Medley v. United States, C-79-2832 RPA

• Decision Date: 30 June 1982
• Docket Number: C-80-3777 RPA and C-79-1842 RPA.,No. C-79-2832 RPA,C-79-2832 RPA
• Citation: 543 F. Supp. 1211
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
• Parties: Harold C. MEDLEY, Gary Canova, Toni Breese and Suzanne Edwards, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant. CENTRAL NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF OMAHA, NEBRASKA, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant. AETNA CASUALTY & SURETY COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America [Federal Aviation Administration (Department of Transportation), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Department of Commerce)], Defendants.

543 F. Supp. 1211

Harold C. MEDLEY, Gary Canova, Toni Breese and Suzanne Edwards, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant.

CENTRAL NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF OMAHA, NEBRASKA, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant.

AETNA CASUALTY & SURETY COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America Federal Aviation Administration (Department of Transportation), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Department of Commerce), Defendants.

Nos. C-79-2832 RPA, C-80-3777 RPA and C-79-1842 RPA.

United States District Court, N. D. California.

June 30, 1982.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Jack T. Friedman, Carroll, Burdick, McDonough, Thomas J. Brandi, Abramson & Bianco, San Francisco, Cal., for plaintiffs.

Mary L. Grad, J. Paul McGrath, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

AGUILAR, District Judge.

These three consolidated actions arise out of two separate aircraft crashes in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. In April of 1978, Harold C. Medley was piloting his Beechcraft Sundowner C-23 aircraft, with his wife as passenger, from San Jose, California, to an intended destination in Death Valley, California. As the plane was crossing the Sierras, "rapidly rising terrain which was beyond the performance level of the aircraft," (Memorandum in Support of Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment, p. 1), was suddenly encountered and the plane crashed. Medley had flown into, and become trapped in, a "blind canyon" known as Center Basin, located north of the Kearsarge Pass in the King's Canyon area of the Sierras. As a result of the crash Mrs. Medley was killed, Medley was injured, and the aircraft was destroyed. Medley v. United States of America, C-79-2832 RPA, is brought by Medley, who sues for the wrongful death of his wife, for the personal injuries he sustained in the crash, and for the property damage to his aircraft. Central National Insurance Company of Omaha, Nebraska v. United States of America, C-80-3777 RPA, is an indemnity action brought by Medley's insurer to recover sums paid out pursuant to an insurance policy providing passenger bodily injury coverage.

In February of 1979, Dale C. Harwood was piloting a Piper Archer aircraft owned by Donald J. and Donna L. Smith in the King's Canyon area of the Sierras. The plane crashed when Harwood suddenly encountered "rapidly rising terrain which was beyond the performance level of the aircraft," (Memorandum in Support of Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment, p. 2), after entering, and becoming trapped in, the Center Basin "blind canyon." Aetna Casualty & Surety Company v. United States of America, C-79-1842 RPA, is an indemnity action brought by the Smith's insurer to recover sums paid out pursuant to an insurance policy for property damage to the aircraft.¹

All three lawsuits name the United States as sole defendant. It is the theory of all plaintiffs that the two airplanes crashed while the pilots were following a mountain pass route marked on a sectional aeronautical chart known as the San Francisco Aeronautical Chart. Plaintiffs assert that while following the route on the sectional chart, the two pilots unknowingly entered the Center Basin blind canyon, and unable to navigate out of it due to the performance capabilities of their aircrafts, crashed into the canyon. The sectional chart is prepared and published by the Federal Aviation Administration (hereinafter referred to as the FAA), with some design work done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Plaintiffs allege that the United States, through its employees in these two agencies, are liable for the injuries and damage caused by the two crashes on the grounds that it negligently prepared, designed, printed, published, sold, supplied, maintained, reviewed, revised, updated, or failed to update, approved and controlled a sectional chart that was dangerous and unsafe to use, and failed to provide adequate warning and instruction on the proper use of the route.²

The United States now moves for summary judgment in all three cases, contending that even if it did commit the alleged acts of negligence, the acts come within the "discretionary function exception" to the Federal Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-2680) and therefore cannot be the basis for the imposition of liability.³

