Wash. Jury Awards Flight Nurse $1M for Injury

WATERVILLE — A jury on Thursday found East Wenatchee charter plane service Executive Flight liable for $1 million in damages over a passenger’s on-board injury.

Dawn Workman, a flight nurse for the Airlift Northwest medical transport service, sued the firm over a landing at Boeing Field in 2011, when the rear emergency exit door fell off and damaged Workman’s hearing in her right ear.

The jury found negligence by Executive Flight, which owned and operated the Lear 35A aircraft, resulted in Workman’s injury. The incident left the plaintiff, a perinatal nurse who specialized in critical care for infants, unable to assist on emergency medical flights, said her attorney, George Telquist.

“She tried to work for a few years while they were doing different types of medical treatment on her, but she can’t localize sound — meaning if she closes her eyes, she can’t tell you where sound is coming from, because of the injury,” Telquist said Friday.

That factor made it too risky for Workman, now 44 and living in Richland, to continue in emergency air transport, he said.

Airlift Northwest is operated by the University of Washington, flying emergency medical transports out of four bases in Washington and one in Alaska. The service held a contract with Executive Flight to supply aircraft, pilots and mechanics for regional medevac flights.

Workman and another nurse had helped to stabilize a critically ill teen on a Feb. 13, 2011, flight from Yakima to Seattle. When the Lear touched down at Boeing Field, the rear emergency hatch came loose and fell into the cabin.

No one was struck by the door, but Workman and her attorneys linked her hearing loss to sudden depressurization in the cabin.

On inspecting the plane, aviation mechanics could not find any trace of a specific shear wire that should have been in place to help keep the door from opening accidentally, according to court papers. The wire is designed to break when the emergency handle is pulled. Later, during an emergency drill on the ground, participants were unable to open the exit from inside the plane.

Executive Flight’s attorneys argued that the change in air pressure would not have been significant enough in itself to damage Workman’s hearing, and noted that she was flying with a sinus congestion.

The jury agreed that Workman exhibited some negligence that contributed to her injury, but assigned 70 percent of the fault to Executive Flight. That led the jurors to reduce Workman’s initial damage award by 30 percent, from $1.4 million to just over $1 million, Telquist said.

Executive Flight attorney David Howenstine of Seattle couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

Workman is now enrolled in a master’s degree program and hopes to teach nursing. Telquist said she’s pleased with the nine-day trial’s outcome.

“She got to tell her story. She was awarded far more than Executive Flight ever offered, by manyfold. They never took responsibility. So she feels that the jury heard her and understood that she was harmed, and made an award with her in mind.”

Reach Jefferson Robbins at 509-664-7123 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JRobbinsWW.

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