A Weld County judge this week ordered a new trial after ruling that a jury erred this year in finding neither pilot at fault in an Erie plane crash that killed five people in 2014.
Pilot Oliver Frascona, 67, and passengers Tori Rains-Wedan, 41, and her three sons — Mason, 15, and twin brothers Austin and Hunter, 11 — were killed when Frascona’s Piper PA 46 Malibu crashed Aug. 31, 2014, at Erie Municipal Airport.
Four weeks ago, the National Transportation Safety Board placed full blame for the crash on Frascona.
The Wedan family last year filed wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of Rains-Wedan and each of her sons against Frascona’s estate and Joe Lechtanski — who was piloting another plane on the runway — claiming that “very bad piloting” led to the crash.
After a week-long trial in April, a six-person jury that heard the case in Weld County District Court found that neither of the pilots was negligent.
But Judge Todd Taylor, who presided over the trial, ruled Thursday that the jury should have found at least one of the pilots negligent, and granted a motion by the plaintiffs seeking a new trial.
“Based on the evidence presented at trial, I agree that the undisputed facts must result in a verdict implicating one or both pilots as the negligent cause of the crash,” Taylor wrote. “The finding of no liability for either pilot is a miscarriage of justice.”
Taylor wrote that he had chosen to invoke his power to grant a new trial in the event that “the verdict is contrary to the weight of the evidence.”
