Strauss v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.

266 F. Supp. 559, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8406
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedMarch 30, 1967
DocketCiv. No. 30610
StatusPublished

This text of 266 F. Supp. 559 (Strauss v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Strauss v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 266 F. Supp. 559, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8406 (E.D. Pa. 1967).

Opinion

OPINION

SHERIDAN, District Judge1

This is a civil action by plaintiff, Kurt Strauss, against defendant, Delta Air Lines, Inc., to recover damages for personal injuries suffered by plaintiff while a passenger on an airplane owned and operated by defendant.

Plaintiff is a citizen of Pennsylvania. Defendant is a Louisiana corporation with its principal place of business in Atlanta, Georgia. The court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332. The parties stipulated that the substantive law of Pennsylvania applies.

On May 12, 1960, plaintiff, a paying passenger, boarded defendant’s DC-8 airplane, bearing serial No. N805E, for a one-way flight from Chicago, Illinois, to Miami, Florida. He seated himself in one of the rear seats alongside the aisle and fastened his seat belt across his abdomen in the usual way. The seat belt remained fastened until the accident occurred. As the airplane approached the Miami airport, it encountered brief, but violent, turbulence during which plaintiff’s seat belt broke. He was hurled out of his seat, striking his head against and partially penetrating the overhead of the cabin. Defendant admitted that the seat belt broke at its insertion on the left side; that seat belts as such are intended for the safety of passengers against turbulence and also the type of turbulence that was encountered on May 12, 1960; and that at the time of the accident the plane was descending at about 1200 to 1500 feet a minute, with a speed of about 290 to 305 knots.

The seat was attached to the aircraft frame. On the back of the seat and at the bottom, a torque tube or bar, approximately two inches in diameter, ran across the width of the seat. A cable, part of the seat belt assembly, fitted or looped around the torque tube at each side of the seat. The “barrel portion,” which looked like a whistle, was at one end of the cable. When the cable was looped around the torque bar, the barrel portion was fitted into a “swaged ball” joint. The swaged ball was attached to the other end of the cable and the webbed belt part of the seat belt. The cable consisted of a number of strands of wire completely covered by a plastic sheath. Defendant admitted that failure of the seat belt took place in the cable in the area of the swaged ball end fitting.

N805E was the fifth of six DC-8 airplanes acquired by Delta from Douglas Aircraft Corporation. It had been delivered to Delta on November 5, 1959. At the time of the accident, 1363 flight hours had been accumulated. The earliest DC-8 acquired by Delta, N801E, had at the time over 1815 flight hours. The latest, N806E, had 1243 flight hours. On May 13, 1960, Delta Engineering Department issued an inspection order which required an inspection of all DC-8 seat belts for frayed cable assemblies. Fraying of the cable assembly means that some of the strands of wire constituting the cable were broken.. The inspection disclosed 46 frayed cables in N801, 62 in N802, 54 in N804, 8 in N805, and 21 in N806. The number in N803 was not reported. In each instance the fraying was adjacent to the attachment of the swaged ball end of the cable. As a consequence of this condi[561]*561tion, Douglas modified the portion of the cable assembly and the barrel section to which it was secured.

The plaintiff proceeded against the defendant on two theories of liability. First, that the cable, as installed, had a patent weakness at insertion of the cable into the swaged ball fitting, that is, that there was a potential for failure by “fatigue” at that point. Plaintiff contended that this should have been detected by a person with knowledge of maintenance and mechanics, and hence by representatives of Delta who were stationed at the Douglas plant during the time the airplanes were assembled. Second, that defendant failed to utilize an adequate inspection system which would or could have disclosed that the seat belt attachments were failing, and that had such an inspection been made, the accident w'ould have been avoided.

At plaintiff’s request, only the liability issue was tried. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant. In his motion, plaintiff assigned several reasons for a new trial. At the request of the parties, the motion was submitted on briefs.

Plaintiff abandoned all but two of the reasons in his motion.

Plaintiff argues first that it was error to have permitted defendant to introduce evidence of the type of inspection that defendant would have made at a 2500-hour overhaul. As a part of its defense to the alleged failure to use a proper inspection system, defendant undertook to show the nature of its inspection and the maintenance program for DC-8’s as it existed at and prior to the date of the accident. Since the DC-8’s were new aircraft recently acquired by Delta, certain phases of the inspection program were in the development stage. The program, as it applied to the seat belts, had three main aspects: the daily inspection, the 220-hour flight time inspection, and the 2500-hour flight time inspection. The daily inspection merely insured that there was no visible damage or damage in a general sense. The second aspect, set forth in Delta’s maintenanee manual, required that at 220 flight time hour intervals, the inspectors were generally to “inspect safety belts and check security.” Mr. Burnette, assistant superintendent for inspection at Delta, testified to the standard practice in carrying out these general inspection requirements. To test the cable for security the seat belt was pulled upon to see that it was secure to the seat. This test would not disclose incipient fatigue cracks or fractures of the individual strands of cable under the plastic sheathing, unless, of course, the number of strands fractured were so numerous as to permit a failure of the seat belt when one pulled upon it. The witness testified that because of the plastic sheath, “[i]t is practically impossible to inspect the swaged ball end [of the cable assembly] when it is installed in the airplane.” Company records showed that the seat belts were last inspected in this manner on April 24, 1960, or about 20 days before the accident occurred. That such inspection was the practice of Delta and that the records showed it had been performed was relevant to the question of. the existence of absence of negligence. Cf. Haines v. Reading Co., 3 Cir. 1950, 178 F.2d 918; Universe Tankships, Inc. v. Pyrate Tank Cleaners, Inc., S.D.N.Y. 1957, 152 F.Supp. 903, 930-932; Murphy v. American Barge Line Co., W.D. Pa.1948, 76 F.Supp. 276.

None of defendant’s DC-8’s had 2500 flight hours at the time of the accident. Defendant contended that in view of plaintiff’s claim of an inadequate inspection program, it was entitled to show that the program did provide for a fuller inspection but the time interval for reaching it had not occurred. Plaintiff objected because after the accident the seat belts were changed so that when the 2500-hour inspection was made, the airplanes had an entirely different seat belt assembly. The court limited this line of testimony to a showing of the inspection procedure at and prior to the time of the accident; to a showing of what would have been the inspection procedure at 2500 hours, if this plane [562]*562had gone 2500 hours, and there had been no modification of the seat belt attachment.2 Plaintiff made only a general objection to the line of testimony as limited by the court.

The 2500-hour inspection was a major overhaul.

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Bluebook (online)
266 F. Supp. 559, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8406, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/strauss-v-delta-air-lines-inc-paed-1967.