Glorvigen v. Cirrus Design Corp.

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, EBEL*fn1 and CLEVENGER*fn2, Circuit Judges.

On January 18, 2003, at 6:38 a.m., a Cirrus SR-22 aircraft with identification number N9523P crashed near Hill City, Minnesota. The pilot and owner of the aircraft, Gary Prokop, and his passenger, James Kosak, were both killed in the crash. Their trustees, Thomas Gartland and Rick Glorvigen, appointed under the Minnesota wrongful-death statute, brought claims against Cirrus, the airplane manufacturer, alleging, among other things, that Cirrus had improperly designed the airplane and had failed to instruct Mr. Prokop properly in its operation. Cirrus then brought a third-party complaint against two federally employed flight service station (“FSS”) specialists for negligence, alleging, among other things, that they were at fault for failing negligently to apprise Mr. Prokop adequately of the weather conditions and weather forecast the morning of the crash. Acting pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act, the United States certified that these Specialists had been acting in the scope of their employment at the time of this incident and, based on that certification, the court substituted the United States as the sole third-party defendant, in place of the two FSS specialists, and removed the case to federal court. See Glorvigen v. Cirrus Design Corp., No. 06-2661, 2006 WL 3043222 *1-*2 (D. Minn. Oct. 24, 2006) (unpublished).