Facts

While a helicopter crew performed an aerial deer survey in Madera County, the helicopter's main blade hit grounding wire. AS a result, the helicopter moved backwards and crashed to the ground where it caught fire. Clu Cotter, Kevin O'Connor, Tom Stolberg and Dennis Donovan died in the accident. The victims' families filed suit against Southern California Edison claiming that the grounding wire was more than 100 feet above the conductors and invisible due to its small size and the background vegetation. The families also sued the helicopter contractor, Landells Aviation of Desert Hot Springs.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS:
Plaintiffs alleged that defendant failed to properly mark the utility line that the helicopter hit, and thus the decedents could not see it. Specifically, plaintiffs argued that the utility line was over 100 feet above drooping main wires. Plaintiffs showed that other SCE lines were no more than 20 feet above conductors even on 1 mile spans. Plaintiffs also had evidence that a similar incident occurred 2 miles away during fire suppression when a tanker hit an elevated line 150 feet over conductors, ripping the plane's tail off.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS:
Defendant had no knowledge, constructive or actual, that low level flights were being conducted in the remote area where the incident occurred. Moreover, no one had requested that the line be marked and Southern California Edison Company has a program in place for aviators and other members of the public to contact them to have line evaluations performed for safety, and this was never done in this case.

Result

After the trial started, the parties entered into an undisclosed cash settlement with Southern California Edison under which defendant agreed to evaluate the options available to it within proper engineering standards to determine if it was feasible for the line to be altered in some way. Plaintiffs also received $10,000,000 from Helicopter Co.