$500,000 Damage Award in Cerritos Plane Crash Upheld

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld $500,000 in damages awarded to a woman for the trauma she suffered when she rushed to her Cerritos home minutes after a plane crash and saw her house on fire with her husband and children inside.

Theresa Estrada’s husband and two of their four children died in the August, 1986, fire, which started when an Aeromexico jetliner plunged into their house after being clipped by a private plane that had strayed into the jet’s airspace as it approached Los Angeles International Airport.

Fifteen people died on the ground, 67 in the planes, and 17 homes were damaged or destroyed as a result of the crash.

Estrada had gone to buy groceries, leaving her husband in his pajamas reading the newspaper while the three children were in bed. On her way back, she saw an explosion, maneuvered through the debris and reached her home within minutes to find it in flames.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Estrada was entitled to damages for emotional distress because she saw the fatal fire, even though she did not see the plane hit the house.

A federal judge in 1989 found Aeromexico blameless in the crash and ruled that the pilot of the small plane, William Kramer, and the federal government were each 50% at fault. The government’s responsibility was based on the failure of air traffic controllers to detect Kramer’s intrusion into restricted airspace and warn the Aeromexico pilot.