On a motion for summary judgment, the party against whom the motion is asserted is entitled to the benefit of all favorable inferences, and summary judgment is proper only where there is no genuine issue of any material fact or where, when viewing the evidence and the inferences drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, the moving party is clearly entitled to prevail as a matter of law. People of State of California ex. rel. Department of Transportation v. United States, 561 F.2d 731, 735 (9th Cir. 1977); Driscoll v. United States, 525 F.2d 136, 137 (9th Cir. 1975). In the present case the parties are in dispute as to the actual facts surrounding the controversy between them, therefore, to determine whether the United States is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, the Court is required to look at the evidence before it in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, and to assume the facts asserted by plaintiffs to be true. Thompson v. United States, 592 F.2d 1104, 1107 (9th Cir. 1979). In this light, the Court summarizes the relevant factual background below.

If a straight line is drawn between the San Francisco Bay Area and Las Vegas, Nevada, the line crosses the Sierra mountains over King's Canyon. Consequently, many pilots flying between these two locations choose to cross the Sierras at this point. As King's Canyon is the location of the Center Basin blind canyon, some of these pilots have become trapped in the Center Basin blind canyon.

A letter of a private citizen came to the attention of the Air Traffic Division of the Western Regional Office of the FAA which alerted the reader to the Center Basin blind canyon, and to numerous crashes that had occurred in the canyon. The citizen suggested that the danger of the canyon be noted on the sectional chart, and discussed at safety seminars. The citizen explained that in order to cross the Sierras over the King's Canyon area in a lower performance aircraft, either a northerly or southerly route must be taken around Mt. Bago. To the north of Mt. Bago is a narrow canyon, but this canyon provides a safe way over the range. To the south of Mt. Bago is a wide, inviting canyon, but this canyon can lead to Center Basin.

The citizen's letter came to the attention of Melvin Koehler, the assistant division chief for the Air Traffic Control Division of the Western Regional Office of the FAA. In January of 1979, when Koehler was acting as Acting Director of the division for the Western Regional Office in the absence of Director Frank Happy, Koehler decided to recommend that a mountain pass route over the Kearsarge Pass area be placed in the next edition of the San Francisco sectional chart. Koehler decided that such action should be taken so that pilots would have a route to follow around Mt. Bago that would prevent them from entering into Center Basin. Before making the recommendation, Koehler received information and a proposed route from his staff, and met with other FAA personnel. However, certain persons who should have been consulted about the proposed route were not, including the Accident Prevention Coordinator for the Western Region of the FAA.

Though he was not personally familiar with the Kearsarge Pass area, Koehler issued a letter recommending the charting of two alternative mountain pass routes over Kearsarge Pass. The letter was issued by Koehler in the name of his superior, Happy; Koehler had the authority to act on Happy's behalf. This recommendation was apparently approved, and the suggested routes sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where the actual cartography of the sectional charts is done. However sometime earlier, the hand drawing of the proposed routes prepared by FAA officials was lost, and a poor quality photographic copy substituted for use by the cartographers. On this copy, the proposed southern route around Mt. Bago was far more legible than the proposed northern route, so the cartographers put only the southern route on the sectional chart. As noted by the citizen in his letter, Center Basin is to the south of Mt. Bago.

Pursuant to Inter-Agency Air Cartographic Committee (IACC) specifications, the route was placed on the sectional chart with the use of blue diamonds. Blue diamonds are used to depict a mountain pass route. Mountain pass routes are not ordinarily depicted on sectional maps, and in fact the placing of the mountain pass route over Kearsarge Pass was the first time such a route had been placed on the San Francisco sectional chart. Additionally, a misleading elevation figure appeared over the route. It was not clear whether this figure applied to the elevation of the pass or to the elevation of the nearby peak, causing pilots not to have gained sufficient altitude to cross the ridge.

The mountain pass route appeared for the first time in the 19th edition of the San Francisco sectional chart. After publication, there was immediate opposition to the charting of the route because of its danger. Accidents occurred in the Kearsarge Pass area after publication of the chart. In response to the objections to the route, the route was removed from the 20th edition of the sectional chart. However, due to a mistake, the route again appeared on the 21st edition of the sectional chart. On the 22nd edition of the chart, the route was finally removed for good.

The United States asserts, in a rather simplistic fashion, that the acts of the government as they pertain to plaintiffs' lawsuits were the decision to chart a route over the Kearsarge Pass, and the choice of what that route would be. The United States contends that...