Florida plane crash lawsuit filed against Sheehy dismissed • Daily Montanan

On July 3, the attorney for the aircraft maintenance company, Amphibians Plus LLC, filed a notice with the court that it has settled the claims between the Ngalamulume family and the company, to be completed within 60 days.

But the ad didn’t mention Sheehy; both he and Amphibians Plus were named defendants in the suit.

It remains unclear whether Sheehy was a party to the likely settlement, as neither his campaign nor nearly all of the attorneys involved in the case responded to questions from the Daily Montanan. The court record of the case does not include a copy of the settlement, which is often kept private by the attorneys and parties involved.

Last year, when the Daily Beast first reported on the lawsuit and Sheehy’s involvement, it noted that the National Transportation Safety Board’s final crash report pointed the finger at Sheehy’s flight instructor for missteps that caused the accident.

Because the case was dismissed with prejudice, the family cannot file another lawsuit in the same venue against Sheehy, claiming he was negligent and caused the accident.

The first amended complaint, filed in 2021, alleged two counts of negligence against Sheehy, one by Guillaume and Esmerance Ngalamulume for property damage to their home following the accident and another by their daughter, Carmelle Ngalamulume, for personal injuries sustained in accident. , disability, mental anguish and loss of earning capacity.

According to the filings, the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the accident and other documents associated with the investigation, including Sheehy’s interview with investigators, Sheehy and another man were being trained by instructor James Wagner on a multi-engine seaplane to obtain a other certification.

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, had more than 800 hours of flight time logged and held commercial pilot, single-engine land, single-engine sea and flight instructor certifications. Five years earlier, he had started his firefighting company Bridger Aerospace in Bozeman.

Sheehy and the other man in training, Timothy Cherwin, had each flown earlier that day, taking turns flying and observing as Wagner coached them. Sheehy told investigators they fueled and inspected the plane before Sheehy took his second flight of the day, in which they were to practice procedures for when an engine failed and for water landings.

Cherwin opted not to travel for the flight, as he did with Sheehy’s first. After takeoff and about 300 feet above ground level, according to Sheehy’s interview with an NTSB investigator, Wagner reduced the throttle on the left engine — the critical engine — causing it to lose power completely. Wagner took over the flight controls as they both tried to restart it, according to the documents.

But the engine did not start. Sheehy was retracting the landing gear and trying to retract the plane’s flaps because Wagner decided they would miss the forced landing site they had chosen, according to his interview. Wagner turned the plane left toward a closer landing site, but likely slowed below minimum control speed, according to the NTSB report. The left wing fell off and the plane crashed nose down into the house.

Sheehy wrote in a statement to the NTSB that he did not lose consciousness in the crash and immediately crawled over to Wagner to check his pulse. He wrote that Wagner’s head was badly injured and “he clearly wasn’t going to make it.” He said he called 911 and went to help the family inside the home.

“A guy across the street cut the power and I took my shirt off to help the lady who was hurt,” he wrote. “That’s when the first responders showed up and got her out of there.”

The NTSB report said Sheehy suffered “minor injuries” and Carmelle Ngalamulume was “severely injured.”

Sheehy told KBUL News Talk in 2019 that the neighbors deserved credit for their bravery after the accident, and provided the radio station with a photo of him with one of those neighbors immediately after the accident, showing him shirtless, bruised and bloodied.

The NTSB’s final report said that Wagner’s decisions to simulate critical engine failure at such a low altitude provided “small margin” for successfully maintaining flight and that his failure to maintain sufficient airspeed “resulted in a loss of control”.

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause(s) of this accident are: A total loss of left engine power for reasons that could not be determined and the failure of the instructor to maintain airspeed during maneuvers for a forced landing, resulting in a loss of control. The instructor’s decision to perform a simulated low-speed engine failure contributed to the accident,” the report concludes.

In Sheehy’s interview, he told the investigator that Wagner did not tell him he would simulate critical engine failure or at such a low altitude. The report says Sheehy said he “didn’t know what (Wagner) was thinking.” He said he believed Wagner’s reduction in engine throttle flooded the engine and would not allow him to restart.

An autopsy confirmed Wagner died of blunt force injuries. The left engine was later tested and started immediately and ran at all power settings without interruption, the NTSB’s final report said.

He also noted that a Federal Aviation Administration pamphlet on flying twin-engine airplanes says that the left engine on them is the critical engine whose failure would most adversely affect the airplane’s performance and handling. It also strongly cautions against performing engine failure training at low altitude.

“Engine failure at low altitude is never worth the risks involved,” the pamphlet said. “Multi-engine instructors should approach simulated engine failures below 400 feet (above ground level) with extreme caution, and failures below 200 feet (above ground level) should be reserved for simulators and training devices.”

The final report was only released on December 3, 2020, well after the original lawsuit was filed. In the lawsuit filed in 2021, the Ngalamulumes’ lawyers argued that Sheehy “committed specific acts of negligence by failing to follow the instructions of the flight instructor during the flight, making recovery by the flight instructor impossible.”

In Sheehy’s response to the complaint, his attorney denied most of the claims made in the lawsuit and also offered affirmative defenses, including that because Sheehy was a student pilot and did not yet have a multi-engine sea rating, Sheehy was not the pilot in command of the aircraft at the time of the accident. The NTSB report referred to Sheehy as the pilot and Wagner as the flight instructor.

Sheehy’s response also says that, as pilot-in-command, Wagner was responsible for the aircraft and accuses him of failing to operate the plane properly, failing to properly train Sheehy and failing to use industry standards for flight training. The plane’s owner, ESP Aviation, is also said to be responsible for Wagner, as he was their employee.

Later in the case, Sheehy’s lawyer again argued that he “was not involved in any decision-making that led to the crash and was not flying the airplane at the time of the crash.”

The case continued through 2022 and 2023, but in May of this year, the court set a case management conference for July 3. On the day of that conference, counsel for Amphibians Plus filed notice that the parties were attempting to settle the case, and five days later, the court said it would review a possible settlement within 60 days.

The joint stipulation of dismissal, signed by attorneys for all parties, was filed on September 10, and the final order of dismissal with prejudice was signed on September 11.

What remains unclear is whether Sheehy was party to the alleged agreement and the terms of the agreement.

Rolando Santiago, one of the lawyers for the Ngalamulume family, said on Wednesday that he could not access the files because the office was closed due to Hurricane Helene. He referred the Daily Montanan to the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Anthony Marsh, based in Seattle.

Marsh did not return several phone messages and emails this week asking if Sheehy is a party to the agreement or about its terms.

Sheehy’s attorney, Jennifer Huang, based in New York, did not return an email seeking clarification on whether Sheehy was a party to the settlement. Amphibians Plus attorney Roberto Torricella, based in Miami, did not return a phone message and email Wednesday asking if Sheehy was involved in the deal.

Sheehy faces Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Green Party candidate Robert Barb and Libertarian Sid Daoud in November.

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