U.S. Court to Begin Hearings into Irkutsk Air Crash on June 14
NOVOSIBIRSK. June 8 (Interfax) – The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) will begin hearings on June 14 into a collective suit by Russian citizens who lost loved ones in the crash of a Sibir airlines Airbus A310 in Irkutsk in July 2006.
A U.S. insurance company, that insures Airbus Industries, the owner of the A310, will be the defendant in the trial, Moscow lawyer Igor Trunov told Interfax on Friday.
“The Slastin family from Ulan-Ude, as well as other people who declined to sue Sibir airlines in Novosibirsk, hope to receive $300,000 per deceased. Multiply that amount by two, since they lost two relatives,” the lawyer said.
“Judging by court rulings in similar cases, our judicial system is not ready to meet the demands of the injured party,” Trunov said.
If S.D.N.Y. fails to meet the demands of the injured parties, relatives of the air crash victims are ready to sue Airbus Industries, the lawyer said.
The A310 crashed on July 9, 2006 on landing at the Irkutsk airport, killing 124 of the 203 people aboard.
Konstantin Slastin lost his spouse and a daughter in the crash. He and a surviving daughter, Lyubov, filed a suit against Sibir airline in Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky district court demanding payments for moral and material damage. However, after studying the airline’s appeal, the court referred the suit to a court in the town of Ob in Novosibirsk region.
Irina Stupchikova, a judge on the Ob court, closed the Slastins’ case on Friday. The judge said that a transcript of telephone calls with the Slastin family, part of the materials in the case, “prove that they understand the consequences of giving up the suit.”
The case was closed despite the objections of an Ingosstrakh representative, who asked that the case be considered on its merits, Stupchikova said.
The Slatin family gave up the suit against Sibir, in order to file a similar suit in U.S. court.
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