Judge Refuses to Drop Plane Owner From Suit

A Ventura County Superior Court judge on Thursday refused to let a defendant out of a lawsuit filed over the 1991 midair collision of a helicopter and plane that claimed two lives at Santa Paula Airport.

Judge Frederick A. Jones denied a motion for summary judgment brought by the attorney representing Robert Keenan, who owned the plane that collided with a helicopter piloted by voice actor Noel Blanc.

Van Nuys attorney Arthur Wasserman offered the plaintiffs, A. Scott Tomlinson and Harriet Tomlinson of Thousand Oaks, $15,000 to drop him from the lawsuit.

“He’s willing to pay that--money we don’t owe--in order to save attorneys’ fees,” Wasserman said.

Stunt pilot Lee Manelski and the Tomlinsons’ 18-year-old son, flying student David Tomlinson, died in the Feb. 13, 1991, crash when the helicopter piloted by Blanc took off into the flight path of Keenan’s stunt plane.

The Tomlinsons blamed Keenan, Blanc, Santa Paula Airport, the state Department of Transportation and Ventura County for the crash.

The county has since been dismissed from the suit.

But Blanc and his passengers, actor Kirk Douglas and Beverly Hills Police Officer Michael Carra, filed a cross-complaint alleging that Manelski was to blame for the accident. Douglas was named in the initial lawsuit, but he was dismissed Feb. 24. He is still a plaintiff in the cross-complaint, however.

The National Transportation Safety Board ruled in November that Blanc was most likely to blame for the crash, but the NTSB report also said limited visibility from inside the stunt plane was “a factor related to the accident.”

The Santa Paula Airport, which operates without air traffic controllers, will ask to be dismissed from the case at a hearing June 8.

A consolidated jury trial on the suit and cross-complaint is scheduled for Sept. 13.