Frontier Passengers File $10 Million Claim Against Denver For Failing To Stop Runway Suicide

This is why people hate lawyers.

A man scaled an 8-foot airport perimeter fence topped with barbed wire, entered Denver’s remote airfield area, and stood on the runway in front of a Frontier jet taking off for Los Angeles. He was ingested into the plane’s engine, in what was ruled a suicide.

The engine caught fire, and a lawyer is now suing the airport owner for “more than $10 million” because some passengers inhaled smoke while evacuating the aircraft. The airline got everyone off the plane to safety, but they’re also suing the city and county because some passengers were injured going down the slide.

Attorney Andres Pereira with DJC Law said his clients expected safe travel but instead experienced a “preventable aviation incident” that left them with physical and psychological injuries.

“I have three clients right now who were sitting in a row right next to the engine, and they actually saw portions of the individual’s body go through the engine, which you can imagine must be a very traumatic experience,” Pereira said. “As soon as that occurred, of course, everybody on the aircraft, my clients included, they all thought they were going to die.”

Their theory for liability is “multiple failures in the design, maintenance, monitoring, and operation of the airport’s perimeter security and intrusion-detection systems” and that the city should have been aware of the breach and notified air traffic control earlier so that the plane wouldn’t have tried to take off. Airport motion detectors picked up deer at the same time he went over the fence.

I guess this is more plausible than when a man ran onto the runway in Salt Lake City, climbed into a Delta engine and died, and then his family demanded $300,000 because first responders should have communicated better amongst themselves in order to have stopped him on time.

I guess we’re really responsible for not telling someone that they shouldn’t go through an emergency exit onto the airfield, strip naked, and crawl into an aircraft engine. It is someone else’s fault that there are consequences for doing so – other than the perpetrator.

The man got onto the airfield because he’s a criminal. He had 20 prior arrests, including for attempted murder. His most recent arrest was just a month ago. And he killed himself.

He is the one responsible for what happened. And if anyone would have a justifiable claim it would be Frontier’s insurers, not the psasengers ‘because they had to witness it’.

Holding the wrong party responsible is why we have instructions that say not to iron clothes while wearing them.

In 1984 a California man was tossing his toddler up and down in his living room. The kid loved it, and the father went higher and higher. Until the kid’s head hit the ceiling fan. Which was on. And the man sued the ceiling fan manufacturer for failing to warn him that this might be dangerous. This wasn’t the only man to sue over failure to warn after a ceiling fan injury.

So I can almost understand warnings like “this motorcycle contains no edible parts” and cartons of eggs that warn “this product may contain eggs” (or jars of peanut butter that flag, “may contain nuts or nut products”). It’s because of lawyers like this one.

I have to think though that insisting butane lighters warn “flame may cause fire” or people who need to be told “this electric drill is not intended for dental use” tell us that something is wrong with our society. Shouldn’t we really rethink the whole idea of responsibility?

Then again, when a U.S. Senator, former Governor and candidate for President of the United States actually does iron his shirts while wearing them what chance to the rest of us have?

The narrative arc of societal decline will be complete when the city and county of Denver settle and taxpayers are forced to pony up.