In Re Air Crash in Bali, Indonesia

DAVID W. WILLIAMS, District Judge.

On April 22, 1974 a Boeing 707 aircraft operated by Pan American World Airways as Flight 812 was headed from Hong Kong to the island of Bali, Indonesia, intending to land at Den Passar Airport, located at the island's southern tip. In darkness it began its descent and landing approach, but became lost. Instead of retracing its path and climbing higher, the crew kept the craft at an inordinately low altitude for too long a period. The plane crashed into a mountain located 37 miles north of the airport, killing all 96 passengers and the 11 crew members.

Numerous lawsuits were filed in several federal districts of the United States, and the Multidistrict Litigation Panel ordered all the suits transferred to the Central District of California for pretrial supervision. At this writing, most of the suits have been settled.

Wrongful death actions on behalf of the survivors of three of the passengers, John and Virginia Causey and John W. Ryder, were tried to a jury. The trial was bifurcated so that claims of the applicability of the Warsaw Convention [1] and its progeny [2] and the defenses arising from a contract of carriage, all having the effect of…