BUFFALO, N.Y. — Lawyers for families of passengers killed when a plane crashed into a house in 2009 have tried to turn the public against the airline in hopes of getting bigger settlements in wrongful-death lawsuits, the airline says.
A motion filed in U.S. District Court by regional airline Colgan Air and its parent on Thursday requests a protective order designating as confidential all deposition transcripts and other material produced by Colgan as it defends itself against dozens of lawsuits filed since the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 near Buffalo.
All 49 people on board the Newark, N.J.-to-Buffalo flight and a man in the house were killed when the plane experienced an aerodynamic stall and went down in suburban Clarence.
The motion comes after the public release last month of internal Colgan emails that raised doubts about pilot Marvin Renslow's qualifications to fly the type of aircraft that crashed.
The emails, made public after Colgan agreed to lift a confidential designation, created a media firestorm when federal accident investigators said they hadn't seen them while determining the cause of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board last week ordered Colgan parent Pinnacle Airlines Corp., of Memphis, Tenn., to turn over previously withheld records regarding the qualifications of the Flight 3407 pilots.
Colgan attorney David Harrington wrote in his motion for a protective order that it's now "abundantly clear that the jury pool in the western district of New York has been tainted and that Colgan will not be able to receive a fair trial before an impartial jury in the district."
Harrington said he had to seek the order to halt the families' lawyers' "purposely reckless and harmful media strategy," which he called disappointing and unprofessional. He wrote that "plaintiffs' true motives are to poison the jury pool and to create a negative public opinion of Colgan for use as leverage in settlement negotiations."
Attorney James Kreindler, who represents several families, called the charges "nonsense."
"There is absolutely no attempt to influence a jury pool in this case," Kreindler said.
The airlines and families disagree about what should be labeled confidential, he said.
"To me, confidentiality can only be used to protect trade secrets or privacy information of individuals," he said. "They want to keep the truth from the public, and I vehemently object."
Attorney Hugh Russ III, who also represents passengers' families, called the motion a pre-emptive strike to prevent information about the airline's operating policies and procedures from being made public.
"There's a lot of information that would be incredibly damaging to Colgan and Continental that they are seeking to prevent from seeing the light of day," he said, declining to elaborate.
Pinnacle, late Thursday, issued a statement saying all the evidence would be available to jurors at trial.
"Public release of hand-picked portions of trial evidence threatens to taint the jury pool before a fair trial can begin," the statement said. "This motion is intended to prevent that from happening."
Several of the lawsuits have been settled, and others are before mediators. Terms haven't been disclosed. Those that aren't resolved are on track for a March trial.
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