Airline lawyers to take relatives’ statements

Press, 28 August 1978, Page 21

Airline lawyers to take relatives’ statements

NZPA Washington : Pan American World Air- , ways lawyers will spend 10 days in New Zealand next month taking depositions : from relatives of victims of 1 the Pan Am Boeing crash at . Pago Pago, American Samoa, in January, 1976. i Seventeen New Zealanders ’ were among the 101 people i killed in the crash. 1 A Los Angeles lawyer, Mr . Dan Cathcart, the lead attorney for lawyers seeking dam- 1 ages from" the airline for ’ families who lost next-of-kin , in the disaster, said taking of . depositions would begin about September 12. i The statements will be 1 sworn in the office of an 1 Auckland lawyer, Mr S. < Hetherington, who is involved in the case. 1 They will cover the per- 1 sonal and financial backgrounds of 34 people, includ- i

ing three who will go to,’ Auckland from Australia,! where they now live. Mr Cathcart will advise his New Zealand clients when: they are questioned by Pan Am lawyers. The depositions, also be- : ing taken from Americans, ; will be used when trials for i compensatory damages from the airline begin at Los Angeles. Dates for the family-by-family damages hearings were to have been set by I Judge William Byrne at Los i Angeles on Tuesday. But other legal arguments in the long running battle by families to get damages ■ from Pan Am interferred and dates were not fixed. Trial dates were expected to be assigned at another 1 hearing today. i Mr Cathcart said he!: thought the trials, forecast::

to last two or three days; ■ each, would be in late September or October. i ; He said Judge Byrne has (indicated he wanted one more settlement conference between lawyers for the two sides before the trials in a final effort to have the amounts of damages settled out of court. Several conferences have been held without success and Pan Am broke off the last a week ago after refusing to budge from damages figures which Mr Cathcart had called unsatisfactory. Since a jury last month I found the airline guilty of) [wilful misconduct in the (Pago Pago crash, only one ! crash case had been settled. ■A Blenheim woman whose husband was among the victims received several hundred thousand dollars from the airline.