Attorney with Briskman Briskman & Greenberg Remarks on Wrongful Death Plane Crash Lawsuit

Chicago, IL (Law Firm Newswire) August 15, 2013 – The family of an airplane mechanic killed in a plane crash has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

Gary P. Stockdale was a mechanic for National Airlines and was aboard one of the company’s Boeing 747 cargo planes when it crashed April 29 after takeoff from Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, killing all seven men aboard. The crash was captured in a video from a vehicle dashboard camera and went viral after it was posted on the Live Leaks website.

The lawsuit was filed July 9 in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Previous suits were filed by the families of Rinku Summan and Jamie Lee Brokaw, the plane’s pilots, who were among the victims of the crash.

“Obviously something went wrong to cause this terrible crash,” said Robert Briskman, a Chicago wrongful death attorney not involved in the case. “A wrongful death lawsuit can help uncover the facts and provide compensation to the victims’ families.”

When the plane crashed, it was carrying military cargo including five armored vehicles weighing almost 80 tons. The vehicles were on pallets in the plane’s main cargo area. According to government investigators, the crash may have been caused by a shift in the cargo and one of the vehicles breaking loose from its restraints.

According to the complaint, the airplane was unreasonably dangerous and not fit for transporting heavy rolling cargo. The lawsuit also alleges that there were insufficient warnings in Boeing’s manuals about the transportation of such cargo. The suit also claims that there were defects in the restraint system for the cargo, that Boeing assembled it improperly during the plane’s conversion from passenger aircraft to cargo jet, and that the restraint system lacked proper instructions.

National Air Cargo, the parent of National Airlines, said in a statement that the flight had landed uneventfully at Bagram for refueling en route to Dubai, that the cargo was reinspected before takeoff, and that the aircraft was properly loaded and secured.

Stockdale was passionate about airplanes, filling his family’s basement with models as a boy and beginning his aviation career at the age of 16. He worked at two Detroit-area airports prior to joining National Airlines.