Wildfire Helicopter Crash Verdict Slashed by Oregon's Wrongful-Death Cap

On August 5, 2008, a Carson Helicopters Sikorsky S-61N carrying nine wildland firefighters and a U.S. Forest Service inspection pilot crashed while trying to take off from a remote helispot in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California, during what became known as the Iron 44 fire. Nine people were killed, including seven firefighters, the Forest Service pilot, and Carson's own pilot, Roark Schwanenberg, a 54-year-old aviator who had flown fire missions for 27 years. Co-pilot William Coultas survived with severe injuries.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation later found that Carson Helicopters had understated the aircraft's empty weight and overstated its lifting performance in the bid documents it gave the Forest Service, so the crew worked from numbers that put the helicopter over its safe takeoff weight before the firefighters ever climbed aboard. Separately, Schwanenberg's widow, Christine, sued General Electric, which built the aircraft's engines, arguing that a contaminated fuel control unit and inadequate fuel filter specifications on one of the two CT58-140-1 engines contributed to the crash and that GE had known about the problem for years.

The case was consolidated with related suits into a multidistrict litigation before the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in Portland, before Judge Michael W. Mosman. On March 27, 2012, after roughly a week of deliberation, the jury awarded the Schwanenberg estate $28,455,000 and found General Electric 57 percent at fault for the crash. Jurors also put 23 percent of the fault on Carson Helicopters, which had already been dismissed from the case, and 20 percent on Sikorsky Aircraft, which had settled confidentially with the plaintiffs before the verdict came in, leaving GE as the defendant left to pay.

The jury's number was not what GE ended up owing. A later Massachusetts Superior Court opinion, issued in a related insurance dispute over the case, recites that the Schwanenberg award was reduced from $28,455,000 to $1,329,350 and that the reduced judgment remained on appeal. Oregon lawmakers cited this same case a few years later in testimony supporting a bill to raise the state's wrongful-death damages cap, describing a cap that took a jury verdict of roughly $28 million down to a fraction of that for Schwanenberg's widow and children.

No source reviewed for this story identifies how that appeal was ultimately resolved or whether General Electric paid the reduced judgment. Greg Anderson, of AndersonGlenn LLP, tried the case for the plaintiffs, telling jurors that GE had known about the fuel control problem for at least six years, and the Associated Press identified him as plaintiffs' counsel on the day of the verdict. The federal docket for the consolidated cases lists both Greg Anderson and John Glenn among counsel for the plaintiffs.