THOUGHT LEADERSHIP/ALERTS

The Agape case

Agape stemmed from the December 20, 2007, crash of a Cessna Grand Caravan Model 208B into the ocean near the Bahamas. Plaintiff Agape Flights, Inc. owned and operated the aircraft, which was equipped with a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-114A engine. Agape rented the engine from defendant Covington Aircraft Engines, an engine maintenance and overhaul facility in Tulsa that had overhauled the engine and installed it on the accident aircraft on November 7, 2007. Seeking to recover for the loss of the aircraft, Agape sued various entities, including Covington, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation, and Kansas Aviation of Independence, LLC, which had overhauled the engine’s fuel pump. Agape alleged that the accident was caused by an in-flight power loss resulting from severe wear to the fuel pump drive shaft splines. The Pratt & Whitney engine was first sold and delivered in 1984, and the fuel pump, manufactured by Hamilton Sundstrand, was first sold and installed, on a different engine, in 1986. Kansas Aviation overhauled the pump in February 2006 and sold it to Covington, which then installed it on the accident engine. In June 2011, the court granted summary judgment in favor of Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand, finding that both were entitled to the protection of GARA’s statute of repose because the engine and the fuel pump were more than 18 years old at the time of the accident.[2]

When Covington installed the engine in Agape’s aircraft, the fuel pump had accrued approximately 504 hours of time in service since overhaul. The Pratt & Whitney engine maintenance manual mandated a 600-hour in-situ safety inspection of the fuel pump to inspect for unusual wear at the drive shaft and drive shaft coupling splines. Covington did not perform the 600-hour inspection before installing the accident engine on Agape’s aircraft since the fuel pump still had 96 hours to go before such an inspection was required. Agape claimed, inter alia, that Covington’s maintenance was negligent, and that Covington was strictly liable for the alleged defects in the fuel pump.

In a motion for summary judgment, Covington argued that Agape’s strict liability claim could not survive following dismissal of the manufacturers pursuant to GARA, and that, due to federal preemption, Agape’s negligence claim should be dismissed because Covington had complied with the applicable FARs, in particular 14 C.F.R. § 43.13. The court agreed and ruled for Covington on both points.

The court finds that plaintiff has no viable strict liability claim against Covington following dismissal of the GARA-barred manufacturers

Signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, GARA established a federal statute of repose barring civil actions for death or injuries to persons or property against manufacturers of certain general aviation aircraft or component “parts” where the allegedly defective product was first delivered by the manufacturer more than 18 years before an accident. GARA §§ 2(a), 3(3). Specifically, section 2(a) of the statute states:

In General.—Except as provided in subsection (b), no civil action for damages for death or injury to persons or damage to property arising out of an accident involving a general aviation aircraft may be brought against the manufacturer of the aircraft or the manufacturer of any new component, system, subassembly, or other part of the aircraft, in its capacity as a manufacturer if the accident occurred—

1. after the applicable limitation period beginning on—
   
   1. the date of delivery of the aircraft to its first purchaser or lessee, if delivered directly from the manufacturer; or
   2. the date of first delivery of the aircraft to a person engaged in the business of selling or leasing such aircraft; or
2. with respect to any new component, system, subassembly, or other part which replaced another component, system, subassembly, or other part originally in, or which was added to, the aircraft, and which is alleged to have caused such death, injury, or damage, after the applicable limitation period beginning on the date of completion of the replacement or addition.[3]

Although the clear language of the statute extends protection only to “the manufacturer” of the aircraft or component “in its capacity as a manufacturer,” Covington argued, and the court agreed, that “it would be contrary to the underlying rationale of GARA to allow a strict products liability claim to proceed against a distributor, who is sued solely on the basis of its position in the chain of distribution, when the same claim has been dismissed against the manufacturer under the statute of repose.[4]

The court was unable to find any Tenth Circuit or Oklahoma precedent regarding whether GARA should apply to distributors under such circumstances. Instead, it based its decision in part on GARA’s purpose of protecting general aviation manufacturers and its governing rationale that, “after an extended period of time, a product has demonstrated its safety and quality, and that it is not reasonable to hold a manufacturer legally responsible for an accident or injury occurring after that much time has elapsed.”[5] Moreover, according to the court, an “implicit” part of GARA’s rationale “is the inability to establish the defective condition of a product for purposes of successfully prosecuting a strict products liability claim.” The fact that Covington was only being sued in strict liability by virtue of its distribution of an otherwise GARA-protected product led the court to conclude that its prior finding that neither Pratt & Whitney nor Hamilton Sundstrand could be held liable to Agape “necessarily operates, as a matter of law, to exonerate Covington from any liability to Agape on such claim.[6]

The court did not expressly hold that GARA itself applies to distributors, which would have been at odds with the statute’s application to “manufacturers” only. Rather, it based its decision on the fact that, under Oklahoma law, the liability of a manufacturer and distributor in a strict products liability action “is co-extensive, even though the distributor was not responsible for the presence of the defect.” [7] Since the court had already determined that Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand could have no liability, then Covington—as an otherwise innocent distributor—could have no “co-extensive” liability. While this aspect of Oklahoma’s strict products liability law was central to the court’s decision, many other states’ laws also impose liability against distributors simply by virtue of their position in the chain of distribution. Thus, the court’s holding could have wider application to otherwise “innocent” distributors of aviation products that are subject to GARA.

