Weekly Edition

Instructor’s role key in aviation case

Student pilot wins plane crash verdict

A Shenandoah County jury last month returned a $250,000 verdict for a student pilot injured in a plane crash – even though the plaintiff was a licensed pilot flying his own plane at the time of the crash. In one of the few aviation cases to go to a jury in Virginia, the student pilot sued the flight instructor who was beside him at the controls, claiming the instructor should have taken control and landed the plane safely.

The 2002 accident occurred as the student pilot was attempting to re-qualify for his pilot’s license. Flying over Shenandoah County, the engine of his Cessna 4-seater unexpectedly quit. The student pilot attempted to make an emergency landing in a field, but overshot the field and crashed the plane in a ravine.

The plaintiff broke his neck in the crash and was knocked unconscious. He had to wear a halo brace on his head and shoulders for six months and incurred $22,000 in special damages.

The plaintiff claimed that, in the moment of crisis, his flight instructor failed to take charge of the aircraft and safely land the powerless plane.

Jury instructions were critical in the case as the judge and attorneys sought to define the duty of a flight instructor who was not actually flying the plane at the time the emergency arose. Both sides cited out-of-state opinions that ranged from one extreme to the other. Lawyers in the case said that federal aviation regulations also provided guidelines, but controlling federal authority deemed those rules too vague and general to support “negligence per se.”

In addition, the parties’ experts clashed on whether the defendant flight instructor was the “pilot in command” of the aircraft, a question the judge resolved at trial in favor of the plaintiff. The judge found that the defendant instructor was the “pilot in command” as a matter of law, and then instructed the jury that the pilot in command of an aircraft is “directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft. He must maintain proper control of the aircraft.”

With that instruction, and others building on that duty, the plaintiff’s lawyers say they were able to persuade the jury that negligence by the flight instructor led to the crash and the injuries. Defense lawyer Michael Melkerson said that those instructions were used over his repeated objections.

“The instructions led the jury to believe that my client was an insurer of the safety of that flight,” Melkerson said. “We are appealing.”

Matt Broughton and Gregory Habeeb, both of the Roanoke firm of Gentry, Locke Rakes & Moore, tried the case for the plaintiff. “This is the only case in Virginia dealing with the question of who is supposed to be flying the plane in this situation,” said Broughton.

Besides having to make their case about the duty of a flight instructor, the plaintiff’s counsel had to contend with defenses of contributory negligence and sudden emergency. The defendant was allowed to argue that the plaintiff’s own negligence helped to cause the accident and that the instructor should be held to a lesser standard because of the crisis situation.

Head of the aviation section of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, Broughton was eager to discuss the case. He pointed out that few aviation cases go to trial in Virginia. “Most of them settle,” he said, “because they are complicated.”

Habeeb noted that aviation cases involve physics, engineering, mechanical, and weather issues. “Pilots have their own lingo,” he said. “You can get it, but you have to find a way to communicate it.”

To educate the jury, the plaintiff’s expert used a four-page primer on aviation. “He essentially took the jury to flight school for half an hour,” said Habeeb.

Although the jury was out for about 3 hours before returning the verdict for the plaintiff, Melkerson said the jury asked a question about damages after only five minutes of deliberation.

© Copyright 2008, by Virginia Lawyers Media, all rights reserved