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Our Cases Comair Flight 3272 Airplane Crash in Michigan Schaden, Katzman, Lampert & McClune represented families and survivors of six of the twenty-six passengers who were killed in the 1997 airplane crash of Comair 3272 only a few miles from Detroit's Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. In one of the firm's cases, Leonard Barrow v. Comair Inc. et al., an important and hard fought precedent was established for victims' rights in plane crash litigation. It was decided that airlines and manufacturers can only stipulate to 'not contest liability' if they first consent to entry of a judgment on liability. Even then, this is only possible after providing affidavits of corporate representatives declaring unequivocally the defendants' intent to waive all rights to appeal or later renege on the failure to contest liability which results in an adverse judgment. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers historically seek damage-only trials in common air carrier litigation resulting from an air disaster, hoping to avoid the enhanced money likely to be awarded in cases where the passenger invariably has no contributory or comparative fault for the plane crash and where the liability facts may be particularly egregious. After several rounds of briefing and oral argument, the court ruled in Barrow v. Comair that the defense could elect to 'not contest liability' only after first agreeing to entry of an adverse judgment on liability and after knowingly waiving their appellate rights on the liability judgment by entry of affidavits of corporate officers acknowledging the waiver. |
