South Florida Injury Lawyer Blog
A federal judge has ordered the US government to pay the family of Michael Zinn $4.4M for his Port St. Lucie wrongful death from a Florida aviation accident that was partially caused by air traffic controller negligence. ZInn, 52, was from Boca Raton. He died in 2005 when he crashed his private plane into a house in Port St. Lucie.
In 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that Zinn lost control of his Cessna P337H when he flew through, instead of around, stormy weather. The NTSB also found that the controller did not help Zinn with navigating the plane and failed to tell him about the weather conditions.
Although Miami U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin G. Torres found Zinn to be 60% liable for the Florida plane crash death, he also said that Miami’s Air Route Traffic Control Center committed failures that played a key role n the tragic accident. He said that the controller breached his duty of care to Zinn and should have given him the information he needed to “make informed decisions.”