$22.4M suit against U.S. Govt over crash

Press, 3 June 1982, Page 3

$22.4M suit against U.S. Govt over crash

NZPA staff correspondent Washington A Washington lawyer plans to press ahead with a $22.4 million case against the United States Government over the Air New Zealand crash on Mount Erebus. The lawyer. Mr Don Madole. of Speiser. Krause and Madole. seeks $1.2 million for the relatives of each of the 17 crew members aboard the DCIO sightseeing flight that crashed into the slopes of Mount Erebus in November. 1979, killing everyone aboard. The firm filed'an administrative claim at the end of last November, just before the Statute of Limitations

expired. Mr Madole alleges that United States Navy radar operators at McMurdo Sound were negligent in failing to warn the DCIO pilot that he was following an unusual course.

The Navy had six months under the administrative claim — an obligatory forerunner to any case against the Government — to admit

or deny liability if it so chose. In fact. Mr Madole told NZPA yesterday, the Navy did neither a common procedure in such cases - and he now planned to file papers in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia within the next two months or so. Mr Madole's answer to a comment that the case appeared to be- outside the mainstream of allegations of blame, and might be seen by some as a “fishing trip." was that any such suggestion would demonstrate great ignorance of United States law.

There was nothing unusual in the United States about suing the Government for failure to provide radar information. he said. After one such case a United States Senator had made the point that the

Government did not invest a vast amount of money in equipment to give radar operators a grandstand seat at air accidents.