Survivors of Jet Crash Besieged by Attorneys : Litigation: Lawyers defend their actions as they solicit survivors. Airlines and others brace for lawsuits totaling millions of dollars.

In what has become a rite of aviation disasters, survivors of the USAir crash at Los Angeles International Airport say they have been besieged by lawyers urging them to sue for millions of dollars in damages.

Robert MacDonald, a 22-year-old mechanical engineer from Whittier, said he has been contacted by attorneys from across the country, purporting to be experts on airline crashes. He did not keep their phone numbers or names.

“All I got were scraped knuckles and I took care of that with Band-Aids,” he said. “I’m not interested in a lawsuit that would drag on for years. I’m not interested in being a millionaire.”

Charlin Bennett, whose husband, Dwayne, was returning from a business trip to Washington on USAir, said they too have been lobbied by lawyers.

“We had four lawyers call us from out of the blue about filing suits,” Bennett said. “My husband thought about suing, but he’s just glad to be alive and be repaid for his things” by the airline.

No doubt, others will conclude differently.

Airline executives, government officials and private attorneys are bracing for what they believe will be the inevitable flurry of lawsuits by survivors and by the families of those who died when a USAir jetliner slammed into a small commuter plane on the runway in Los Angeles--apparently the result of a confused controller.

Already, a Malaysian woman has sued SkyWest, USAir and the airport. Several other lawsuits are in the works, according to attorneys specializing in aviation litigation.

Before it is over, attorneys expect that many of the survivors and families of the 113 passengers aboard the two flights will recover millions of dollars through settlements or trials against the airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration and the airport.

“I’ve got two children to worry about. So I’ve left everything to my attorney,” said Connie Gilliam of Palmdale, whose husband, Scott, an FAA air controller, was killed in the crash.

Her attorney, Richard Nordstrom, said he anticipates bringing a lawsuit.

“There has been tremendous loss of life and health here,” he said. “There are now a number of investigations going on as to what happened. That takes time.”

If past aviation disasters are any measure, the legal battles on the horizon will be long, complex and bitter.

“It’s a vicious game,” said San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, the lawyer for several passengers on the USAir flight. It is a game, he said, that pits personal-injury lawyers, airline officials and insurance carriers in a bruising battle to win the hearts of shaken litigants.

Critics have accused Belli of being the nation’s premier ambulance chaser, representing clients involved in many disasters. The flamboyant lawyer disputes the label, claiming instead: “We sit here like wallflowers and wait for someone to ask us to dance.”

Belli and other personal-injury attorneys say that they are trying to counter the standard practice of airlines and insurance carriers to dissuade passengers and their families from suing.

On the night of the USAir-SkyWest crash, Belli said, the airlines put passengers in hotels and offered to finance funerals and give them emergency money. The next step, Belli predicted, will be for airline executives to “sweet talk” them into accepting airline settlement offers.

“They are vulnerable now, and have no idea what their true losses are in economic terms,” said Gerald Sterns, a San Francisco attorney who is preparing at least two suits stemming from the Feb. 1 Los Angeles crash.

Many victims of past airline crashes have received what personal-injury lawyers call “Alpert” letters, named after an insurance underwriter famous for penning them. The letters urge families to settle their cases without legal action.

The airlines say they routinely help survivors and families after crashes for altruistic, not monetary, reasons.

“We tell people they can talk to us about anything any time, including litigation. SkyWest spokesman Ron Reber said: “We aren’t the enemy. We are helping them through a difficult time. . . . No one wants legal expenses except the attorneys.”

According to Jury Verdict Research Inc., litigants recover damages in 93% of all aviation-related injury cases, compared to 63% in other injury lawsuits. Although awards have been as high as $4.3 million, most are far less.

“These suits are the easiest in the world to win,” Belli said. “The damned airplane falls out of the sky and that’s it, you’ve got liability. But they won’t pay up till you get them to the courthouse steps. And then they want to settle for peanuts.”

Between 1970 and 1984, families of those killed in commercial airline crashes were awarded an average of $363,000, according to a RAND Institute of Civil Justice study. While that may seem substantial, it does not cover the economic benefits the person could have reaped for one’s family had he or she lived, the study found.

Richard E. Golden, who filed what is thought to be the first lawsuit stemming from the Los Angeles crash, said that his client, Sabriza Abubakar, contacted him through a local Malaysian diplomat.

She was still shaken, he said, and could barely speak when they met several days after the accident.

“She saw death and thought she would die herself,” Golden said. The woman, he said, filed the lawsuit quickly because she was returning to an accounting job in Kuala Lumpur.

She is seeking unspecified damages against the airport and airlines. She also has filed a claim against the FAA seeking $100,000--a precursor to any federal suits.

USAir executives and federal officials said they would not comment on the Abubakar suit or others arising from the crash.

SkyWest spokesman Reber would say only: “Our insurance provider takes over from here. Their objective is to make settlements. It’s obvious from the crash that the system has failed the passengers.”

The hard part comes, he said, when “you have to take a tragic loss and say, this is the monetary value of that individual.”

Solicitation for legal business after disasters is allowed under the California Bar Assn.’s code of ethics, as long as it does not occur at the accident scene, at the hospital or when the victim is unable to think rationally. Those who break the rules can face disciplinary action.

The Bar Assn. and the Red Cross passed out leaflets at the Los Angeles crash--as they do at most accident scenes--warning people against making on the spot legal choices and giving them the names of legitimate referral services.

David Koch, a Wichita, Kan., schoolteacher, said he has received at least half a dozen “eager” calls from attorneys asking to represent him since the crash. The only problem, he said, is that he was not a passenger.

“Someone else has the same name,” Koch said. “But I got all these calls, some even at 1 in the morning. I told them all, if they wanted to, they could send me some money anyway.”

Researcher Joyce Pinney contributed to this article.