Sikkelee v. AVCO Corp.

268 F.Supp.3d 660

Jill SIKKELEE, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of David Sikkelee, deceased, Plaintiff,

v.AVCO CORPORATION, et al., Defendants.

No. 4:07–CV–00886

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania.

Signed August 3, 2017

Clifford A. Rieders, Rieders Travis Humphrey Waters & Dohrmann, Williamsport, PA, David I. Katzman, John D. McClune, Patrick J. Gallagher, Katzman, Lampert & McClune, Troy, MI, Bruce A. Lampert, Katzman Lampert & McClune, Westminster, CO, Tejinder Singh, Goldstein & Russell, P.C., Bethesda, MD, for Plaintiff.

John M. Devaney, Perkins Cole LLP, Washington, DC, Mary P. Gaston, Sara E. Baynard–Cooke, William Brendan Murphy, Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, WA, William J. Conroy, Campbell Campbell Edwards & Conroy, P.C., Berwyn, PA, Catherine B. Slavin, Cozen O'Conner, Sara A. Frey, Gordon & Rees LLP, John E. Salmon, Zachary J. Ballard, Salmon, Ricchezza, Singer & Turchi, LLP, Philadelphia, PA, Christopher Carlsen, Deborah A. Elsasser, Clyde & Co., US LLP, New York, NY, Louis R. Bourgeois, John P. O'Flanagan, Banker Lopez Gassler PA, Tampa, FL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Matthew W. Brann, United States District Judge

A weightless innocence so often attends our daydreams of flight. As the American aviator John Gillespie Magee, Jr., loftily described it, pilots "dance[ ] the skies on laughter-silvered wings," soaring "high in the sunlit silence."¹ Sadly, it would seem that Magee's "high untrespassed sanctity of space" must belong to a universe far away from the dark origins and convoluted history of this case.

Initiated in 2007, two years after David Sikkelee, Jr., died in a fiery plane crash, the instant litigation has charted an eventful path full of intricate factual, legal, and regulatory detours. At its core is an allegation by the Plaintiff that her deceased husband's plane lost power when screws that held the engine's carburetor together came loose. AVCO Corporation's Lycoming Engine division (hereinafter "Lycoming"), who filed the two pending motions, did not manufacture or install the carburetor that powered the aircraft on that fateful day.

In January 2013, the matter was reassigned to me, and in September 2014, relying upon Abdullah v. American Airlines, Inc . 181 F.3d 363 (3d Cir. 1999), I held that Plaintiff's state tort claims against Lycoming were field preempted by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. Sikkelee v. Precision Airmotive Corp. , 45 F.Supp.3d 431 (M.D. Pa. 2014). In April 2016, during the ensuing interlocutory appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit repudiated Abdullah's breadth but instructed me to consider whether Plaintiff's state law claims might nevertheless be conflict preempted. Sikkelee v. Precision Airmotive Corp. , 822 F.3d 680 (3d Cir. 2016). Thereafter, in November 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States denied Lycoming's petition for a writ of certiorari. AVCO Corp. v. Sikkelee , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S.Ct. 495, 196 L.Ed.2d 433 (2016).

On remand, Lycoming has submitted two new motions for summary judgment. One motion challenges the extent of Lycoming's liability for third-party modifications; the other sounds in recent conflict preemption jurisprudence. I conducted oral argument on May 19, 2017 and received supplemental briefing.

Lycoming has on numerous occasions vociferously challenged a prior decision in this case that exposed it to liability for subsequent modifications made by an aftermarket parts manufacturer. That holding was reached by my colleague, the Honorable John E. Jones III, to whom this matter was originally assigned. In particular, Judge Jones concluded that Lycoming, a type certificate holder, could be held liable for modifications made by the third-party manufacturer who overhauled the engine's carburetor. In Judge Jones's view, "while Lycoming's hands were not physically present in the plant during the manufacture or in the shop during the overhaul, its invisible hands were undeniably present." ECF No. 299 at 17.

Although I have previously expressed skepticism at this holding, it is evident now, with the benefit of thorough argument, that this expanded notion of liability is unsupported by the law and is partially responsible for sending this litigation into an academic tailspin. One might say that since I was first assigned to this matter, "I have acquired new wisdom...or, to put it more critically, have discarded old ignorance." Ring v. Arizona , 536 U.S. 584, 611, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002) (Scalia, J., concurring). Now having gained familiarity with the applicable regulations, the FAA approvals, and the production history at issue here, I must conclude that Lycoming's connection to the allegedly defective component was too far removed to subject it to tort liability. Indeed, the third-party manufacturer, without Lycoming's knowledge or approval, acted pursuant to its own aftermarket parts agreement when it overhauled the carburetor in a manner that Lycoming could never have foreseen. Summary judgment is warranted on that ground alone.

