In February, a helicopter crashed north of Phoenix, Ariz., killing five people. On board that helicopter were pilot John “Rick” Morton and Thomas J. Stewart, along with Stewart’s wife, child and brother-in-law. According to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the passengers and pilot most likely knew they were going to die moments before their chopper went down. Stewart and his family were on their way back to Scottsdale after spending a long weekend at the family’s ranch near Flagstaff. While an official cause for the crash has yet to be determined by investigators, a mechanical failure is suspected to be at the root of the helicopter’s problems. Witnesses who saw the helicopter go down claim that pieces of the aircraft were falling from the sky just moments before the crash.
Now the pilot’s wife, Charlotte Morton, and her adult daughter, Brenda, have filed a lawsuit against the mechanic who did repairs on the helicopter and his company, Cascade Airframe Repair Inc., as well as the manufacturer of the aircraft, Eurocopter, and the previous owner of the helicopter, Clearwater Corp. Lawyers for the Morton family allege that those named in the suit are negligent because they had knowledge that the chopper’s blades were faulty. One of the main rotor blades on the crashed aircraft had been severely damaged after flying through a intense thunderstorm and had undergone extensive repairs by both Cascade and Eurocopter. The lawsuit states that the cause of the crash was a crack that developed along the edge of the rotor blade, leading it to expand and separate while in flight. The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and none of the defendants has made an official response to the suit.
Morton had been the Stewart family’s personal pilot for years. Previously, Morton was a U.S. Army veteran who had flown helicopters in Vietnam. He accumulated more than 11,000 hours of flight time during the past 30 years of his career. He was killed on the day of his 38th wedding anniversary.
