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Relatives of the passengers injured or killed in three major
air crashes involving local airlines Mandala Air, Adam Air and, most
recently, Garuda Indonesia are lining up to sue the manufacturers of
the ill-fated aircraft and their components for alleged product defects.
"We have filed a law suit in a U.S. court on the behalf of the families
of the 75 victims of the Mandala Air accident in Medan, and 11 victims
of the recent Adam Air accident," Indonesian advocate David Abraham
told reporters Wednesday in Jakarta.
David said that his law firm had received verbal confirmations from the
relatives of two passengers who died in the recent Garuda plane crash
in Yogyakarta, and from one surviving passenger, that they wanted to
sue the aircraft and component manufacturers.
The Garuda plane, which was carrying 140 passengers, crashed on
landing, killing 21 passengers.
Meanwhile, all 102 passengers aboard an Adam Air Boeing 737-300
aircraft were killed when it plunged into the ocean off the coast of
Sulawesi island in January.
Regarding the Mandala Air crash in Medan on Sept. 5, 2005, which killed
147 people, Abraham said his firm was collaborating with U.S.-based law
firm, Lieff Global.
With the help of Lieff Global, his company had filed a negligence
lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Illinois in January against the
Boeing Corporation and United Technologies.
"I just found out that Boeing and United Technologies have another week
to accept the lawsuit served upon them, which I think they will do ...
we expect things to move very rapidly," said Brian J. Lawler from Lieff
Global.
Abraham added, "The lawsuit has been accepted and we expect trial to
commence on April 26."
When asked whether it was possible for his company to sue 16 months
after the Mandala crash, Lawler said that such a timeline was normal in
these types of cases.
"That's very typical, 16 to 18 months. I think that's about the
timeframe you can expect since the unfortunate accident in September
2005," Lawler said.
Clarifying further on the process, Abraham said that his firm and Lieff
Global had compiled all the records on the Mandala accident, including
the findings made by an independent technical investigation funded by
Lieff Global, as well as those made by national transportation safety
investigators in both Indonesia and U.S.
"I expect a similar period of investigation prior to filing the Adam
Air and Garuda suits," he said.
"Our investigation shows that there was a possibility of product
defects in the Mandala accident, one involving the engine and another
affecting the takeoff warning system, which was not working properly,"
he said.
Suing an aircraft manufacturer after an accident is something of a
novel idea in Indonesia, with the Mandala case being the first
involving Indonesian citizens.
However, the victims of the Singapore-based SilkAir plane that plunged
into the Musi river in Palembang, South Sumatra, in 1997, won their
lawsuit after the Los Angeles Superior Court found that the plane's
rudder control system was defective.
The court's ruling negated an earlier statement by the Indonesian air
safety authorities saying that pilot suicide was the cause of the
accident. In the biggest award made by the court in the SilkAir case,
the relatives of two Singaporean victims and a Scottish victim were
awarded $43.6 million in 2004.
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