Many readers undoubtedly remember all too well the fatal air crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in early February 2009, a flight departing from New Jersey and destined for Buffalo, New York.
Sadly, that Newark-originating flight ended tragically, with the plane crashing into a house in New York after stalling. Fifty people — everybody on board the flight as well as a resident in the home — died in the accident. No other commercial airliner has crashed over U.S. airspace since that accident.
Unsurprisingly, the outcome of that disaster spawned a significant amount of personal injury litigation in its wake, with wrongful death lawsuits being filed in both federal court and in New York state court.
A memorandum filed in federal court in New York earlier this week updated the judge on the status of the filings. According to that document, 29 settlements have been approved, with two others still pending. Several others remain ongoing in state court. Eleven additional cases may yet be litigated at trial.
A number of entities have been named as defendants in the litigation, namely, Colgan, Continental Airlines, Pinnacle Airlines (Colgan’s corporate parent), the plane’s manufacturer, Bombardier, and Flight Safety International, the school where the pilots of Flight 3407 trained. Colgan and Continental had a code share agreement pursuant to which 3407 was marketed as a Continental flight.
The crash put a strong focus on regional airlines. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board stated in their formal accident report that pilot error caused the crash.
Source: Wall Street Journal, “Settlements continue in NY plane crash lawsuits,” Jan. 16, 2013
- Our law firm has been advocating passionately and with unrelenting diligence on behalf of clients in wrongful death and other personal injury litigation for decades. For more information about the firm and its vigorous representation of persons needing proven legal services, please visit our Bergen and Passaic County Wrongful Death page.