Further, by arguing that those subsequent carburetor modifications were attributable to Lycoming because the third-party manufacturer was bound by regulation to follow the type certificate holder's designs, Plaintiff has chanced upon a second reason why her claims must fail: they are conflict preempted. Because it was impossible for Lycoming and the aftermarket parts manufacturer to unilaterally comply with both state tort law and federal regulations, as in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett , 570 U.S. 472, 133 S.Ct. 2466, 186 L.Ed.2d 607 (2013), and PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing , 564 U.S. 604, 131 S.Ct. 2567, 180 L.Ed.2d 580 (2011), I will grant summary judgment in Lycoming's favor on this independent ground.

I. BACKGROUND

As the late Honorable Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, once remarked, "Planes do not wander about in the sky like vagrant clouds. They move only by federal permission, subject to federal inspection, in the hands of federally certified personnel and under an intricate system of federal commands." Northwest Airlines v. State of Minnesota , 322 U.S. 292, 303, 64 S.Ct. 950, 88 L.Ed. 1283 (1944). Justice Jackson's observation sprang from "the national responsibility for regulating air commerce" and reinforced the notion that the "air is too precious as an open highway to permit it to be owned" by local interests. Id. "Local exactions and barriers to free transit in the air would neutralize its indifference to space and its conquest of time." Id.

Nearly three-quarters of a century later, Justice Jackson's prescient concerns about an excessively splintered airway regulatory system ring just as true. Indeed, those animating federalist principles are precisely why Congress has established an administration whose sole mission is to assure the safety of our nation's skies. This background section examines the FAA's intricate framework of regulations, a fraction of whose existence Justice Jackson could only imagine in 1944. It then connects those regulations to the narrative of this case.

A. In 1958, Congress Creates The Federal Aviation Agency And Bestows Upon It Dominion Over The Skies.

Congress passed the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 to regulate aviation in a way that would "best foster its development and safety" and would ensure the "safe and efficient use of the airspace." 85 Pub. L. No. 726, 72 Stat. 731. The Act created the position of an Administrator who would be appointed by the president to head the agency. 49 U.S.C. §§ 106(b). As part of his official role, the Administrator must prescribe, among other regulations, minimum standards for the design, construction, inspection, and overhauling of aircraft and their engines. Id. § 44701(a)(1)–(2).

Concerned with a lack of coordination amongst our nation's transportation systems, President Lyndon B. Johnson worked jointly with Congress to create the Department of Transportation (DOT) in 1967, at which time the Federal Aviation Agency was renamed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and brought within the DOT's purview. See A Brief History of the FAA .² Since that time, the FAA has continued to fulfill its regulatory mission, and today, its nearly 50,000 employees make it the largest subdivision within the DOT. See FACT SHEET .³ Recent estimates suggest that more than 1.7 million passengers board a flight in the United States every day, and the FAA oversees more than 50 million commercial, military, and general aviation flights per year. See id.

Acting on the powers vested in it by Congress through the Federal Aviation Act and corresponding grants, the FAA has littered the books with a maze of regulations not readily traversed by most laypersons. Like other parallel regulatory regimes that have exposed state tort claims to conflict preemption defenses, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett , 570 U.S. 472, 133 S.Ct. 2466, 186 L.Ed.2d 607 (2013) (FDA drug regulations); PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing , 564 U.S. 604, 131 S.Ct. 2567, 180 L.Ed.2d 580 (2011) (same), the FAA's regulations are highly particularized, govern nearly every aspect of the regulated field, and are born from the twin aims of ensuring the safety of consumers and protecting the public. See, e.g., Elsworth v. Beech Aircraft Corp. , 37 Cal.3d 540, 208 Cal.Rptr. 874, 691 P.2d 630, 636 (1984) (FAA regulations protect not only "those who fly in airplanes" but also anyone "affected by their flight").

The FAA's regulations, found at Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, are divided into three volumes, sixty-eight parts, and thousands more detailed subparts. See Overview—Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations , at 12–1.⁴ Volume I contains those FAA regulations governing definitions (Parts 1 & 3); procedure (Parts 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, & 17); and aircrafts (Parts 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 43, 45, 47 & 49). Volume II contains the regulations governing airmen (...