A SOCATA TBM 900 airplane similar to this one was involved in the fatal incident
After five years of litigation, Kreindler successfully resolved claims brought by the family of prominent members of the Rochester, New York community, Larry and Jane Glazer against Daher SAS, the French manufacturer of TBM 900 aircraft (also known as a Daher-SOCATA TBM 700, modified and marketed as a TBM 900 in 2014).
Larry Glazer was a highly successful real estate developer who, at the time of his death, was the largest landlord in Rochester, and was the driving force in the successful redevelopment of the city’s vibrant downtown district. His wife Jane, a successful entrepreneur in her own right, was the founder and owner of a popular home goods catalogue and e-commerce business.
While flying from New York to Florida in Larry and Jane Glazer's brand new Daher-SOCATA TBM 900, a defect in the plane's pressurization system caused an insidious cabin depressurization that rendered the couple unconscious causing the plane to crash.
On September 5, 2014, Larry and Jane were traveling from Rochester to their vacation home in Naples, Florida in their new TBM 900 aircraft, when the cabin suddenly and insidiously depressurized. Lack of oxygen rendered them both unconscious and the aircraft continued to fly on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed off the coast of Jamaica.
The Glazer family hired an underwater salvage company to recover the wreckage of the aircraft, which allowed the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to conduct a very thorough investigation of the crash by examining the components of the TBM 900’s pressurization system. In its investigation of the crash, the NTSB identified defects in the design of the pressurization system, particularly in relation to interaction between the GASC computer that controls the system and an overheat thermal switch (OTSW) that can issue invalid signals of an overheat when one does not exist, resulting in the GASC shutting off pressurization to the cabin. The NTSB also highlighted the emergency procedures in the pilot’s operating handbook, concluding that they prioritized attempting to troubleshoot pressurization problems, rather than protecting the pilot and passengers by directing them to immediately don oxygen.
Kreindler undertook extensive discovery into the design and function of the very complex pressurization system, consisting of numerous mechanical components, as well as the computer logic that controlled all the components within the system. Kreindler obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and took numerous depositions of SOCATA witnesses.
Kreindler also retained experts in aircraft systems design, as well as a metallurgist to examine the condition of the overheat thermal switch. Kreindler also retained an expert pilot and flight instructor who compared the TBM 900 emergency procedures to those in competing aircraft that prioritized use of an oxygen mask before attempting to troubleshoot a pressurization problem.
Proving the family’s losses in this case was also very complex. While Larry Glazer’s family inherited his significant real estate holdings, his portfolio of real estate holdings was on a steep upward growth trajectory at the time of his death, and that growth was lost when he died. Kreindler retained both an expert economist and expert accountant to opine as the value of the lost growth in Larry Glazer’s real estate portfolio resulting from his untimely death.
Socata moved to exclude all the opinions of the experts retained by Kreindler and then tried to dismiss the Glazer family’s claims as unsupported by expert opinion, but the Court denied those motions and the case resolved soon thereafter for a substantial confidential amount.
While flying from New York to Florida in Larry and Jane Glazer's brand new Daher-SOCATA TBM 900, a defect in the plane's pressurization system caused an insidious cabin depressurization that rendered the couple unconscious causing the plane to crash.
