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FAA now embroiled in Hendrick plane crash lawsuits
By Bob Pockrass
Friday, March 24, 2006
Hendrick Motorsports, facing three negligence lawsuits resulting from an Oct. 24, 2004, plane crash near Martinsville (Va.) Airport, contends in court documents that its liability, if any, should be transferred to air traffic controllers.
Dianne Dorton, widow of Hendrick engine builder Randy Dorton, and Tracy Lathram, widow of Tony Stewart pilot Scott Lathram, filed separate lawsuits in December in North Carolina Superior Court against Hendrick Motorsports. Linda Turner, widow of former Hendrick Motorsports general manager Jeff Turner, filed a lawsuit earlier this month in North Carolina against the team.
Linda Turner also has filed a federal lawsuit in Greensboro, N.C., against the Federal Aviation Administration over the actions of air traffic controllers.
All of the lawsuits ask for an unspecified amount of damages.
"The negligent and wrongful acts and omissions of the air traffic controller and employees of the FAA ... were a proximate cause of the airplane's crash and Jeff Turner's death," the Turner complaint states.
While denying their claims of negligence in the Dorton and Lathram cases, Hendrick Motorsports uses many similar arguments as Turner's complaint against the FAA. Hendrick Motorsports' complaint names air traffic controllers Brian Park, William Thomson Jr. and Jerry Wilson.
Hendrick Motorsports alleges that the air traffic controllers failed to properly monitor the aircraft and respond when they should have known the plane was in danger of missing the approach at Martinsville Airport.
"If the trier [of] fact determines that the defendants, or any one of them, were negligent, grossly negligent, or reckless, which is specifically denied, then the negligence, gross negligence and recklessness of the air traffic controllers superseded and intervened so as to insulate defendants from all liability," Hendrick Motorsports attorneys Mark Ash and Michael Mitchell wrote in their March 16 filing in both lawsuits.
The National Transportation Safety Board has blamed errors of the pilots as the probable cause of the crash, which killed both pilots and eight others, including four family members of team owner Rick Hendrick. The NTSB report on the crash states that once the plane was cleared for approach and was approved to change its radio frequency away from the controllers' frequency that the "controller no longer had responsibility for the flight."
Hendrick's filing also states that Dorton's complaint should be handled as a workers compensation claim.
Ash and Hendrick Motorsports spokesman Jesse Essex declined to comment.
Mentioned Drivers: Tony Stewart
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