Litigants Claim GPS Was Responsible For The Crash

Twenty-five people have brought a lawsuit against Garmin stemming from an accident in the Republic of Congo in 2010. The plaintiffs claim that the Garmin GPSMAP 496 installed in the aircraft was defective.

The flight took place aboard a Casa 212 airplane. The accident airplane impacted terrain on a charter flight from Yaoundé, Cameroon to Yangadou, Republic of Congo. Eleven people, including six Australian mining executives, were fatally injured when the plane went down. The plaintiffs are residents of China, Australia, and the UK.

The Courthouse News Service reports that, according to documents filed in Federal Court in Chicago, the plaintiffs claim that the GPSMAP 496 was "defective and unreasonably dangerous" when it left the factory, that it did not accurately indicate the airplane's position, and that the terrain-avoidance function did not "provide timely alerts of approaching and hazardous terrain." The suit also claims that the GPS did not contain warnings of "these and other defects."

The plaintiffs say that because of the defective GPS, the pilot flew the airplane into the side of a mountain.

No damages are specified in the complaint.

FMI: www.garmin.com, http://wisner-law.com