Robert David "Speck" Gros
January 13, 2009Downtown Art Gallery (Houma)
January 15, 2009
The first lawsuit has been filed involving the helicopter crash that killed eight men in western Terrebonne Parish on Jan. 4.
Houma resident Britain Boudreaux, 20, the separated wife of crash victim Allen Boudreaux Jr., 23, filed suit last Wednesday against Lafayette-based Petroleum Helicopters International, Inc. The suit alleges that negligence on the part of PHI caused the accident.
Britain Boudreaux is seeking damages for loss of her husband’s affection, companionship and society, funeral and burial expenses and loss of future earnings and benefits.
“Obviously, there was some type of failure in that helicopter, or there was pilot error,” said Bill Dodd, one of Boudreaux’s attorneys handling the case. “Helicopters are meant to go from point A to point B, not to fall in between. It was a very tragic accident, but one that should have been avoided.”
Repeated calls to PHI for comment were unanswered as of press time.
Dodd said filing a suit so soon after the crash is a common and necessary step in the discovery process.
“There are a lot of records that are going to have to be produced that you may not be able to get without the force of a court order,” he said. “These things take a long time to develop, but you better hit the floor running and make sure what evidence is there is properly maintained and does not slip away from you.”
Dodd is hoping his first request for documents arrives this week, including autopsy reports to learn if the victims died on impact and the exact cause of death.
He also wants a report from the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office on what was found at the crash site because they were the first investigators on the scene.
However, Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois said his office would not be releasing a report about what his investigators discovered at the scene.
“I’m leaving that to the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to handle,” he said. “You get involved in too many lawsuits when you do that.”
Search crews found the helicopter’s flight data recorders last Tuesday. They were brought to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, D.C., for analysis.
NTSB investigators at the crash site and at PHI headquarters have returned to their field offices, according to NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz.
The wreckage has been moved to a PHI storage facility in Lafayette.
“Engine and other maintenance components have been removed and sent to manufacturing facilities for further testing,” Lopatkiewicz said.
The doomed aircraft carrying a pilot, co-pilot and seven offshore workers plunged en route from a PHI base in Amelia to Shell’s South Timbalier 300 Block offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
The lone survivor, Dynamic Industries Inc. employee Steven Yelton, is in the intensive care unit at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.
Dodd said he and his son went duck hunting in Bayou Black, about an hour’s boat ride from the crash site in Bayou Penchant, the weekend the helicopter went down. He claimed weather could not have played a factor.
“That Sunday morning it was a clear day. That’s why we didn’t kill any ducks. It was a bluebird day,” Dodd said. “I think we can almost exclusively rule weather out, which means it has to be one of two things: a failure of something on that helicopter or pilot error.”
The NTSB reported there were scattered clouds and visibility was 10 miles at the time of the crash.
While no other victims’ relatives have contacted Dodd, he said he spoke with a Texas lawyer claiming to represent one of the crash victims about filing a suit in Terrebonne Parish. He expects more attorneys and companies could be dragged in as the case progresses.
“You’re probably going to have a number of defendants in this case. We’re going to be pushed and pulled in a lot of directions,” Dodd said. “We expect to do everything that is appropriate to represent Mrs. Boudreaux in this matter.”
In this handout photo released by the U.S. Coast Guard, debris can be seen in a marsh area after a helicopter crash that occurred near Bayou Penchant January 4. * Photo by U.S. COAST GUARD
