Impact (46 page)

“I suppose I would. I don't know how much.”

Chambers nodded. “Incidentally, Mr. Udall. In that test you mentioned, didn't the FAA estimate that only nineteen of the fifty-three passengers aboard the plane would have gotten out of that crash alive?”

“They claimed it was something like that.”

“Yes they did, didn't they?”

Hawthorne is around the corner ordering a case of wine, leaving Keith Tollison and Laura Donahue momentarily alone in the restaurant. Once again isolated beneath the stairs, their eyes flick on and off each other as though they would like to be introduced but have no idea if they share an interest that would sustain a conversation. Fortified with the morning's progress, feeling for the first time capable of winning what he finally has come to consider his case, Tollison decides to tell her what has been bothering him all week. “We've got a little problem,” he begins.

Laura raises a brow. “Really? I think it's going wonderfully. The jury seemed very upset at what you brought out about those tests.”

“The problem's down the road.”

Laura's eyes sparkle for him like in the old days. For a moment he is reminded how little loveliness there is in his life without her.

“Are you afraid I'll make a spectacle of myself?” she asks merrily.

He grins. “You're too honest to be a
great
witness, but I'll beat that out of you when the time comes. The problem is with our proof. We're trying to show the plane wasn't crashworthy, and so far that evidence looks pretty good. But we still haven't connected Jack to the defects.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Take the seats. We've offered proof that they were inadequately fastened to the frame and that most of them came loose at impact, but we haven't showed
Jack's
seat came loose. That's called proximate cause, and if we don't connect up our proof, we'll be thrown out of court.”

“But the doctor—”

He nods. “Ryan can give circumstantial evidence of how Jack got hurt and say he was damaged by the fire. But I don't know if it's going to be enough. What was it that stuck into Jack's head, anyway?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “A piece of metal of some kind. That's all I know.”

“The next time you talk to Ryan ask him, okay? If they still have it at the hospital, ask him to bring it to court the day he testifies.”

Laura nods absently, as if his worries and tactics are too trivial to entertain.

He takes her hand. “I may have to put Jack on, Laura. Just to make sure I'm doing everything possible.”

Her composure vanishes. “You
can't
. He's not ready for that. Not
nearly.”

“I won't unless I have to, but it may be our only chance. What I need you to do is go home and see if you can dig up any memory at all of what happened that night. Where he was sitting on the plane; where he ended up. Anything.”

She shakes her head. “That's gone, Keith. Every bit of it.”

“You have to try, Laura. It's important.”

“Not to me.”

As he reels from yet another belittling of his effort, Laura grabs his arm. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”

When he doesn't excuse her, she asks a question: “Did you see Brenda this morning?”

He nods.

“She called me last night.”

“What on earth for?”

“She said she was checking on Spitter, because she hadn't seen him for several days. But I know he went home last weekend, so I think it's just the trial.”

“How do you mean?”

Laura shrugs. “She shows up every day, and hears people talk about everyone but her sister, and it's starting to drive her crazy.”

Tollison swears. “If she gets crazy enough, she can ruin it.”

Laura seems about to comment when Hawthorne returns with his wine and hauls them off to court. By the time they are seated at their table, Laura has almost persuaded Tollison that it would be suicidal to use her husband as a witness no matter how badly the case needs buttressing. For his part, Tollison wonders what he can offer Brenda Farnsworth that will persuade her to give them peace.

“Plaintiff calls John Stacy,” Tollison declares after Powell gavels them to order. “Mr. Stacy, will you state your current employment?”

The wizened man adjusts his rimless glasses, blinks at his interrogator, and fingers his bow tie. “I'm a combustibles expert. I work at the FAA tech center in Atlantic City.”

“Please tell the jury what your job entails.”

“I test foam cushioning and upholstery materials to determine suitability for use in aircraft interiors. My tests primarily involve the combustibility of such materials—how they react to fire.”

“Is it part of your job to recommend changes in the federal regulations based on your findings in the laboratory?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“What percentage of your recommendations eventually become incorporated in the federal regulations, if you know?”

Chambers pounds the table. “Objection, irrelevant.”

Tollison's voice is ringing. “Since the defense intends to rebut the claim of negligence with evidence that they were in full compliance with the FARs, I'm entitled to show those regulations were and are inadequate.”

“I agree, Mr. Tollison. Overruled.”

“What percentage of the recommendations from your office have been adopted by the FAA over the years, Mr. Stacy?” Tollison repeats.

Stacy presses his glasses to his forehead. “The last figures I saw showed an adoption rate of sixty-five percent with regard to recommendations by the NTSB, and I'd guess our shop has about the same result.”

Tollison moves ahead. “Before we get to the materials used
inside
the H-11, Mr. Stacy, it's true, is it not, that neither the aluminum skin nor the plastic windows offer much protection in the event of a fire outside the aircraft.”

He shrugs. “The windows melt rather rapidly, but it takes a pretty good blaze to penetrate the skin.”

“Aren't there are instances of a fire penetrating the skin of a commercial aircraft in less than thirty seconds?”

“I believe that was the finding in the 737 fire in England back in '85. Such events are rare, but they happen.”

“The skin could be made more impervious to fire than it is, could it not?”

Stacy nods. “We've done tests where we've painted the underbelly of an aircraft with an intumescent paint. What it does is swell up and form an insulating layer when it makes contact with a heat source. Our tests did not persuade us that the paint is invariably effective.”

“When was the last such test you performed?”

“Seventy-six, I think.”

“You've done nothing since?”

“No. Not with the paints.”

“Intumescent paint is not required on airliners?”

“No.”

“But it's available, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Does SurfAir coat its planes with such a material?”

