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Ag Plane Crash Leads to $6.7 Million Wrongful Death Verdict
When Steve Allen, a highly respected Northern California ag pilot with 26,000 accident free hours, crashed his Rockwell S-2R into a whisper-thin, barely visible galvanized steel wind observation tower on January 11, 2011, a dark and sickening secret about personal greed and avarice was exposed for all the world to see. The $6.7 million wrongful death settlement the aviator's family was awarded this month will hopefully help ensure other similar tragedies won't happen in the future. (www.flyingmag.com) Mehr...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Hmm...it would be interesting to know exactly how many accidents there have been in say, the last 10 years? Is this happening frequently or is this accident uncommon? New regs might be in order.
I think that it may be legal to erect such towers, however the insurance company probably should have insisted that it be painted and lighted. How many government regs are propagated because of insurance liability concerns? Often, regulations are passed not because something has happened, but rather because the liability to insurance companies is enough that they push for legislation to address a problem before it exists. What happened here? I would have thought that their insurance carrier would have taken every opportunity to make sure that they exercised due diligence to lessen their financial exposure should an accident like this occur.
You can bet the insurance company's liability is already lessened. One death won't pay 6.7 I doubt.
Apparently it didn't. There may exist the possibility that since it was just a prospecting type fixture that there may not have been any type coverage on it. I guess it would depend on how an insurance carrier was structured with an LLC or whatever group the ownership was in. From the liability standpoint, it looks like it would have been taken down or at least laid down, but if it met the normal rules and legal requirements for air travel, which it did, they just may not have worried about it.
Well, #1, when you set a rule such as a tower being lighted at 200' +, some will always find a way around it. #2, hard as it may sound, a good ag pilot always surveys his application area. Don't know what happened here but there are many of these around the country. I got to agree with Wallace 24, the rules and the court verdict are at odds. Looks like there should be some liability on part of the landowner, cause in most cases, there was a lease involved on the land. I sort of feel an appeal coming on.
You can probably bank on an appeal more than 6 mil in the bank.
probably so. The other thing I just noticed in the article is that while many have been put up, there doesn't seem to be any rush to take one down. Depending on distance, after they have served their usefulness at a location and provided the needed information, I would think they could be taken down and put up at another location rather than just leaving them and erecting a new one somewhere.