A federal jury has awarded $161,050 to the owner of the Molokai property where a tour helicopter crashed in 2011.
Wednesday’s award by a U.S. District Court jury includes $125,000 in punitive damages against Blue Hawaiian Helicopters.
“What the jury found was that Blue Hawaiian deliberately failed to clean up all of the debris from the helicopter crash,” said Jim Bickerton, the lawyer for property owner Vernon Suzuki.
The rest of the award includes money for the cleanup, Suzuki’s emotional distress and for the diminished value of his property.
The Nov. 10, 2011, crash killed the Blue Hawaiian pilot and all four of his passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the pilot for flying too close to mountainous terrain during bad weather.
Suzuki owns a share of the property that includes the crash site, and owns an entire adjacent parcel where some of the crash debris had spread. He testified that after the NTSB removed whatever debris it needed for its crash investigation, he notified Blue Hawaiian of the need for additional cleanup. He said Blue Hawaiian’s insurer offered to reimburse him only what he had spent up to October 2012, when he contacted Blue Hawaiian.
Former Blue Hawaiian owner David Chevalier testified that he sold the company in 2013 for $64 million, less than what he thought it was worth, because of the effect the crash and deaths had on him.
“It’s heart-wrenching. And I didn’t want to do it anymore,” Chevalier said.
Killed in the crash were pilot Nathan Cline, 30, of Maui; Stuart Robertson, 50, and Eva Birgitta Wannersjo, 47, of Toronto; and newlyweds Mike Abel, 25, and Nicole Bevilacqua-Abel, 28, of Pennsylvania.
Cline’s widow, Violeta Escobar, sued aircraft manufacturer Airbus Helicopters SAS for what she claims were defects in the design and manufacturing of the helicopter her husband was piloting that contributed to the crash. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement last month.
The families of Robertson and the Abels reached final settlement with Blue Hawaiian and Airbus last year.
