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Six years ago, a newly rehauled engine in a small airplane failed at 8,000 feet in the air near Florence, S.C. leading to an emergency landing in a field, injuries and an unsalvageable aircraft.
The people in that plane lost their case before the Appeals Court of North Carolina, not over the cause of the crash but over whether the legal dispute should be heard in North Carolina where the engine work was done or in South Carolina where the engine failed.
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The appeals court agreed the case should be heard in South Carolina where the statute of limitations limits allegations of unfair and deceptive trade practices to three years and not in North Carolina where it is four years.
Izzy Air LLC is a Delaware-based company that owned a Piper Model PA-32 Cherokee plane. Husband and wife Hugh and Leslie Page Tuttle owned that company, and he was flying that plane on Sept. 30, 2016, out of the Florence Regional Airport in Florence headed toward Asheville with his wife the only passenger.
The National Transportation and Safety Bureau report called this a “breaking-in” flight in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. A test flight four days earlier had turned up a problem with a temperature sensor, which was replaced.
The plane’s engine started running rough about 20 minutes after takeoff, and Tuttle was forced to head back to the airport, according to the suit and report from the NTSB. He didn’t get there. The engine started cutting in and out, and Tuttle was forced to attempt an emergency landing at Woodward Field Airport in Camden, S.C. But he didn’t get there, either. The engine lost all power about five miles from the airport, and Tuttle had to land in a field.
That emergency landing tore the right wing from the plane, damaged its fuselage and bent its propellers, according to the NTSB report, It was a total loss. The Tuttles sustained minor injuries, says the NTSB, though their lawsuit alleges “serious personal and psychological injuries,” with long-term and even permanent consequences.
The NTSB found the cause to be a magneto that wasn’t properly torqued down causing some electrical arcing that melted a part called a “cam follower” which is apparently very important since it led to the loss of power that brought the plane down. The NTSB could not determine the last time it had been torqued.
The Tuttles and their company didn’t sue at first. Their lawyer James Crouse told the court of appeals in January that the Burlington company that worked on the engine, Triad Aviation, seemed to be negotiating a settlement but was actually stalling to run out the clock. Defense lawyer Steven Bader told the court the company’s negotiations did not keep the Tuttles from suing sooner.
As the Times-News reported in 2019, it took about three years for the couple and their company to sue for negligence and breach of contract in Alamance County Superior Court. That suit, however, named the wrong defendant, Triad Engine Parts and Services Inc., which has the same address, president and corporate officers as Triad Aviation, according to the North Carolina Secretary of State.
They withdrew that suit and filed another one in 2020 and then amended their complaint to allege unfair and deceptive trade practices in North Carolina. The defense called that a strategy to keep the suit alive.
The Tuttles’ lawyer, however, said Triad Aviation had not honored and refused to even discuss its one-year warranty making it a fraudulent guarantee.
That argument didn’t – well – fly with a judge in Alamance County in late 2020, and the court of appeals agreed with that decision. North Carolina courts have found that cases crossing state lines over plane crashes should be decided under the law of the state where the injuries occurred. This time, that is South Carolina.
And, according to the appeals court's opinion, the plaintiffs had plenty of time to file a claim that could win and failed to introduce evidence showing Triad Aviation’s settlement negotiations tricked them into believing it would not use the statute of limitations as a defense.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Burlington aviation company wins appeal over S.C. plane crash
