Federal Court Upholds $2.3 Million Verdict in Florida Airplane Crash Lawsuit
When someone is injured in a car or truck accident on land, there are well-established rules within Florida personal injury law to compensate the victims. But what happens if you are injured in an aircraft accident? In that scenario, the legal picture can get quite a bit more complicated.
Pilot on the Hook After Plane Ran Out of Gas
For example, a federal appeals court recently upheld a $2.3 million personal injury judgment arising from a January 2022 aircraft accident. The plaintiff in this case was the sole passenger on a charter flight making a round trip from Miami to the Bahamas. During the flight to the Bahamas, the Cessna airplane’s engines failed due to fuel starvation, forcing the pilot to ditch the plane about 5 miles off the coast of the Bahamas.
Fortunately, both the plaintiff and the pilot survived. But the plaintiff still suffered significant injuries. He subsequently filed a personal injury lawsuit in Florida state court against several defendants, including the pilot, the plane’s owner, the charter company, and the company responsible for refueling the plane. The case was ultimately tried in federal court against three of the four defendants, the court having dismissed the plane’s owner.
A federal jury determined that the pilot and charter company were each 40 percent responsible for the plaintiff’s accident-related injuries, with the plaintiff responsible for the remaining 20 percent. The plaintiff’s damages were around $2.9 million, so the trial court entered a final judgment for 80 percent of that amount of $2,329,670.40, for which both the pilot and charter company were “jointly and severally liable.”
In personal injury law, joint and several liability means that multiple defendants are equally responsible for the entire damages award. In other words, if one defendant does not pay up, the plaintiff can seek to collect the entire amount of the judgment from the other defendant. In 2006, Florida actually abolished joint and several liability in 2006 in most personal injury cases in favor of comparative negligence, where each defendant is only responsible for that portion of a judgment attributed to their own fault.
So under Florida’s personal injury rules, the pilot in our case above would have only been liable for 40 percent of the plaintiff’s damages and not 80 percent. But this case was not governed by Florida personal injury law. Instead, it fell under an international treaty known as the Montreal Convention, which governs personal injury claims arising from international flights.
As the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals explained in its January 2026 decision upholding the judgment against the pilot in this case, the Montreal Convention itself does not specify a rule for apportioning liability among multiple defendants. The 11th Circuit therefore applied U.S. maritime law, as the ditching of the plane occurred in the ocean, which does provide for joint and several liability. The pilot is therefore liable for any portion of the $2.3 million award not paid by its co-defendant, the charter operator.
Contact a Pasco County Aviation Accident Attorney
If you are seriously injured during air travel, it is important to seek out competent legal advice from a Pasco County aviation accident lawyer who can explain your rights under the applicable law. Call Wendy Doyle-Palumbo, Esq., today at (727) 233-2134 to schedule a consultation. We serve clients in Hudson, New Port Richie, and Pasco County.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4833896868510925062