Judgment for company from Brantly helicopter crash should stand, COA affirms

IL file photo

A company that delivered a helicopter to a Morgan County man for routine maintenance was entitled to a judgment from the man’s estate for damages equal to the aircraft’s value after it was destroyed in a 2020 crash, the Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed Monday.

According to court records, Drake Air, LLC, owned a Brantly B-2B helicopter.

Brantly helicopters are no longer manufactured, and Drake Air engaged Gerald Goldsberry in Mooresville to service the helicopter.

Goldsberry was known as “Mr. Brantly” because “he had all of the parts for Brantly helicopters in the country.”

On several occasions, Goldsberry’s invoices to Drake Air stated that the labor for the requested services on the helicopter had been performed by Goldsberry, Bill Myrtle, or Brad Huddle.

Myrtle and Huddle were not paid employees of Goldsberry, and they did not see themselves as agents of Goldsberry; rather, they viewed their work with Goldsberry on Brantly helicopters as simply part of their friendship with Goldsberry.

In July, Drake Air delivered the helicopter to Goldsberry for routine maintenance. The helicopter was in airworthy condition upon delivery.

Goldsberry accepted the delivery of the helicopter to perform the requested maintenance. Myrtle performed the maintenance, and Huddle inspected the helicopter following the maintenance.

Thereafter, Goldsberry performed a test flight of the helicopter.

During that flight, the engine quit, and the helicopter crashed.

Myrtle rushed to the scene but struggled to extract Goldsberry from the wreckage due to the heat of the resultant fire. Myrtle eventually succeeded in extracting Goldsberry, and Goldsberry stated that he had “lost power.”

Goldsberry died shortly afterward. An ensuing inspection by the National Transportation Safety Board was unable to determine the cause of the crash.

In August 2022, Drake Air filed a complaint against the estate for the loss of the helicopter.

Following a bench trial, the Morgan Superior Court found there was no probative evidence addressing whether Goldsberry did or did not negligently inspect or perform maintenance upon the helicopter and that no probative evidence as to the particulars of his activity and the mechanical tasks performed on the helicopter had been provided by either party.

“This case leaves [the] court with the relevant facts as to [Goldsberry’s] actions regarding the helicopter that are unfortunately unknowable, and a burden of proof upon the Defendant that demands them[] if the Defendant is to avoid liability. Accordingly, [Drake Air] is entitled to damages equal to the value of the [h]elicopter,” according to the trial court.

The court then found the value of the helicopter at the time of the crash to have been $50,000, and it entered judgment for Drake Air.

Goldsberry’s estate appealed the trial court’s judgment, arguing that the court had erred as a matter of law when it concluded that a bailment existed between Drake Air and Goldsberry, even though Myrtle and Huddle had access to the helicopter the day of the crash.

The estate also argued that the trial court erred when it concluded that the estate had not sufficiently demonstrated that the damage to the property was not the fault of the estate.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment.

Judge Paul Mathias wrote the opinion for the appellate court.

According to Mathias, the Goldsberry estate asserted that both Myrtle and Huddle had access to the helicopter, and, as such, there could be no bailment between Drake Air and Goldsberry.

Mathias wrote the appellate court could not agree with the estate, with a bailment being in the nature of a contract between the bailor and the bailee.

“Although the Estate argues that Myrtle and Huddle were not employees or agents of Goldsberry, that argument is beside the point. The question is whether Drake Air and Goldsberry contemplated that the bailment would include others such as Myrtle and Huddle, and the prior history between Drake Air and Goldsberry, along with the nature of this particular bailment being one for the service of a vehicle, makes clear that they did,” Mathias wrote.

The estate also challenged the trial court’s conclusion that the estate failed to meet its burden to demonstrate that the loss of the helicopter was not Goldsberry’s fault.

Mathias wrote that the estate asserted that it did present probative evidence, namely, Myrtle’s and Huddle’s representations that the helicopter was airworthy prior to Goldsberry’s test flight, as well as the NTSB’s inability to identify a cause of the crash after an investigation.

“Contrary to the Estate’s reading, we interpret the whole of that finding to be that the trial court found Myrtle’s and Huddle’s generic assertions of their own work and the helicopter’s airworthiness to not be persuasive. And that assessment was well within the trial court’s discretion,” Mathias wrote, adding that “the trial court’s finding that the reason for the crash was an engine failure following the maintenance of the helicopter is supported by the record.”

Mathias concluded by stating that the evidence before the trial court supported its conclusion that the helicopter went from being an airworthy vehicle at the time Drake Air delivered it to not being an airworthy vehicle while it was in Goldsberry’s possession and control.

Judges Elizabeth Tavitas and Leanna Weissmann concurred in Estate of Gerald Everett Goldsberry v. Drake Air, LLC, by its member Brent L. Drake, 23A-MI-1987.