FAA now embroiled in Hendrick plane crash lawsuits
BOB POCKRASS

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recklessness of the air traffic controllers superseded and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.

http://www.scenedaily.com/stories/2006/03/20/scene_daily24.html
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