Liability: Epilogue to Disaster

On the morning of Dec. 16, 1960, a United Airlines DC-8 and a Trans World Airlines Super Constellation collided in the icy air over New York City. It was history’s most disastrous air accident: all 128 persons aboard the two planes were killed.

Guided by one of the cardinal unwritten rules of negligence practice, lawyers for the relatives and heirs of the victims filed suit against everyone who might be involved—the Federal Aviation Agency, which was in charge of traffic control, United Airlines, and TWA as well. It mattered not a bit that after prolonged investigation the Civil Aeronautics Board pinned the entire blame for the crash on United’s pilot.

Government lawyers, well aware that juries are prone to be generous toward an injured plaintiff, figured that the FAA might be held partially responsible anyway, whatever the CAB said. Last spring they agreed to pay 24% of all damages that were awarded. But FAA Chief Najeeb Halaby protested. After all, he argued, his agency had been exonerated by the CAB.

Last week word came from the Justice Department that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had overruled Halaby and signed the 24% agreement. Anxious to cut through the liability tangle, TWA agreed to pay 15% of the damages. United will pay the remaining 61%. The damage awards are expected to add up to more than $10 million—the highest total ever to result from a single air accident.

Why the reversal within the Administration? In the interval between Halaby’s no and Bobby’s yes, pretrial testimony had established that in guiding the United DC-8, FAA controllers at Idlewild departed from standard procedures. Those departures could hardly be said to have caused the collision, but they did cloud the question of the Government’s responsibility.

The final agreement was probably in the interest of all parties. With the liability issue out of the way, plaintiffs will get much quicker settlements of their claims. And the airlines and the U.S. Government will avoid long, expensive courtroom wrangles over precisely who and what were to blame on that terrible December morning.