The parents of a teenager who died in a 2023 plane crash near Osage Beach filed a wrongful death lawsuit, citing pilot negligence.
On Monday, Gary and Penny Vandiver filed the suit in Camden County, where they are seeking more than $25,000 in damages from pilot Hayden Ritchhart's estate over the death of their 19-year-old son, Evan Vandiver.
Wrongful Death Lawsuit
The deadly incident took place on July 13, 2023, near the Grand Glaize-Osage Beach Airport in Camden County. The aircraft was carrying the teenager, who died, and his 54-year-old father, Gary, who received serious injuries.
The pilot of the plane, 22-year-old Ritchhart, also died in the crash, and his estate has since been named as the defendant in the lawsuit filed by the teenager's parents. Attorney Timothy McDuffey was appointed as the Defendant Ad Litem.
The lawsuit cites three counts: one for the wrongful death of Evan Vandiver, a second for the personal injuries of Gary Vandiver, and a third for the loss of consortium Penny Vandiver experienced because of her son's passing and her husband's injuries, according to KRMS Radio.
Read more: Minneapolis Woman Sentenced to 23 Years in Prison for Fatal Crash That Killed Teenage Girl
The parents of the victim argue that the pilot's actions at the time of the incident were negligent and careless, adding that he failed to exercise ordinary care while operating the aircraft he was flying with passengers.
The court filing also alleges several missteps, including failure to perform a proper pre-flight inspection, failure to set proper trim tab settings before takeoff, or to correct them during flight. The pilot is also accused of failure to recognize the plane's nose-up altitude and sluggish climb, while also exceeding its angle of flight, which resulted in the subsequent stall and crash.
Tragic Plane Crash
The parents' lawsuit claims that these actions are all factors that resulted in the crash that killed the teenager and the pilot, and injured Gary. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released an aviation investigation report on Nov. 21, 2024, that found the probable cause of the crash was Ritchhart's failure to properly set the plane's stabilator trim before takeoff, KRCGTV reported.
The report showed that the NTSB did not find any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the aircraft's frame or engine that would have interfered with its operations. Officials did find a trim tab jackscrew that was extended above the drum, meaning the plane was in a full nose-up trim setting.
Experts said that a trim tab jackscrew is a plane's equivalent to a car's cruise control. The finding means that the airplane would have automatically tried to continue climbing to fix the downward pressure, which could have resulted in it losing speed or stalling, as per ABC17 News.
