Opinion ID: 185028
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Injury By Virtue of Civil Litigation

Text: 18 Petitioners apparently are afraid that the factual portion of NTSB's report may be admitted as evidence in a lawsuit that Federal Express has filed against them. See Joint Br. for Petitioners at 21 ([S]ome day a judge and/or a jury may be asked to rely on supposedly 'factual' evidence from an NTSB investigation that did not include all pertinent material.).Petitioners object to the report as written, and they hope that the information they seek will reveal new evidence that they can employ to convince the NTSB to change its report so that it will not be so damaging to them in the pending lawsuit. This alleged injury is not cognizable, because petitioners bring this petition for review as parties to an NTSB investigation, and, as parties, they cannot claim injuries that they might suffer as defendants in an entirely separate civil lawsuit. 19 As an initial matter, we reject the premise that NTSB's report itself is admissible in a civil lawsuit. Congress has quite explicitly provided that, 20 [n]o part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report. 21 49 U.S.C. 1154(b) (1994). The simple truth here is that NTSB investigatory procedures are not designed to facilitate litigation, and Congress has made it clear that the Board and its reports should not be used to the advantage or disadvantage of any party in a civil lawsuit. In our view, this congressional mandate could not be clearer. 22 Petitioners point out that, despite the statute's clear language, some early circuit court opinions held that NTSB factual findings were admissible in civil litigation. Joint Br. for Petitioners at 20 (citing authority). A careful review of these opinions, however, shows that these early cases actually focused only on the admissibility of investigators' reports which were mislabeled by the courts as report[s] of the Board. See, e.g., American Airlines, Inc. v. United States, 418 F.2d 180, 196 (5th Cir. 1969) (allowing admission of graphs that were based on information from a safety committee's report); Berguido v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 317 F.2d 628, 631-32 (3d Cir. 1963) (allowing testimony of witness based on investigator's report); Lobel v. American Airlines, Inc., 192 F.2d 217, 220 (2d Cir. 1951) (allowing admission of an investigator's report of his examination of the plane wreckage). Because of this judicial mislabeling, these circuits created what they supposed was an exception to 1154(b) for factual data from NTSB investigations in order to protect the interests of alleged victims. See, e.g., Berguido, 317 F.2d at 631-32 (finding testimony based on an investigator's report admissible, despite the statute, because of the need to compromise between the interests of those who would adopt a policy of absolute privilege ... and the countervailing policy of making available all accident information to litigants in a civil suit). In short, the need to insure that victims had access to investigators' factual data surrounding an accident prompted the courts in the early years to allow admission of what they labeled as a report of the Board. 23 When faced with the judiciary's literal distortion of the statute, the Board, in 1975, responded by amending its regulations to make clear that investigators' reports--the very reports that some courts were already admitting--are not reports of the Board for the purpose of 1154(b). Section 835.2 defines the Board's accident report as the report containing the Board's determinations, including the probable cause of an accident. 49 C.F.R. 835.2 (1998). No part of this report may be admitted as evidence or used in any suit or action for damages growing out of any matter mentioned in such reports. Id. (using almost the exact language of 49 U.S.C. 1154(b)). A factual accident report, on the other hand, is an investigator's report of his investigation of the accident. Id. Because this report is not a report of the Board, it is not barred by the statute and is therefore admissible. As counsel for NTSB made clear during oral argument, the only reports that are admissible are the factual reports that investigators do, not the Board's findings, either factual or probable cause, but what individual investigators find.... [T]hose reports of these factual developments are made part of the record and parties can get that.Audio-tape of Oral Arguments (Nov. 15, 1999). Thus, because investigators' reports are now plainly admissible under agency regulations, victims have access to necessary factual information. Therefore, courts no longer need to employ an exception to the statute to protect parties in litigation. 24 Our research indicates that, since the promulgation of the Board's 1975 rule, only two circuit court opinions have failed to recognize that the admissibility of investigators' reports obviates the need for a judicial exception to the statute. See Mullan v. Quickie Aircraft Corp., 797 F.2d. 845, 848 (10th Cir. 1986) ([E]xpert witness properly relied on the factual portions of the NTSB report.); Curry v. Chevron, USA 779 F.2d 272, 274 (5th Cir. 1985) (acknowledging judicial gloss of the statute that allow[s] factual portions of the report to be admitted). In each case, the courts distinguished between the factual portions of Board reports and parts of NTSB reports which contain agency conclusions on the probable cause of accidents. Mullan, 797 F.2d at 848. However, neither opinion is weighty authority, even for the limited rule enunciated, because there are later decisions from both circuits that adhere to the strict terms of the statute. Subsequent to Mullan, the Tenth Circuit has held that, [c]onsistent with its fact-finding mission that is litigation neutral, NTSB reports are barred as evidence in court. Thomas Brooks v. Burnett, 920 F.2d 634, 639 (10th Cir. 1990); accord Jetcraft Corp. v. Flight Safety Int'l, 16 F.3d 362, 366 (10th Cir. 1993). And even more recently, in 1998, the Fifth Circuit has noted that: 25 Federal law flatly prohibits the NTSB accident report from being admitted into evidence in any suit for dam-ages arising out of accidents investigated by the NTSB. 26 Campbell v. Keystone Aerial Surveys, Inc., 138 F.3d 996, 1001 (5th Cir. 1998). 27 We agree with these recent decisions from the Fifth and Tenth Circuits, and also a decision from the Ninth Circuit, see Benna v. Reeder Flying Serv., Inc., 578 F.2d 269, 271 (9th Cir. 1978), holding that, under the plain terms of the statute, NTSB reports are inadmissible in civil litigation. When the statute was interpreted broadly to include investigators' reports, there may have been a public policy justification for admitting factual information. However, once the statute was interpreted more narrowly, no justification remained for any exception to 1154(b). 28 Moreover, as this case demonstrates, admitting Board reports into civil litigation can have the unsavory affect of embroiling NTSB in the interests of civil litigants. Thus, the statute means what it says: No part of the Board's actual report is admissible as evidence in a civil suit. See Universal Airline, Inc. v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 188 F.2d 993, 1000 (D.C. Cir. 1951) (noting that the Board should not be compelled to produce its reports). Because it is the Board's actual report that petitioners hope to change, they are not injured by their inability to change it, because it is not admissible in a civil suit. 29 Even if the report were admissible, however, petitioners' injury as civil litigants is simply not cognizable in this case. Petitioners bring this suit as parties to an NTSB investigation. As parties, they signed a statement agreeing that their participation would be for the purpose of assisting NTSB's investigation and would not be for the purpose of preparing for litigation. See Statement of Party Representatives to NTSB Investigation, reprinted in 1 Deferred Appendix at 435. Furthermore, NTSB's investigations are fact-finding proceedings; they are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights or liabilities of any party. Therefore, the injuries petitioners might suffer as civil defendants are not relevant to their status as parties. Accordingly, because petitioners bring this suit as parties to an NTSB investigation, their injuries as civil litigants are not legally cognizable. Whatever data they may require in litigation, apart from the Board's report, may be obtained through the normal course of discovery.