Lawyer who sued airlines crashes plane

Boy, I read that report, and I saw this exchange:

"...At that time, I directly expressed my concern that this abort was a close call and I asked the pilot if he realized that we had very little RSA [runway safety area] and that even if he went over the end at 1 mph he was in trouble as it was a substantial drop off. His response was that he would worry about flying the aircraft, or 'I'll fly the aircraft...' and I[assistant airport director] should worry about, or be concerned about airport matters...

This reminds me of the USS Missouri when it went aground in the Chesapeake Bay back in 1950, I think she was doing 20 knots or so in an area she had no business doing, near Hampton Roads, I think. There was a new skipper aboard, and was taking her out for the first time.

The captain took the ship to the wrong side of a channel marker, and the Coxswain, who had been through that area dozens of times tried to tell him, and was ignored. He tried again, and was ignored. Below decks, the navigator KNEW something was wrong, and was frantically looking out a porthole to be SURE. The Coxswain tried to tell the Captain once more, and promply had his head rudely bitten off by his new captain. After that, he determined he wasn't going open his mouth for anything.

The ship ran aground on some gooey mud, and went nearly a half mile ashore.

It ran aground during an unusually high spring tide...:(

Very bad for the Skipper. It was a major operation to get it off, unloading everything that moved, waited for the next high tide, had 16 oceangoing tugboats, divers in the water with water hoses spraying mud away from the hull...a real mess.

Piper's initial downfall was directly attributable to being found slightly at fault and then having to pay the whole judgment.

Joint and several liability is one of the most evil ways the dirty filthy greedy scumbags of the trial bar enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. We have to crush this greedy tyranny. They are the worst scum in the country and I hate them worse than drug dealers and terrorists.

Here in Arizona we see controlled flight into terrain all the time. Idiots from Florida who night-fly at 6000' like usual, forgetting that the brown bumpy things on the charts represent mountains that can be twice that high in this part of the world.

There is still a scorch mark on the mountain a half mile behind my house where some dodo (a commercial pilot no less) flew into a granite cloud on a moonless night a few years ago. We heard the crash. It was the second one on the same mountain since we moved here.

If morons like that get even one penny from the airplane maker, it's too much.

-ccm

Granite cloud, eh? heh heh heh.

Fortunately, a few things from the government are still not subject to interpretation. I can see the NTSB inspector at the pearly gates - "Did you see the five digit number on the sectional? Did you think it was a Zip Code?"

The Malibu crashes I remember - three of them at least - did not fly into the sides of mountains. They descended until they wrecked. Very strange.

Bit harsh. To anyone still reading the thread, a professional videographer named Shawn Adams shot hi-def video of the plane crashing and that video has been delivered to the investigators. He was at the show to make a HD promo film for his own services, and to shoot some video for one of the airshow performers.

This is the first crash ever caught on HD video, but as it was shot from the show grounds, there's no relevant audio, and the actual impact of the plane is not visible. The aircraft is seen to stall and drop the right wing before dropping out of sight.

In my professional opinion, he was never in the ejection envelope, and as an examiner for the Hunter type rating he'd have known that.

There are a few things you do with an aircraft where if you lose power you're screwed, and taking off from that built-up area in a single-engine jet is one of them. Jet engines now are incredibly reliable, but the jets of the fifties and sixties weren't (and the air forces of the world paid a butchers' bill to match).

For those asking about damage, a house was completely destroyed. The owner was raking the ashes for surviving valuables the other day, shocked at her loss but grateful that no one was home. Quick response by bystanders and by fire departments prevented the destruction of other houses, but by the time people were calling 911, seconds after the crash, the upper story of the house Guilford hit was gone.

I agree that the flaky doctrine of joint and several liability has done much to create the quasi-random lottery that we have currently in lieu of a tort system that compensates people who suffered a wrong in some proportion. So has the lack of responsible rules, like "loser pays" on fees. The biggest scam is class-action litigation, invariably designed by lawyers for lawyers and rarely of any benefit whatsoever to the putative plaintiffs.

But I don't think that celebrating the death of a prominent tortster does anything but make us look small. Let's take a high road and have a prayer for the guy (and thanks that it wasn't worse, and maybe a prayer for the poor lady who came home to find a jet had fallen square on her home and obliterated it).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.