The husband of pilot Maria Rodriguez has sued manufacturers Rolls-Royce and Boeing — as well as aircraft mechanic Jay Lammering — in V.I. Superior Court over a 2021 helicopter crash near Botany Bay, which claimed the lives of Rodriguez and three others.
The suit was filed days after a U.S. District Court judge in Texas dismissed Van Heurck and others’ federal complaint against the companies.
Rodriguez was piloting a Bell 206B-III helicopter through her business, Caribbean Buzz Helicopters, in February 2021 while carrying passengers Daniel Yannone, Neisha Zahn and their son, Tyler Yannone, on a sightseeing tour of St. Thomas. According to an investigative report from the National Transportation Safety Board, a witness saw dark smoke emanate from the engine compartment before the helicopter crashed into a densely wooded, steep hill near Botany Bay.
Both complaints note that a toxicology report found no traces of alcohol or nonprescription drugs in Rodrigeuz’s system at the time of the crash. Both complaints also reference eyewitness reports of dark smoke and a sudden silencing of the engine, indicating “sudden and complete loss of power.” According to Caribbean Buzz’s own investigation, the helicopter crashed due to a “contained failure within the compressor section of the helicopter’s engine.”
In dismissing the Texas case, District Judge Karen Gren Scholer wrote that the plaintiffs’ alleged wrongful act — Rolls-Royce’s failure to warn Caribbean Buzz about the new part — took place 14 years ago in Indiana, where the part was manufactured. The statute of limitations for product liability claims is 10 years in Indiana. Even if the lawsuit had been filed timely, Scholer wrote that the plaintiffs “never sufficiently pleaded a failure-to-warn claim.”
That claim is fleshed out in the latest complaint, which notes that the helicopter was overhauled between December 2008 and January 2009 and a new “stage 2-3 compressor wheel” was installed. That overhaul came two years after Rolls-Royce began manufacturing the compressor wheels, which were machined rather than cast, “which meant operators could avoid the possibility of casting defects if they used the new compressor wheels.” Rolls-Royce announced the new manufacturing process in a commercial service letter but “did not require or encourage operators” to replace the old ones or “disclose that the machined wheels were designed to avoid casting defects.”
According to Van Heurck, Rolls-Royce didn’t recommend replacing the compressor wheels until the commercial service letter was revised in 2023.
“Maria’s death was wrongful because it was caused by the negligence, product defect, failure to warn and/or breach of warranty of Defendants in manufacturing, distributing, or servicing the state 2-3 compressor wheel and/or the M250 engine and component parts,” according to attorneys Christopher Allen Kroblin and Marjorie Whalen from the law firm Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin.
