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Very few lawyers are willing to take on helicopter accident cases and even fewer lawyers are able to win these cases.
There are several reasons why. First, engineers often describe a helicopter as thousands of rapidly rotating parts all trying to fly in different directions. Just trying to explain, briefly, why a helicopter flies at all can be difficult to explain to a jury.
Another obstacle to success is that few jurors have ever flown in a helicopter. The problem is that "unknowns" tend to make people inherently suspicious — something that is especially true with helicopters because one of the things jurors do know is that they are used for low-level and dangerous flying.
Manufacturers try to exploit these problems and biases by hiring the most difficult and ruthless lawyers they can find to defend these lawsuits.
Our Attorneys Have Settled or Tried Over Two Hundred Helicopter Crashes
When Terry O'Reilly won $9,140,000 for the families of two logging pilots in Fife & Cook v. Bell Helicopter in 1996, counsel for Bell advised that this was the first jury verdict against Bell in more than twenty years. If there have been any since, they have not been reported.
The aircraft involved was a Bell 214, originally designed to carry a squad of soldiers for the Shah of Iran. In 1979, the Shah's sudden exit from power left Bell with lots of 214s for sale. Some 214s were put to work lifting ten ton logs from remote sites. This puts an enormous strain on any helicopter and the massive pumps used to control the main rotors, called actuators, were not up to it. Actuator failure that close to the ground gives the pilots almost no time to react and both were killed.
Actuator failure also figured in a 1989 case our lawyers handled, Doll v. Sullivan.
Kevin Doll, a husband and father, died when the rotors on his Bell 214 went out of control while he was lifting a log. Sadly, his wife and children retained a lawyer who proclaimed himself an expert on helicopters but who had never tried any aviation cases. Harold Sullivan gave the case away for a settlement of $40,000 because he had no idea what to do. He was so desperate, he never mentioned any of this to the clients.
This did not sit well with a Los Angeles jury, who returned a $2,500,000 verdict against him. He appealed to the Supreme Court but O'Reilly Collins did not relent. He paid.
To learn more, contact O'Reilly Collins online or call our law offices in the San Francisco area from anywhere in California or the United States, toll-free, at 888-696-5371.
