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Aviation

O'Reilly & Danko has a proven record of trying these cases and obtaining multimillion dollar verdicts. The $32 million settlement we achieved in Paboojian v. Teledyne Continental Motors remains the largest single personal injury settlement in aviation history. Our cumulative experience in aviation disasters dates back to the crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 near Paris in 1974. We have represented hundreds of families of passengers and crew in aviation accidents from around the world. Members of the Firm have served on Plaintiffs' Committees of major disasters such as TWA Flight 800, EgyptAir Flight 990 and Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Several of our cases have resulted in new legal precedents, such as White v. Inbound Aviation and Beverage v. Continental..

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Beverage v. Continental
Appellate Court Decision
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
February 23, 1999
Aviation Accident
Bob Beverage was in an aisle seat on a Continental flight from SFO to Newark. Somewhere over Kansas a flight attendant rammed his shoulder from behind with a foot cart. Beverage had just undergone shoulder reconstruction two months earlier. The flight attendant struck him with such force that it ripped out the prosthetic device his doctors had so carefully installed. The airline refused to pay to have Beverage's shoulder repaired, citing its "immunity" from suits for injuries caused by flight attendants under the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Beverage came to O'Reilly & Danko for help.
The airline was right. The Ninth Circuit had already ruled that suits such as Beverage's were pre–empted by federal law. Before Beverage could recover, the law would have to be changed.
O'Reilly & Danko accepted Beverage's case and filed suit against the airline in California. A Federal District Judge immediately dismissed the suit, citing the controlling Ninth Circuit precedent. O'Reilly & Danko appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit, asking it to reconsider its previous rulings. The Ninth Circuit agreed, convening an 11-judge panel to consider the matter "en banc." After the en banc panel heard oral argument, it decided that its previous rulings were wrongly decided and overruled them, agreeing that in enacting the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Congress did not intend to bar suits such as Beverage's.
As a result of this landmark decision benefitting consumer rights, air travelers were no longer limited by arbitrary levels of compensation in the event of an airplane accident.
Chara v. Trans World Airlines, Inc. The Court set forth new law in an opinion published sub nom. Chara v. Trans World Airlines, Inc. 160 F.3d 1259 (9th Cir. 1998)(en banc.)

Argued and Submitted February 13, 1998, San Francisco, CA
Chara v. Trans World Airlines, Inc. 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 8685
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"Man–Handled and Travel Worn, Passengers Plot Revenge" San Francisco Chronicle, 3/21/99.