Jury clears plane manufacturer in Cory Lidle crash
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The widow of Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle lost her wrongful death lawsuit against the manufacturer of the plane in which her husband crashed to his death in 2006, a U.S. jury decided on Tuesday.
The Yankees star and flight instructor Tyler Stanger were killed when the single-engine, four-person SR20 aircraft they were flying crashed into the side of an apartment building on Manhattan's Upper East Side in October 2006.
Lidle's widow, Melanie Lidle, filed a $50 million wrongful death suit against the aircraft's manufacturers, Minnesota-based Cirrus Design Corp., in 2007, alleging the plane was mechanically defective.
Federal investigators concluded a pilot error during a turn caused the fatal crash.
Attorney Todd Macaluso, who represented the men's families in Manhattan federal court, blamed the crash on a mechanical jam that prevented the pilots from controlling the aircraft.
"There is no negligence," he told the jury. "If you can't control the airplane, you can't be at fault. This airplane was out of control."
Cirrus attorney Patrick Bradley said that while the crash was "a terrible tragedy," neither the company nor the airplane was at fault.
The SR20 is equipped with dual controls and investigators were unable to determine whether Stanger or Lidle was in control when the plane crashed.
Lidle spent nine seasons playing professional baseball with seven different teams.
(Reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr. and Basil Katz; Editing by Chris Michaud and Greg McCune)
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