The benefits of helicopters come with a heavy burden: they are intricate, complex machines that require the highest levels of design, construction, maintenance and operational skill. If any one of these components is missing, the results are usually disastrous for its occupants and their families. What was designed to help humans with their daily lives all too often causes great harm to those who use them.

Regardless of the cause of an accident, helicopter accidents and helicopter crashes do not occur unless something goes terribly wrong, and this inevitably means that someone did something they should not have done or they failed to do something they should have done.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the primary government agency responsible for investigating aviation accidents, including helicopter crashes. Although the NTSB does a commendable job, its workload and staffing produce reports that are good as far as they go, but often do not go far enough. Often the truth about what really happened, the full and complete picture, does not come out until skilled, experienced and dedicated attorneys, technically knowledgeable in their own right and aided by trained, educated and experienced technical experts, through the litigation process, obtain documents, information and testimony that the NTSB simply did not have the time or the resources to gather. For example, in a recent transmission failure case, we uncovered information that the transmission had failed several test runs after overhaul and that a component in its oil pump was reused three times despite being found to be beyond overhaul specifications.

In order to find out what really happened, the right team must be assembled, and that begins with the selecting the right attorney.

Proper, thorough investigation, coupled with legal analysis, will find those who are at fault, factually and legally, for a particular accident. Each analysis will depend on the facts of a particular helicopter accident. Generally speaking, experience shows that the following entities are potential defendants:

1. Operator—Company or individual pilot.
2. Designer—Aircraft or component
3. Manufacturer—Aircraft or component
4. Seller—Aircraft or component
5. Flight School/Flight Instructor
6. Owner
7. Lessor/lessee
8. Overhauler
9. Maintainer
10. Air Traffic Control—U.S. Government or contractor
11. Control Tower Operator—U.S. Government, contractor, or private
12. Flight Chart/Approach Procedure Publisher
13. Operational or Maintenance Manual Publisher
14. Airfield/Helicopter Pad Owner/Operator
15. Obstruction (television, radio, cell phone tower, vegetation, building) owner or lessor
16. Weather provider

Crouse Law Offices has the necessary experience and knowledge to handle your helicopter case, no matter what type of helicopter, what type of accident, where it occurred, and where or who the defendants are. Experience means knowing the equipment, how it works, how it fails, how it is operated, how all of this will be defended, and how to succeed—and how to win.

Crouse Law Offices
Two Hanover Square, Suite 2350
434 Fayetteville Street Mall
Raleigh, North Carolina 27601
Telephone: 919-861-0500
Fax: 919-861-0504
Info - info@crouselaw.com