AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 1958 - (Page 12)

LEGALLY SPEAKING by ALFRED L. WOLF AOPA GENERALCOUNSEL (AOPA 123171), Trenton, N. J. It dealt with the results of the trial of a suit brought by the parents of a boy who was electrocuted w i e climbing a hl wire fence to reach the wreckage of an aircraft on his family's farm. The aircraft struck high tension wires which fell on the fence, killing the boy, and the parents sued the widow of the pilot. The case illustrates several intercating legal points, and we extract some for your attention. Probably the first thing that will interest AOPA1ers is why the boy'a death could be attributed to the pilot. The law carefully looks to the effective cause of damage and permits the party damaged to recover from the effective culprit All lawyers remember, from law school days, what was known as the "squib" case, where a lad threw a fire cracker over a fence and several parties, near whom it landed, in turn tossed it away (as yet unexploded), but the fire cracker eventually exploded near a bystander and hurt him. The bystander was allowed to recover from the initial thrower because this man was the effective cause of the damage to the bystander, and it was his carelesanese, rather than the instinct of self-preaervation in the other throwers, which caused the damage. In the case before us, i t was the fact that the pilot knocked down the high tension wires and entered the wire enclosed field that exposed the boy to the danger resulting i his death,and theren fore the pilot was responsible. This is only one of the many lessons that we learn from this case. The second thing in importance to AOPA'ers is a question often discussed in the predecessor to this column, which appeared in The AOPA PILOT insert It will be remembered that AOPA has often complained of those States which impose absolute liability on operators of aircraft for damage to land and land-based objects caused by flight. AOPA has urged it would be weU, in connection with such events, if a court could find out who waa really reaponaible for a damage and penalize immediately that party. Thus, if a pilot were aloft in an airplane, defective through the negligence of a mechanic, and this airplane caused damage in the course of a perfectly executed forced landing, the mechanic would be immediately amenable to legal action, but the pilot, who was really not at fault, would not be liable. In this case we have been fortunate enough to see certain of the briefs, and learn that the attorney for the parents did not rely on the State statute to How far can trouble reach? We have been fortunate to receive a newspaper report of a case otherwise unreported, from Margaret L Lebair . Photo Ptler G e m Oh t Alfred L. Wolf, AOPA's General Counsel and author of "Legally Speaking" and of "Operation Cost Cut" on page 32 of this issue of The PILOT, i s shown alighting from his Seabee. place the blame on the pilot. Instead, the attorney based the parents' case on one of the oldest principles of the common law, which has a wonderful Latin name called "trespass quare causum fregit". This means that a person becomes a trespasser by breaking into the "close" (that is, the "enclosed property") of another. Under the old cornmon law, once you became a trespasser, anything that then happened by reason of your acts was your fault, and you must pay the damaged party. This theory was employed successfully in this case, without the interposition of any statutory law, to make the pilot responsible because he had trespassed into the fields of the parents of the deceased boy and, accordingly, rendered the pilot's widow liable for the jury's sizable verdict. Lastly, this case, was a case where there were dual controls in the aircraft This raised the much vexed question of who was the pilot. However, the party who was sued was the instructor's widow, as the other occupant was a student. Under the regulations, an instructor is, whether he likes it or not, in command of an airplane. Thus, without any further argument, the plaintiff's attorney was able convince the Judge that there was no question as to the responsibility of the party he had chosen to sue. FKED MILLER, ET AL V B. NANCY PHILLIPS, AL ET U S. DIST.COURTFOR THE . EASTERN DISTRICT PENNA. OF CIVIL ACTION17866 MAY, 1966 Expanded Department Welcomes Readers' Help This department looks forward to a maximum of assistance from its readers in finding these interesting cases. Owing to the manner i which many cases are n tried, records of the trials and decisions do no reach the record books. The possibility exists that this department can considerably enrich the legal literature surrounding aviation law with the assistance of its interested readers. T h i s department also looks forward to the inauguration of a Question and Answer column, and will be happy to receive simple legal questions from its readers, but cannot guarantee to answer these questions unless they be deemed to be of sufficient interest to the membership at large and, additionally, be appropriately answerable here. THE AOPA PILOT

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 1958

AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 1958
Contents
Calendar
Legally Speaking
Editorial
What About Airspace Use, Mr. Pyle?
10,000 Seconds Under the Hood
Flying Weather One Month Ahead
AOPA Weathercast
AOPA 185579
Air-Age Teenagers Give City a Lift
Your Radio and You
Operation Cost Cut
Put Your Fabric to the Test
Are You "Compasss Punchy?
Yankee Duster in Latin America
South American Challenge
I Lived Through a Graveyard Spiral
Safety Corner and Accident Report
On the Airways
Travel
What's New?
Classified Department

AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 1958

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