The families of two victims of the UPS plane crash last month — Angela Anderson and Trinadette ‘Trina’ Chavez — are suing UPS along with other companies involved in the manufacturing and inspection of the plane.
The families are alleging that negligence was behind the Nov. 4 crash, which killed 14 people and injured 23 others. On that day, around 5:15 p.m., an MD-11 cargo jet crashed shortly after takeoff, devastating an industrial area just south of Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport. The aircraft, which was bound for Honolulu, Hawaii, was carrying 38,000 pounds of jet fuel when its left engine broke off the wing.
Attorneys from the Chicago-based firm Clifford Law Offices are partnering with local attorney Sam Aguiar to represent family members of Anderson and Chavez. Speaking at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Bradley Cosgrove with Clifford Law Offices said they are looking for answers about what caused the crash, reforms that ensure this doesn’t happen again and justice for those responsible.
“This plane should have never been airworthy to be in the air that day, and this crash was preventable,” Cosgrove said. “We hope to find all of the reasons why it was preventable.”
The lawsuit filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court names five defendants: UPS; UPS Air; General Electric, the engine manufacturer; Boeing, who acquired the original plane manufacturer; and VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc., who conducted inspections and maintenance on the plane before the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency, is still investigating the cause of the crash, but an interim report released on Nov. 20 found evidence of fatigue and stress fractures in the hardware that affixed the left engine to the UPS cargo plane.
Cosgrove, who’s a partner at Clifford Law Offices, said attorneys think this should have been noticed.
“We think that those would have been longstanding defects that should have been found and fixed long before this aged aircraft continued to be pressed to its max by UPS over and over with more than 21,000 cycles under its belt,” he said.
The report also made reference to a 1979 crash in Chicago in which a plane had a similar catastrophic failure. That plane, a DC-10, was an earlier model of the MD-11.
In the lawsuit, the victims’ families allege that UPS operated the 34-year-old plane when it was not airworthy and created unsafe conditions for employees and the public by “implementing inadequate maintenance, inspection, or operational procedures.” They’re also accusing Boeing of knowing the risk for catastrophic failure but failing to notify companies and air crews.
LPM News reached out to the companies named in the lawsuit.
In a statement, UPS spokesperson Jim Mayer said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
“We remain deeply saddened for those affected by Flight 2976,” Mayer said. “UPS is fully supporting the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the accident and working tirelessly with federal, state and local authorities on response efforts.”
Likewise, GE refused to comment on the lawsuit, but extended sympathies to the victims’ families and committed to complying with the investigation.
Representatives of Boeing and VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc. did not respond to emailed requests for comment by deadline.
The pair of lawsuits filed in Louisville Wednesday have been assigned to Judge Patricia Morris.
These are the first lawsuits filed by families who lost a loved one in the UPS plane crash, but they are unlikely to be the last.
Families want justice for victims
Sitting at a table, flanked by her lawyers, Gabriela Hermosillo-Nunez cried as she spoke about the type of person her sister was.
“My sister, Trinadette Chavez, was the heart and soul of this family,” Hermosillo-Nunez said.
Chavez, 37, was an employee at Grade A Auto Parts, one of the businesses located within the industrial area where the plane crashed. The mother of two did not survive the initial explosion, according to the lawsuit.
Hermosillo-Nunez, who’s taken legal guardianship of one of Chavez’s children, said her sister was the oldest of nine children. They had a rough childhood, she said, but they made it out because Chavez sacrificed everything for her siblings.
“While others her age were living their childhoods, [Chavez], who was a child herself, was feeding us, changing our diapers, teaching us, protecting us and showering us with love,” her sister said.
Hermosillo-Nunez said because of Chavez’ sacrifices she was able to go to college, see the world and get a job that she loves. She said Chavez always stood up for her siblings and the lawsuit is how they plan to step up for her. The family hopes that the lawsuit will bring accountability and any award will help to take care of her two children.
“We intend to stand up for [Chavez] and fight for her, however long it takes, just like she always did for us,” Hermosillo-Nunez said.
The plaintiffs in the second lawsuit are Alexandria Faith and Angelica Anderson, the daughters of 45-year-old Angela Anderson. A mother of four, Anderson went to Grade A Auto Parts to sell scrap metal when the crash occurred.
Faith had her attorney read her statement to the media Wednesday. In it, Faith said Anderson was loved by many people.
“Like a lot of us, she had some challenges in the past, but I know how hard she had been fighting to overcome them,” Faith wrote. “I was proud of her efforts but am now living with the regret that I didn’t tell her before it was too late.”
Faith said she hopes her mother knows “that we’re working to do what it takes to preserve her legacy and to reduce the chances that other families, friends and loved ones ever have to go through something like this.”
Attorneys promise another investigation
The attorneys representing Anderson and Chavez have promised to conduct their own investigation into the crash.
Tracy Brammeier, an attorney with Clifford Law Offices, said they will use the powers that come along with filing a lawsuit to obtain documents and interviews. She said their investigation will happen alongside the NTSB, which will release a final report sometime in the coming years.
“Our own investigation in this case will be not only to uncover the immediate cause of this crash … but going beyond that, how this unairworthy condition was allowed to develop in the first place,” Brammeier said. “What happened at these corporations that they allowed an airplane that was in this condition to continue to be flown at the risk of not only the people on the airplane, at the risk of all the communities surrounding it.”
Brammeier called UPS’ decision to allow the plane to take off full of jet fuel “completely unforgivable.”
UPS officials grounded all MD-11s three days after the crash, “out of an abundance of caution.” The planes make up about 9% of the entire UPS fleet. One day later, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all of that class of aircraft.
While the decision was expected to last weeks, UPS Airlines President Bill Moore recently told employees it could take “several months” to provide the necessary repairs and inspections, according to the Courier-Journal.
Lawyers representing the victims’ families said that leaked memo from UPS suggests the inspections and maintenance problems are more widespread than previously thought.
Cosgrove called the decision to ground the MD-11 planes “a step in the right direction,” but one that came too late.