“I've seen no evidence of it.”

“Thank you.” Tollison consults his outline. “Are there other means of increasing the protection of passengers from fires outside the aircraft?”

“Goodyear sent us a fire-resistant polycarbonate window to look at, but we don't have the money to test it, so it's just collecting dust.”

“Have
any
fire-resistant measures been utilized on the outside of a commercial aircraft?”

“Well, McDonnell Douglas puts a phenolic resin insulation in the walls of the DC-10.”

“What does that do?”

“Provides additional resistance to heat.”

“Did the government require that insulation?”

“No. Douglas did it on their own.”

Tollison nods. “Did you have occasion to examine the wreckage of flight 617, Mr. Stacy?”

“Yes I did.”

“Where did you do that?”

“At the mock-up at Moffett Field.”

“So when I ask you about the flight 617, your response includes what you observed during that inspection.”

“Yes.”

“On that basis, I ask you this—did Hastings Aircraft Corporation put an insulating resin into the walls of the H-11 that crashed on March twenty-third?”

“Objection, hearsay.”

“Overruled.”

“Answer the question, please,” Tollison instructs.

Stacy shakes his head. “I saw no indication that they put anything in there that would insulate from fire.”

Tollison nods briskly. He is on a roll, and he tries to prolong it. “Aviation history is littered with the bodies of passengers who were otherwise unhurt but who perished in flames after an emergency landing, isn't it?”

“Well, I wouldn't put it quite that—”

Chambers ejects from his chair. “Argumentative and irrelevant, Your Honor. Counsel continues to be outrageous.”

Judge Powell does not seem perturbed. “Rephrase the question, counselor.”

Tollison nods. “Let's get specific, Mr. Stacy. In the 727 crash near Salt Lake City in 1965, more than forty people died from the effects of toxic inhalants, isn't that correct?”

“Objection, irrelevant.”

Tollison's fists clench and his face flushes. “I'm trying to show a pattern of knowledge in the industry, Your Honor. So the jury can judge whether the defendants' conduct in building and operating the H-11 was reasonable under the circumstances.”

Judge Powell nods. “Overruled.”

Chambers murmurs an angry aside to his assistant, who seems to shoulder blame for the ruling personally.

“Mr. Stacy?”

“I believe that's true—most of the deaths in the Salt Lake crash were from poison gases.”

“And in the Varig in-flight lavatory fire over Paris in 1973, more than three fourths of the deaths were from fire-related carbon monoxide inhalation, true?”

“I believe it was something like that.”

“That plane landed only eight minutes after the fire broke out, didn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Yet over one hundred people died.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“In response to that fire, the NTSB recommended that regulations be amended to require smoke detectors in aircraft lavatories and that portable oxygen bottles be provided for flight attendants, correct?”

“Yes. It also recommended that automatic discharge fire extinguishers be installed in the lavatories and full-face smoke masks be available for the crew as well.”

“Yes. But it's true, is it not, that
not one
of those recommendations was adopted at that time, that the
sole response
of the FAA was to order
NO SMOKING
and
NO CIGARETTE DISPOSAL
signs placed in the lavatories on commercial flights?”

Stacy wriggles within his clothing, as though it has combusted in sympathy with the subject. “That's correct.”

Tollison surges forward. “Ten years later, on an Air Canada flight in 1983, twenty-three people died because of a lavatory fire, a fire that smoke detectors and automatic extinguishers would have prevented, correct?”

“I—”

“Objection. Speculation.”

“Sustained.”

Tollison ignores the interruption. “After this fire, the NTSB made eighteen
more
recommendations for improved fire safety?”

“Yes.”

“And
still
none were immediately adopted by the FAA, except for the addition of some emergency lighting in the floors.”

“Right.”

Because he wants a jury inundated with disaster and incensed at the failures to prevent them, Tollison hurries to proceed. “A crash similar to flight 617 occurred in Portland a few years back, did it not?”

“True. An aircraft approaching the Portland, Oregon, airport was forced to land in a wooded area.”

“What was the speed at the time of touchdown?”

“Right at a hundred twenty knots per hour.”

“Only eight of the one hundred eighty-one passengers on that flight were killed, isn't that right?”

“Yes.”

“Because there was no fire aboard the aircraft.”

“Objection. Speculation.”

“Sustained.”

“Was
there a fire aboard that aircraft after it crashed?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because there was no fuel left in the tanks—they ran out of gas.”

“Yet in a similar accident in Atlanta, when there
was
fuel on board a plane that crash-landed in an area similar to Portland, sixty-two of eighty-nine people died, the majority from fire.”

“Correct.”

“In fact, there are over six hundred instances of fire, smoke, fumes, and explosions aboard U.S. aircraft
each year
, are there not?”

“Something like that.”

“So it would be fair to say the danger of fire has been known to the FAA and to the industry for a long time.”

“No question about it. We spend a lot of time on the subject.”

“In fact, in 1978 the FAA recommended that new flammability standards be adopted regarding smoke and toxic emissions from cabin materials, didn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Were the new standards in effect when the Hastings H-11 was manufactured six years later?”

“They were not.”

“Are they in effect today?”

“No. The agency withdrew those proposals. We are recommending new standards, however, and—”

“In fact, the flammability standards in effect—not proposed, but
in effect
—both in 1985 and today were adopted
forty years
ago, were they not?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“And over this period of FAA inaction, over a thousand people have been killed by fire in survivable accidents, isn't that right?”

“I … if you say so.”

Chambers renews his objection of relevance, but it is too late. Tollison has done his duty, Hawthorne's script has prevailed, and the point has been made indelibly.