USAir Flight 427: $7 Million Settlement for a Victim's Family in Boeing Rudder-Defect Litigation

On September 8, 1994, USAir Flight 427 plunged into a ravine near Hopewell Township, Pennsylvania, while on final approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 passengers and crew. The Boeing 737-300 had been descending normally when the aircraft suddenly rolled and pitched nose-down at roughly 300 miles per hour. There were no survivors.

Federal investigators traced the disaster to the aircraft's rudder system. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that a jam in the main rudder power control unit servo valve caused the rudder to deflect hard in a direction opposite to what the pilots commanded, sending the plane into an unrecoverable dive. Lawyers representing victims' families advanced a related design-defect theory: that Boeing had long been aware its 737 rudders could reverse under certain conditions but had not warned airlines or corrected the problem. Boeing disputed that explanation throughout the early years of litigation, pointing instead to pilot error.

The wrongful-death claims from all 132 deaths were consolidated into a multidistrict proceeding in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Jamie Lebovitz of Nurenberg, Paris, Heller and McCarthy represented one victim's family in that proceeding. His approach, developed over years of aviation-disaster work, centered on building a detailed documentary portrait of the decedent's life and economic contributions, so that Boeing and its insurers would understand what a Cleveland jury might award.

Lebovitz spent roughly three years pushing through depositions and resisting early settlement offers. When a trial date was set, he maintained the threat of actually trying the case. On the day trial was to begin, he accepted an offer of approximately $7 million for his client. That figure was substantially higher than the amounts most other Flight 427 families had settled for individually, reflecting the economic and damages profile Lebovitz had built for the decedent.

Boeing later agreed to redesign the rudder control system and paid to retrofit the entire worldwide 737 fleet. The Flight 427 claims were consolidated in the Western District of Pennsylvania, where 47 cases were filed and another 19 were transferred in by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Across that litigation, most families settled for between roughly $1.25 million and $2 million, a handful of higher-value cases resolved for between $5 million and $10 million, and one record settlement reached $25.2 million. The Nurenberg Paris result sat well above the band most families received.