Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Homestead Plan Crash Probe Continues to Determine Cause

The Miami Herald recently published a string of stories related to the Homestead, Florida plane crash that struck last weekend, killing the two occupants inside the aircraft.  According to reports the accident occurred last Saturday morning, shortly after 10:30am.  The ultra-light plane—a yellow single-engine fixed wing craft—began spiraling downward not far from Richards Field Airport.  According to the National Transportation Safety Board spokesman who discussed the matter, the plane began to nose-dive and eventually crashed about a thousand feet from Richards—a private grass strip airport northwest of Homestead in southern Florida. 

Initially, authorities did not know the identities of the two victims, a man and female.  However, it was confirmed early on that the owner of the plane, Louis Richard Bragassa was not in the plane when the Florida plane crash occurred.  Last night the identities of the victims were finally released.  The pilot of the airplane was fifty-seven year old Rick Blanco and the passenger was forty-seven year old Andra Bronnenberg.  The National Transportation Safety Board expects to release a preliminary report on the tragedy by the end of this week.

It is common for a Miami plane crash attorney to mention the Latin phrase res ipsa loquitor when discussing the legal issues related to these accidents.  Res ipsa loquitor mean “the thing speaks for itself” and refers to an incident that could only happen due to some act of negligence.  In other words, it is a legal principle that is often used when the specific cause of some tragedy remains unknown, and a victim is asserting that the event could not have occurred but for some act of negligence.  Plane crashes are a common example of this principle at work, because planes do not normally fall out of the sky.  Therefore, some some form of negligence is likely to have caused the problem.

However, res ipsa loquitor is a principle that does not necessarily provide any firm legal conclusions.  Instead, close examination and investigation is still required following most of these tragedies to specifically determine how liability should be apportioned should a Florida plane accident lawsuit be filed by an involved party or their surviving family members.  As a basic matter, it will need to be determined if a malfunction with the aircraft or pilot error were involved in the crash.  However, no matter what the specific cause was, there are other factors that might play into the legal issues of the crash.  For example, if pilot error were involved, it must be determined why Mr. Blanco was in the aircraft, what his experience level was, and what his relationship to the plane owner was.  Similarly, if a mechanical problem was the root cause, then the recent maintenance issues would need to be investigated and similar information would be crucial to all legal resolutions.

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