Page 26 - EAA78.Newsletter.Archives.(February.2017-July.2021)
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CHAPTER CHATTER, EAA Chapter 78 3
blamed the rudder. Wolk has been litigating the Piper possibility of pilot error was remote. Such was the case
cases since the 1990s. in the 2013 crash of a Piper Seneca near Johnstown,
N.Y., following a midair breakup. The pilot, who also
“He is a guy who has to be taken absolutely seriously was flying passengers on an angel flight, had taken
because he will do and spend whatever is necessary to pains to avoid inclement weather during the flight, said
prepare the case fully,” said Ralph Wellington, a the lawsuit against Piper and other defendants.
partner at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, who as a
corporate defense lawyer has tried multiple cases The breakup of another Piper Seneca near Castro
against Wolk. “He does not do anything by the seat of Verde, Portugal, in 2009 also occurred during good
his pants.” weather, another lawsuit says. An instructor and two
student pilots were flying in clear weather at night
Lawyers such as Wolk for years have been the bane of when their aircraft disintegrated.
the general aviation industry, which after hitting a high
in 1978 of about 18,000 aircraft manufactured declined Portuguese aviation authorities later concluded that a
to producing just under 1,000 planes in 1994. phenomenon known as runaway trim caused the pilot,
who had not been trained to deal with the problem, to
Piper, which for years manufactured planes in Lock lose control. But an expert working for the plaintiffs
Haven, Pa., but closed all its facilities in Pennsylvania said in an affidavit that the aircraft likely crashed
by the early 1980s, also was caught up in the decline, because its stabilator had failed.
going in and out of bankruptcy.
“The accident is simply a repeat of many in-flight
It was a stunning fall for a company that once was an breakup events that have occurred scores of times in the
industry leader and whose planes were used to train same manner [i.e. loss of pitch control, loss of
most U.S. military pilots in World War II. It is now stabilator, bending or shedding of wings, and
owned by the government of Brunei, a tiny oil- and gas- destruction of the fuselage of a stabilator-equipped
rich nation on the north coast of the island of Borneo, Piper airplane],” Douglas O’Herlihy, a former NTSB
and headquartered in Vero Beach, Fla. air crash investigator and Coast Guard pilot with more
than 17,000 hours of flying experience, said in an
In 2016, it had sales of just over $150 million. affidavit for the plaintiffs.
Industry leaders blame the decline in part on civil In-flight breakups, though rare, are typically
litigation and lobbied Congress successfully to pass the catastrophic and only a few, such as Renick and
1994 General Aviation Revitalization Act, signed by Mielzarek, have survived. Another survivor was test
President Bill Clinton, which barred lawsuits against pilot Sherman Hall, who gives a harrowing account of
manufacturers for design defects on aircraft older than the breakup of his stabilator-equipped Seneca on Dec.
18 years. 27, 1976, which he survived because he was equipped
with a parachute.
One of the bill's drafters, Victor Schwartz, then general
counsel to the General Aviation Manufacturers Hall says that during the test flight to probe for flutter
Association, said liability-insurance premiums in the tolerances, he took the plane to 25,000 feet, high above
late 1970s and 1980s came close to destroying the the Cascade Mountain range in Washington state,
industry. As manufacturers produced fewer and fewer pulsing the controls periodically to gauge the aircraft
planes, the soaring insurance costs were spread across a performance. The aircraft was in trim, meaning that its
declining number of unit sales, and foreign pitch and bank were well under control by the pilot, and
manufacturers not faced with the same lawsuit exposure all was functioning normally.
swooped in to scoop up market share.
Suddenly, he said, “it was like an explosion.”
“It was putting the companies out of business,”
Schwartz said. The nose of the plane pitched downward, both wings
sheared off, part of the tail section and rear door were
Wolk says many of the accidents he’s litigated occurred gone, and the windshields had blown out. As the plane
in good flying conditions, and he contends that the plummeted toward earth, gravity pinned Hall to the
