Assigning liability in the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash

The cause of the helicopter crash that killed retired Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people, remains unknown. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, which occurred on a foggy Sunday morning in a hilly area in west Los Angeles.

Could there be a lawsuit?

Our colleagues at The Recorder reached out to former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo, a partner at Motley Rice, whose firm brought a lawsuit over a crash of the U.S. Army’s Black Hawk helicopter, a Sikorsky similar to the one that was taking Bryant and the other passengers to his daughter’s basketball game.

What follows is an excerpt from that conversation.

What can you tell us about this helicopter?

This one was a 1991 helicopter, so it’s got some years on it. To me, it was interesting it was circling downtown Los Angeles at a very low altitude. To me that says fog, or some kind of problem. Then they headed to Calabasas. Then they turned left and headed to a wooded non-populated area. Those [movements] might suggest you’re having mechanical [problems], or they were desperately trying to get out of the fog.

When you look at maintenance records, what it was used for in the meantime, what was the reason they went “visual flight rules,” instead of IFR [instrument flight rules]? In the Black Hawk Sikorsky case, there were everything from problems with the rotor, the rotor pitch failed, one problem was the seat came loose.

What about the pilot?

It’s looking bad at this point for the piloting, but we don’t know yet. But taking off in limited visibility on a visual flight rule plan, that call will be questioned by the NTSB. Why didn’t they go instrument flight rules, which means air traffic control? So here, the second avenue of examination will be the pilot’s performance and whether this is pilot error, which brings us to the third thing lawyers will look at: What is this holding company?

…So which holding company is it?

This aircraft was titled, or owned, by a company called Island Express. Island Express is [based] south of Los Angeles in Orange County, and runs visual tours, air tours. They take people out over Catalina Island. They have a few dozen employees, and they were looking for more employees when this happened… They took their website down.

They have a number of pilots and do tours. Some media reports said this was Kobe Bryant’s helicopter, but the registration does not say that. It says it belongs to Island Express. That will bring us into the legal conundrum of:

1. Were the pilots also Island Express pilots?
2. What kind of coverage does Island Express have? and
3. Were there any special circumstances? Did Kobe or anyone on that plane put pressure on the pilot?

They’ll be looking at what kind of flight control Island Express had on this flight. It looks like they owned it, it looks like it’s their pilot, so why weren’t they more careful? Does Mr. Bryant’s estate have any financial interest in this Island Express, or did he turn over ownership of his helicopter to maintain it?

What do you make of the air traffic controller’s conversation with the pilot?

I’ve only heard snippets of air traffic control. The U.S. government runs air traffic controls. They said they were going to follow the aircraft on radar. But then they said, “No, you’re way too low.” They said, “We can’t climb any higher because we’re in the clouds.” They were really low for LA. That’s a little surprising. So they said, “We can’t provide you flight forwarding anymore. We can’t watch you on radar; you’re too low.” What we need to hear is the next few sentences. What came next? Did they give them any more instruction?

Why is that important?

That’s really important because it is possible air traffic control made a mistake. If that’s the case, the U.S. of America foots the bill.

…We don’t know what the FAA told them next. If they said climb to 2,000 feet and turn left, and there was a mountain in their path, the government is liable. If the next thing is you are not legal, you are in the clouds, you are flying VFR without visual reference, you have to get out of there, you are flying illegally, it’s on the pilot. Those next sentences could be billion-dollar words.

Is there any circumstance here in which there might not be a lawsuit?

I don’t see it.

This article has been edited for length and brevity.

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