Anna Haney, widow of Captain Jeffrey Haney, has filed a wrongful death suit as the result of Captain Haney’s tragic 2010 crash of a supersonic Air Force F-22 Raptor. The named defendants include the Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney.
The lengthy complaint, filed by prominent Chicago plaintiffs attorneys Corboy & Demetrio, makes allegations of product liability, negligence, breach of warranty, breach of contract and fraud. In the suit, Ms. Haney alleges:
1. That the plane was designed, manufactured and distributed with a propensity to supply the pilot with oxygen contaminated by harmful elements by the OBOGS, the ECS and the engine bleed air system.
2. That the defendants ignored the known life support systems failure modes and oxygen contamination modes.
3. That the defendants ignored the numerous alleged failures, faults and malfunctions of the engine bleed air system, including but not limited to overheat conditions and bleed air contamination.
4. That the plane did not account for known failure modes and did not protect critical life support systems from the impact of bleed air system failures, faults and malfunctions.
5. That the plane was designed, manufactured, distributed and sold with dangerous and defective life support warning sensors that were inadequate and unreliable, as there was nothing to alert pilots or maintainers of the failures of the life support systems.
6. That the plane was designed, manufactured, distributed and sold with a dangerous and defective oxygen backup system that did not automatically provide life support or breathable oxygen to the pilot in the event of a malfunction.
7. That the Raptor contained a dangerous and defective backup oxygen system which could be activated only manually, and whose manual activation mechanism was located underneath and behind the pilot, in an area impossible for a pilot to reach while he or she maneuvered the sophisticated aircraft at speeds exceeding the speed of sound and while he or she experienced forces many times the force gravity.
The defendants have yet to answer the suit, but can be expected to aggressively defend against the allegations. The suit has been brought in Cook County Illinois, a venue which has traditionally been unkind to corporate defendants.
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