NOTE: Labels in bold are required.
Charleston, West Virginia Plane Crash Attorneys
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is responsible for investigating airplane crashes and aviation-related accidents. However, by law, attorneys representing family members of victims killed in a plane crash cannot take part in an NTSB investigation. Interestingly enough, plane manufacturers and airliners are allowed to participate in NTSB investigations since it's assumed they have the engineering expertise and scientific knowledge required to investigate airplane accidents.
Unfortunately, this means those who may be materially responsible for causing an aviation accident are essentially allowed to investigate themselves. As a result, family members of crash victims have no guarantee that a conflict of interest or undue influence won't prejudice the outcome of an investigation.
Attorneys representing victims can, however, gather information from available reports and eyewitness testimony. At The Bell Law Firm, PLLC, our lawyers understand how to examine important information related to aviation accidents and use it to expose negligence on the part of airlines and plane manufacturers. To schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help you, contact The Bell Law Firm, PLLC today.
Relevant Information Pertaining to Aviation Accidents
Our attorneys collect and gather the following kinds of information in order to begin the process of determining what went wrong in a plane crash:
- FAA Facility Logs
- FAA Airman license records
- TSOs
- Service Difficulty information
- Reports of hazards or poor whether
- Engineering reports on stress tests
- Video footage and photographs of crash site
- Records and reports of inspections
- Airworthiness Directive records
- ARTCC radar data and reports
- Pilot training information
- Copies of black box flight data recordings
Presenting Evidence at Trial
To date, the NTSB's final conclusions cannot be entered as evidence at trial. In some cases, however, the Factual Report issued by the NTSB can be considered by jurors. In some cases, the report may support what our own investigation has discovered while in others, it may not. Our attorneys use the Factual Report as a supplement to our own investigation, relying heavily on our own expert witnesses when establishing evidence supporting our claims at trial. Where the report contradicts known evidence or obscures the issues, we present the conclusions of our own investigation in order to set the record straight.
