Woman Given Right to Sue Over Injury at John Wayne

A woman who was struck by a passenger gate blown open by a blast from a jet engine at John Wayne Airport is entitled to a trial of her lawsuit, a state appellate court ruled Tuesday.

Florence Blakely claims in the suit that it was dangerous to maintain the double-swing gate 80 feet from a spot marked for airplanes to park and that Orange County officials should not have allowed it. As she was waiting for her daughter to arrive on a flight in 1980, she was injured when a security guard unlocked the gate and it was forced open by jet exhaust, knocking her down.

A Superior Court judge threw her suit out of court, but the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana reinstated it Tuesday.

“The very presence of jet blast coupled with a double-direction swinging gate, directly behind which are congregated members of the public, raises an inference of a dangerous condition,” said the opinion written by Judge Sheila P. Sonenshine. “When the gate must be unlocked and moved inward by hand, the further complication of human error is added.”

The opinion noted that the swinging gate later was replaced with a “parallel sliding gate.”

Sonenshine’s opinion cut through two sections of state law that defense lawyers contended gave the county immunity from Blakely’s lawsuit.

The appellate court ruled it was possible for a jury to find the gate to be dangerous, despite sworn statements from airport officials that no similar accidents had ever happened, and that there had been no complaints of excessive jet blast in the area and no prior reports of negligence by guards opening the gates.

The county also claimed immunity from Blakely’s lawsuit because the design of 1966 airport improvements, including the gates, was not unreasonable when approved by the Board of Supervisors.

The court found that government immunity for construction plans legally approved by government authority “is not perpetual” and that Blakely’s claim that changes should have been made or warnings posted deserves a hearing.

Blakely’s lawsuit named as defendants Orange County, which operates the airport; Air California, and the Wackenhut Corp., which provided security services at the airport in 1980.