Lawyers Go for The Jugular

A US law firm said Saturday it was representing the families of 10 victims of a plane crash last month in Egypt in a suit against the maker of the plane, Boeing. On January 3, 2004, Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashed into the Red Sea shortly after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh.

"We have been given the authority to begin preparing for a lawsuit that would be filed in the United States" by 10 of the victims' families, lawyer Manuel von Ribbeck said at a press conference in the southern French city of Marseille.

The suit will be filed against the aviation giant Boeing and the US company International Lease and Finance Corporation, which owned and was leasing the Boeing 737-300 to Flash Airlines when it crashed off the Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh on January 3, killing all 148 people - mostly French tourists - aboard.

Von Ribbeck, a lawyer with the Chicago-based Nolan Law Group, said the suit would be filed in a Chicago court "within a week". Francois Quilichini, a lawyer representing the children of the crash victim Ernest Siddi, said the lawsuit would allow interested parties to "consult all of Boeing's documents related to this affair". 
 
He said the plaintiffs in the case blame Boeing for having "let the 737 fly even though they knew about the dysfunctions of these planes and yet did nothing so that these dysfunctions were repaired within a reasonable delay". The airplane, a Boeing 737-300, registry SU-ZCF, was delivered in October 1992 and had accumulated 25592 cycles and 17973 hours.

The International Lease and Finance Corporation is suspected of having leased the plane to "successive lessees with ever-decreasing regard for the state of the plane".  He said three of the families represented in the case live in the south of France and the other seven live in or around Paris.

FMI: www.flashtour.com/airline.htm