Colson Hicks Eidson Announces Nine Families File Lawsuit Against Manufacturers of Aircraft That Disintegrated While Airborne -- Killing 21 National Guardsmen.

Business Editors/Legal Writers

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 5, 2002

The Law Firm of Colson Hicks Eidson and the Law Offices of Raymond P. Johnson in Los Angeles, California, today announced that they filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida located in Miami, Florida, against Short Brothers PLC manufacturers of the Sherpa C-23 aircraft which crashed on March 3, 2001, after the airplane went out of control and disintegrated one hour after take-off from Hurlburt Field, Florida, killing 21 National Guardsmen -- the three-person crew from the Florida Army National Guard and 18 Virginians who were members of the Virginia Beach based Air National Guard unit, the 203rd Red Horse Flight -- returning to Virginia after two weeks of active duty in Florida.

The lawsuit also names as defendants: Bombardier, Inc., which wholly owns Short Brothers PLC and was responsible for remanufacturing the civilian aircraft for the US military in 1998, Duncan Aviation, Inc. of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Rockwell International, a California corporation and its subsidiary Rockwell Collins, Inc., located in Iowa. According to the lawsuit, Duncan took part in the remanufacturing of the aircraft and was also responsible for careless maintenance of the aircraft and its weather radar system at its Lakeland, Florida facility. The suit alleges that the autopilot, which was manufactured by Rockwell, was defective and was a contributing factor in the crash.

The Sherpa, built in Northern Ireland by Short Brothers, now a division of Bombardier, Inc., and modified by Bombardier for the US military at its West Virginia Air Center, was in route to Oceana Naval Air Station near Virginia Beach, VA, when the aircraft fell apart in the air and crashed near Unadilla, GA. -- killing everyone onboard. The victims, all men, ranged in age from early 20's to 60 and included veterans from the Gulf War and Vietnam. Members of the National Guard, who have both federal and state responsibilities, were in Florida as part of the soldiers' training regimen.

After the incident, a Collateral Investigation Board convened to seek the root cause of the crash and approved a report listing crew error as the primary cause because of an unbalanced load in the aircraft, even though the aircraft's radar was not working correctly and did not alert the crew of impending bad weather. In addition to the malfunctioning radar, the aircraft had not been re-tested after being reconfigured into its new design.

Last August, Maj. Gen. Ronald D. Harrison, the adjutant general of the Florida National Guard at the time, overruled this finding.

"The report blames the crew; my research shows that the Board jumped to conclusions based on speculation and closed the incident file," stated Mike Eidson, former Chairman of the Aviation Section of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and lawyer representing nine of the families of the passengers onboard the ill-fated aircraft. "It is our intention to prove the true cause of this tragedy. We disagree with the Board's finding: aircrafts should not disintegrate and crash, killing American soldiers, leaving widows and young children, because of slight variations in the way the aircraft was loaded."

"We filed this lawsuit to put the blame of this accident where it belongs: on the defendants we have named, and to compensate the families of these victims for their losses," added Eidson. "We intend to exonerate the crew by proving that the crash was not their fault, but was the result of mistakes made in the manufacturing of the aircraft and its component parts, the training of the crew and maintenance errors."

The Sherpa, a bulky cargo plane known for its ability to land in rugged terrain, can carry up to 30 passengers and provides troop and equipment transport, and airdrop and medical evacuation to the military.