Brett stepped inside the temporary NTSB office across from the ballroom and thanked several of the investigators. He told Loeb, “I really appreciate your being vocal yesterday.”
“That’s what they pay me to do,” Loeb said.
A few minutes later Brett said he was pessimistic that Tom McSweeny, the FAA official in charge of airplane certification, would agree with the NTSB’s recommendations. Brett and other family members had met with McSweeny that morning, and Brett came away with the impression that the FAA official was more interested in making excuses than in being aggressive about the rudder problem.
Brett said he regretted that the NTSB had been unable to solve the Colorado Springs mystery eight years earlier. If they had solved it, he said, “Joan would be alive today.”
Upstairs in the FAA office, McSweeny stubbornly refused to give the NTSB credit. He said his agency would take further action about the 737, but he said it was not because of anything the NTSB had done. He said the FAA would call for faster minimum speeds to ensure that 737s did not fly slower than the crossover point, but he insisted, “We’re doing that because of the unexplained MetroJet incident. It is not a response to this meeting.”
When Haueter returned to the NTSB office at L’Enfant Plaza, everyone was glum. They were angry about Black’s and Hall’s comments. The board members were backing away from the report they had just approved. “The report was adopted unscathed, but it felt like cold water was thrown on it,” Haueter said.
To perk up the troops, he went downstairs to the L’Enfant Plaza mall and bought four bottles of champagne and some plastic glasses. He summoned the Flight 427 team to the conference room.
They reminisced about the investigation. Malcolm Brenner told the group that Haueter must be blessed with some kind of superhuman hormone that kept him going when others were ready to quit. Someone else proposed a toast to Eastwind pilot Brian Bishop, who had survived a rudder reversal, saved fifty-five lives, and given the NTSB key evidence about what was wrong in the 737.
“To Captain Bishop,” one of the investigators said, and they all clinked their plastic cups together.
EPILOGUE
With the NTSB investigation complete, lawyers for USAir, Boeing, and the families quickened the pace of their settlement talks. The companies were eager to settle with all families before the Cook County trial, scheduled to begin in November 1999.
Two years earlier, USAir’s insurance company had offered Brett $2 million to settle. The company told Demetrio that it was a reasonable offer because that’s what the company had paid other people in similar circumstances. Brett didn’t think $2 million was enough. He said he wanted to go to court.
To reach a settlement amount for Joan, both sides had hired economists and accountants. They had estimated her lifetime earnings if she had not been killed in the crash, as well as the cost for Brett to hire someone else to perform her household chores. The economists then subtracted the “terminated consumption”—the amount Joan would have spent each year on clothes, food, and so on. The calculations were all part of the painful but necessary process of setting a price on Joan’s life.
There was no agreement on the numbers. The economist hired by Brett’s lawyers estimated his total loss from Joan’s death at $1.6 million to $1.8 million. An economist hired by USAir estimated the loss at $1.4 million, while one hired by Boeing came in at $833,000.
One reason for the disparity was that the parties disagreed on how long Joan would have worked before retiring. The economist hired by Brett’s firm assumed 31 years after the crash, USAir used 29.5 years, and Boeing assumed 28.5. Also, Brett’s economist came up with a higher value for Joan’s household chores. For 1999, for example, he said the chores were worth $10,974. USAir’s estimate was $9,993, while Boeing’s was $7,011.
Why such a range? The economists used different sources for their calculations and applied various factors to adjust them for the future. Their assumptions usually benefited their client’s interests. In general, the economist used by Brett’s lawyer relied on more generous assumptions, while the USAir and Boeing economists used more conservative figures.
The numbers provided a starting point for the settlement talks. In 1998, a year after Brett rejected the $2 million offer, his lawyer, Mike Demetrio, had made a counteroffer to USAir and Boeing, asking for $5 million. Demetrio said that figure reflected the $1.8 million estimate from his economist, plus a sizable amount for Brett’s “loss of society,” the legal term for the loss of love and companionship when a spouse dies. There also was a “significant premium” to account for the long delay since the 1994 crash, Demetrio said.
But USAir and Boeing couldn’t respond because the companies were too busy fighting each other about how much each should pay. At some depositions, the Boeing and USAir lawyers were “screaming at each other at the top of their lungs,” Demetrio said. “It was like watching my third-grader on the playground.”
In February 1999—about one month before the NTSB meeting—Boeing and USAir lawyers put aside their feud and floated the possibility of a $3 million settlement. But Brett again said it was too low. The case was headed for trial.
He viewed the trial as his revenge against the companies. He said he wanted “to stick it to them financially” and embarrass them in court. The USAir and Boeing executives would get a public grilling from Demetrio and other lawyers. For weeks, the companies would be battered by the bad publicity.
As the trial date neared, both sides knew there would be last-minute settlement talks. That was the nature of crash lawsuits. The parties often settled only a few hours before the trial was to start. There were five cases left in Cook County, including Brett’s. They were scheduled to be tried together.
The lawyers had put together powerful exhibits to sway the jury and create public relations problems for Boeing and USAir. The biggest was a full-size, fully functional 737 tail. It was three stories high and painted in USAir’s colors. The lawyers planned to put it outside the courthouse and demonstrate a rudder reversal in full view of the public and the news media. For Boeing and USAir, that would be a public relations nightmare.
Demetrio and the other plaintiff’s attorneys had another powerful prop: a four-foot-long replica of a USAir 737 with a removable top. Demetrio was going to lift the top off and show jurors the inside. He planned to say: “This was where Joan Van Bortel was sitting.”
Negotiations began Monday, November 1, two days before the trial was supposed to start. By the evening of November 2, USAir and Boeing had come up with a new offer for Brett: $6 million. It was double their last offer and $1 million more than Brett’s request a year earlier.
Demetrio called his client shortly before 5 P.M. “We think it’s a good offer,” he said.
“Do I have time to think about this?” Brett asked.
Demetrio said he needed an answer that night.
Sitting in his office in Oak Brook, a Chicago suburb, Brett pondered his options. He had wanted a trial to publicly embarrass Boeing and USAir and force them to be more responsible with safety issues in the future. He felt that Boeing was largely responsible for the crash, that the company knew about the rudder problem after the Colorado Springs accident but did nothing to correct it. Brett believed the company had rolled the dice with people’s lives rather than paying to fix the planes. He also blamed USAir for allowing the plane to have dirty hydraulic fluid, which he believed had contributed to the crash.
On the other hand, Brett wanted to start a foundation named after Joan to pay for scholarships. The money would allow him to start it immediately. Six million dollars was triple the original offer, and Demetrio said it was high for a victim with no children. If Brett went to trial, he would be taking a big risk. He might get less money, and he might not see it for years because of appeals.