posted by BFSGrad

In the Crafton lawsuit, AA and PSA are listed as defendants in addition to the U.S. Government. However, the PSA5342 pilots are cited within the lawsuit for failures; e.g., non-response to TCAS RA , not briefing the 33 approach. But the bulk of the PSA5342 criticism is leveled at AA and PSA for failure to properly train PSA flight crews about the risks of DCA ops.

Originally Posted by punkalouver

My question to other people on this thread is: Did the NTSB do some sort of evaluation of this particular helicopter in order to come to a reasonable conclusion that all errors were in such a way that they were all in the direction of resulting in the helicopter being higher than indicated as opposed to errors potentially cancelling each other out(or partially so)?