The court finds that Covington’s compliance with the FARs, which set the governing standard of care, compels dismissal of plaintiff’s negligence claims

Covington also argued, and the court agreed, that Agape’s negligence claim was preempted by federal law, and that because Agape could not establish a relevant regulatory violation Covington was entitled to summary judgment on that count as well.

The U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in which the Agape court sits, is one of several federal courts of appeal to have adopted the concept of “implied field preemption” in the aviation area, in which federal law is said to “so thoroughly occup[y] a legislative field” as to make it reasonable to assume that Congress intended to preempt state law in that field.[8] This doctrine is best exemplified by the Third Circuit’s seminal decision in Abdullah v. American Airlines, Inc., which held that “federal law establishes the applicable standards of care in the field of air safety, generally, thus preempting the entire field from state and territorial regulation.”[9] In other words, under Abdullah and Tenth Circuit precedent, a claimant must establish a violation of an applicable federal standard of care (e.g., a FAR violation) to succeed on a claim in the preempted area of “air safety.” Agape did not appear to dispute that federal law, namely 14 C.F.R. § 43.13(a), set the relevant standard of care with respect to its negligence claim against Covington. That section provides that “service providers such as Covington are required to perform maintenance and preventive maintenance according to ‘methods, techniques, and practices prescribed in the current manufacturer’s maintenance manual.’”[10] Since the applicable Pratt & Whitney maintenance manual only required an in-situ inspection of the fuel pump at 600-hour intervals, Agape’s claim appeared to be that Covington should have gone above and beyond this requirement and performed an additional or different inspection.

In other words, Agape was trying to do precisely what the preemption doctrine prevents—i.e., impose additional requirements (presumably based on state negligence laws) in an area already pervasively and completely regulated by the federal government. As stated by the court: “Agape is attempting to impose on Covington an inspection requirement not mandated by the P&WC manual and, consequently, one not mandated under the [Federal Aviation Act of 1958].”[11] Because field preemption precluded Agape from imposing such additional requirements, and because Covington had complied “with all FAA inspection requirements for the Fuel Pump,” the court concluded that it had met the applicable standard of care and was entitled to judgment as a matter of law on Agape’s negligence claim.[12]

Conclusion

As noted, the Agape court’s focus on a specific aspect of Oklahoma’s strict liability law, and the somewhat unique factual circumstance of Covington’s status as a truly innocent distributor, may serve to limit the precedential value of the case. However, the court’s holdings do provide a valuable affirmation of the doctrine of preemption, as well as a potentially valuable analytical framework for crafting GARA-based defenses. 

1. The court also dismissed other aspects of the plaintiff’s claims based on Oklahoma’s economic loss doctrine and Covington’s limited warranty related to the subject engine.
   [Back to reference]
2. See Agape Flights, Inc. v. Covington Aircraft Engines, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69521 (E.D. Okla. June 28, 2011).
   [Back to reference]
3. GARA § 2(a)—“Time Limitations Against Aircraft Manufacturers.” Plaintiffs had previously argued that GARA’s “warranty” exception and its rolling provision applied to the fuel pump and engine, but the court rejected those arguments in its June 2011 order. Agape, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69521 at *12-23.
   [Back to reference]
4. Agape, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94053 at *14.
   [Back to reference]
5. Id. at *14-15, quoting Altseimer v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 919 F. Supp. 340, 342 (E.D. Cal. 1996) (quoting 140 Cong. Rec. H4998 (daily ed. July 27, 1994)(statement of Rep. Fish)).
   [Back to reference]
6. Id. at *15-17.
   [Back to reference]
7. Id., quoting Braden v. Hendricks, 695 P.2d 1343, 1350 (Okla. 1985).
   [Back to reference]
8. U.S. Airways, Inc. v. O’Donnell, 627 F.3d 1318, 1326 (10th Cir. 2010). See also Goodspeed Airport LLC v. East Haddam Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Comm’n, 634 F.3d 206 (2d Cir. 2011); Greene v. B.F. Goodrich Avionics Sys., 409 F.3d 784, 795 (6th Cir. 2005); Montalvo v. Spirit Airlines, 508 F.3d 464, 468 (9th Cir. 2007); Abdullah v. American Airlines, Inc., 181 F.3d 363, 367 (3d Cir. 1999).
   [Back to reference]
9. 181 F.3d at 367.
   [Back to reference]
10. Agape, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94053, at *20, quoting 14 C.F.R. § 43.13(a).
    [Back to reference]
11. Id. at *21.
    [Back to reference]
12. Id. at *22.
    [Back to reference]