Many people are surprised that French prosecutors want to file manslaughter charges against four people, including two Continental Airlines employees, they blame for an Air France Concorde crash that killed 113 people. They shouldn't be. After all, we're talking about the French.
We turned to Gerald C. Sterns, a renowned aviation attorney with Sterns & Walker to explain the decision, which seems excessive given it was an Air France jet that crashed. Sterns knows a thing or two about aviation law, having recently won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and litigated high-profile cases around the world.
Flight 4590 crashed July 25, 2000, shortly after leaving Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. Investigators attributed the crash to a strip of titanium that fell from a Continental DC-10 that used the same runway just before the Concorde. The metal punctured one of the Concorde's tires and the debris punctured one of the jet's fuel tanks.
Prosecutors want a judge to file the charges against Continental mechanic John Taylor and maintenance chief Stanley Ford. Claude
Frantzen, former head of training at the French civil aviation authority, and Henri Perrier, ex-chief of the Concorde program, also could face charges.
Wired: Manslaughter? Wasn't this an "act of God"? Why criminal, rather than civil, charges?
Gerald Sterns: In France, every air accident is a criminal matter by law, unlike the U.S. A criminal judge is appointed to oversee the investigation. France is unique in that the statutes of limitation for bringing criminal actions are very, very long. Also, so long as the case is open, the appointed judge gets lots of perks. This, in part, explains why criminal charges are just now being filed. "Act of God" is not a legal term but a media one. There is no such defense -- either someone is at fault for an accident or they are not, depending on proof. In the case of the Concorde, however, there was lots of blame to go around, both in the design of the fuel system, the maintenance on the Continental plane in Houston and perhaps the airport.
Wired: Prosecutors claim that the panel that fell from the
Continental DC-10 and purportedly punctured the Concorde's tires was made of titanium, a metal harder than the aluminum panel it replaced. Yet airplane tires blow out all the time. Isn't the deficiency here with the Concorde's fuel tank design?
Sterns: Yes, indeed, no question. It is foreseeable that crap will get onto a runway or that tires may explode for other reasons.
Wired: As long as both aircraft passed government mandated safety inspections, how can there be criminal liability?
Sterns: It depends on the law. In the U.S. you still can bring a civil damage claim for a defect on an aircraft, if you can prove it. [That the aircraft] has been certified by the FAA or inspected, etc., is a matter of proof the defense would use. But it's not conclusive. France, again, is different. For the same reasons [I've cited], criminal charges can be brought if the authorities think they can nail someone.
Wired: The French prosecutors recommended trying the two Continental employees who installed the defective panel. If the titanium strip was kosher with Boeing’s maintenance mandates for the DC-10, shouldn’t Boeing be charged instead?
Sterns: The French system only tries individuals in criminal matters. Boeing might have been negligent with the manual, but that goes to civil liability.
Wired: Prosecutors also recommended manslaughter charges against a Concorde engineer who allegedly knew as long ago as 1979 that the fuel tank design was flawed. Why not file charges against the government employees who certified the aircraft for flight?__ __
Sterns: Government regulatory agencies are generally immune from any civil or criminal liability in carrying out official duties that involve policy decisions or discretionary functions. That is certainly the rule in the U.S. and probably also in France.
Wired: Few analysts believe that anyone will go to prison over this. Is there something about French or European Union law that requires prosecutors to seek criminal charges in order to get compensation for the victims?
Sterns: No. The compensation side of this, I think, was resolved some years ago, although it is not uncommon for prosecutors to use criminal charges as leverage to get money for victims who intervene in the criminal proceedings. I think in this case, however, all the passenger claims were settled with the insurers for the major players. But don't bet on somebody not going to prison. That is mainly what this criminal prosecution is all about. Along with the judge, the prosecutor has a high profile. But the U.S.-named defendants are not going to be players. We will never permit them to be extradited to France under these facts and after this much time.
Wired: Why isn't the airport liable for runway maintenance?
Sterns: [It] might be if there were a maintenance issue, such as a huge pothole that had been there for some time. A dropped metal panel is something quite different, however. It depends on how long, how obvious or not, etc.
Wired: If you were defending Continental Airlines, what line of reasoning would you use?
Sterns: Metal debris can get on a runway in any number of ways. Airplane tires can explode for many reasons. The fuel system of the Concorde should have been designed to anticipate such ... The cause of the crash was crappy design on the Concorde.
Wired: And if you were defending the Concorde?
Sterns: The reverse. No one can foresee that some dummy will rig a sharp titanium shard on an engine in such a sloppy manner that it can just fall off in normal service. The Concorde could never have anticipated such negligence.
Wired: It will be up to a judge about whether to proceed with this case. Care to take a guess on how it will go?
Sterns: No. All bets are off when dealing with the French. Too many other things than just the facts are at play here. Very suspect, however, is how very long they took to start these proceedings -- very prejudicial to the defendants. My take on this is that there is an Eliot Spitzer revelation or a Rudi Giuliani-type prosecutor who is trying to make a name for himself with a high-profile case. And a judge who likes to keep the perks of the investigation going for much longer. The criminal case could drag out for another five years. Stay tuned.
*Concorde photo by Associated Press. Gerald Sterns photo courtesy of Sterns and Walker. *
