AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) – Family of U.S. Navy members who died in a helicopter fire and crash can sue the company hired to perform maintenance of the aircraft, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled.
On Jan. 21, the court ruled the claims made by plaintiffs representing the estates of J. Wesley Van Dorn, Sean Snyder and Brian Collins don’t boil down to the military’s judgment. Those plaintiffs, plus the injured Dylan Boone, can proceed with claims M1 Support Services negligently fulfilled its duties.
M1 argued the Navy was partially or wholly responsible for the accident because it inspected the helicopter before and after M1’s maintenance, which would call the Navy’s judgment into question.
“To demonstrate a political question, however, it is not enough that M1 alleges these defenses; it must provide evidence of a connection between these military actions and the crash as part of its plea to the jurisdiction,” Justice Jane Bland wrote.
“M1 does not suggest, for example, that the Navy provided M1 with a defective spare part. M1 and the record it produced do not connect general criticisms regarding cannibalized parts or the lack of an appropriate technical manual to a failure to detect the fuel-tube damage or to the crash of this aircraft.”
Five men were in a Navy MH-53E helicopter in January 2014 off the coast of Virginia when it caught fire and crashed. It was revealed, after the Navy recovered the wreckage, that there were two holes in a fuel-transfer tube and chafing damage around those areas.
The same chafing likely exposed poorly insulated wiring that ignited the fuel leaking out of the two holes.
M1 followed Navy directives when performing “phase maintenance” about three months before the crash and marked the helicopter “safe for flight.” One maintenance card from the Navy required M1 to check the fuel and vent lines in the cabin for leakage, chafing and obvious damage.
M1 asserted a government-contractor defense, but the trial court has yet to rule on that. In the meantime, the trial court dismissed the suit – and the Court of Appeals affirmed – because it said it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction.
It relied on a state Supreme Court decision in American K-9 Detection Services v. Freeman, which recognized the political question doctrine in Texas cases involving the military. It said Texas courts must consider abstention when judicial review of military action inappropriately encroaches on the Executive Branch’s constitutional authority over the military.
But that authority isn’t threatened by retaining jurisdiction over the lawsuit against Texas-based M1, the court ruled.
“The central issue in this case is the maintenance of a particular aircraft and whether deficiencies in its maintenance contributed to a crash,” Justice Bland wrote.
“To the extent that the Navy’s inspections are implicated, we are not convinced that its maintenance work on this particular helicopter is insulated from judicial review. The federal government-contractor defense the Supreme Court recognized in Boyle v. United Technologies Corp. indicates it is not.
M1’s defense as the trial court proceedings resume includes a plea to apply settlements from other defendants as credits, should it be found liable.