Courts, Government

Lawyer Sues Government For Treating Snowmobile Trail Like A Helicopter Parking Lot

Didn't know helicopter crashes were a danger of snowmobiling.

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car crash car accident fatal accidents crashesGenerally speaking, snowmobile paths and helicopter landing pads look different. When they don’t, you’re looking at an easy recipe for injury. From CBS News:

Jeff Smith was whizzing along on a snowmobile one evening a few years back when something dark appeared in front of him. He hit his brakes but he couldn’t avoid clipping the rear tail of a Black Hawk helicopter parked on the trail.

The March 2019 crash almost cost Smith his life and is now the subject of a federal lawsuit by the Massachusetts lawyer. He is demanding $9.5 million in damages from the government, money he says is needed to cover his medical expenses and lost wages, as well as hold the military responsible for the crash.

People should really leave parking invisible aircrafts to Wonder Woman. Part of Smith’s suit blames the government for not leaving lights or some other way of drawing attention to the camouflaged hunk of metal parked in a space that they should have known doubled as a snowmobile path. Without some sort of warning, injuries like this seem inevitable:

Here is the sticky bit. While the snowmobiling accident took place on an airfield — the exact sort of place you’d expect someone to park their Black Hawk — Smith alleges it was rarely used for that purpose.

If this happened on some airfield with no history of alternative use, we’d call him stupid and bet he wouldn’t trespass again. But this is different —- the field is regularly used for other purposes that the government was or should have been aware of:

“The Army internal investigation showed pretty clearly that the crew knew that they were landing right before or right after on an active snowmobile trail,” he said. “What bad could happen there? You know, helicopter on a snowmobile trailer where folks go fast.”

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If a cursory look at the terrain was all the Army needed to know that planting the plane there was risky, the math stops mathing in their favor. Why in the hell would you drop a 64ft hunk of camo on fresh tracks? The fact pattern feels less like parking and more like dropping a barricade on a high-speed intersection with no heads-up.

Smith is fighting an uphill battle — the government generally has to consent to being sued because of the Federal Tort Claims Act and it doesn’t look like they plan on granting him a day in court. Best of luck to Smith, and keep your eyes out for helicopters on the horizon to everyone else.

Lawyer Who Crashed Snowmobile Into Black Hawk Helicopter Is Suing For $9.5 Million [CBS News]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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