A jury awarded $116 million to the family of one of the five individuals who died after a no-door helicopter crashed and drowned in a New York City river, trapping passengers in their safety belts.
The ruling in the lawsuit over the death of Trevor Cadigan, who was 26 years old when he joined the tragic trip in March 2018, was announced on Thursday.
According to family lawyer Gary C. Robb, it was “a death trap.”
“They just completely misled the public about the ability to get out in an emergency” from the harnesses, which were store-bought fall-protection equipment designed for construction workers rather for aircraft use, he added.
Messages requesting comment were received Friday by the lawyers representing the firms that jurors blamed for his death.
The jury determined that FlyNYON, which planned the flight, was 42% to blame, and Liberty Helicopters, which owned the helicopter and supplied the pilot, was 38%. Dart Aerospace, the manufacturer of a flotation device that malfunctioned during the incident, was assigned 20% of the culpability by the jury.
The helicopter crashed into the East River after a passenger tether became entangled with a floor-mounted fuel shutoff switch, causing the engine to halt, according to federal authorities. The plane began sinking within seconds.
The pilot, who was wearing a seatbelt, managed to release himself and survive. However, the five passengers tried unsuccessfully to remove themselves from their harnesses, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.
All five perished. They were Cadigan, Brian McDaniel (26), Carla Vallejos Blanco (29), Tristan Hill (29), and Daniel Thompson (34).
Cadigan, a journalist, had just come to New York from Dallas and was enjoying a visit from his childhood friend McDaniel, a Dallas firefighter.
The NTSB mostly accused FlyNYON, claiming that the company fitted difficult-to-escape restraints and used a legislative loophole to avoid having to meet safety rules that would apply to tourist flights.
FlyNYON marketed “sneaker selfies” — photographs of customers’ feet dangling over lower Manhattan — but urged employees not to use terminology like “air tour” or “sightseeing” so the firm could keep a certification with less severe safety criteria, according to investigators. The company obtained the certification under an exception designed for operations such as news gathering, commercial photography, and film productions.
FlyNYON complained to the NTSB about the helicopter’s design and the flotation mechanism, which failed to hold the aircraft upright. DART Aerospace, in response, claimed that the pilot had not used the equipment correctly. The pilot informed the NTSB that the passengers had a pre-flight safety briefing and were taught how to cut themselves free from the restraint straps.
Following the tragedy, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily suspended doors-off flights with tight seat restraints. The flights were later resumed, with the necessity for restraints that could be released with a single action.
According to Robb, Cadigan’s parents sued to stop the no-doors flights.
His father, Dallas broadcast journalist Jerry Cadigan, died in July in St. Louis while visiting relatives during a three-month break in the Manhattan trial.
“He didn’t see the final journey to justice,” said Robb, “but he knew it was coming.”