St. Louis Jury Awards $10 Million to Widow of Army Pilot Killed When Helicopter Hit Unmarked Power Lines

On July 31, 1994, a U.S. Army Reserve CH-47 Chinook helicopter on a flight training mission struck power lines strung across the Osage River in Missouri and crashed. All four crew members died. Pilot Kenney Jones, 36, had command of the aircraft. He left his wife, Penny, and their two daughters.

The lines belonged to Three Rivers Electric Cooperative. They spanned 939 feet of river between two support structures, and they were three-eighths of an inch thick. Installed in 1975, they had weathered to a greenish brown that blended into the trees behind them, and vegetation hid the structures that held them up. They carried no marker balls or other warnings. Federal rules did not require marking because the lines hung less than 200 feet above the ground and were not near a public airport. Witnesses saw the helicopter over the middle of the river at about 100 feet, and none saw it try to avoid the wires.

Penny Jones sued for herself and her daughters, as did the widow of flight engineer George Lopez in a separate action. Morry S. Cole of Gray, Ritter & Graham, P.C. in St. Louis represented Mrs. Jones. Grant L. Davis and Thomas C. Jones of Davis, Bethune & Jones, P.C. in Kansas City represented Mrs. Lopez. The claim was that the cooperative knew aircraft could meet its lines over that stretch of river and did nothing to warn pilots. A 1975 crash of a fixed-wing plane into the same wires came up in jury selection.

The first trial ended in a verdict for both families, but in August 2000 the Missouri Supreme Court reversed it. The trial court had told the jury to hold the cooperative to the highest degree of care, a standard the court held was higher than the law requires, and the case went back for a new trial.

The retrial opened in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis on May 21, 2001, and the jury returned its verdict on June 5. The cooperative argued that the crew had flown too low on an unfamiliar river, against Army regulations and their own mission briefing, and that the pilot bore much of the blame. This time the jury put 100 percent of the fault on Three Rivers and none on Kenney Jones. It awarded Penny Jones $10 million for the death of her husband, on behalf of herself, the couple's two daughters and his parents. The Lopez jury award in the companion case was $11 million.

Three Rivers appealed. It challenged the seating of a juror who had said she might feel sympathy for the families, the exclusion of the Army's accident report, and the size of the awards. On October 22, 2002, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, rejected each point. The court found evidence of a close family and of the income and household help the family lost, and held that the $10 million and $11 million awards were not so excessive as to shock the conscience.