Court Opinion

ID: 9718412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:22:51.522789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:58.868461
License: Public Domain

FLEMING, Acting P. J.
I dissent.
Liability of the owner of an aircraft for injury or death to passengers is governed by “the rules of law applicable to torts on the land or waters of this State, arising out of similar relationships.” (Pub. Util. Code, § 21404.) In my view this provision assimilates to aircraft not only the substantive liability of an owner to passengers but the rules for determining who shall be liable and for how long a period. Basic to these rules is the system of registration of ownership of motor vehicles and watercraft set out in Vehicle Code sections 5600, 5602, 9900, and 9905. Under these sections the registered owner of a motor vehicle or watercraft remains the owner of the vehicle or craft for purposes of tort liability until title has been properly transferred to the new owner and appropriate steps taken to register the transfer.
In 1958 the federal government established a national system of mandatory registration for aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration and thereby preempted the field of aircraft registration. (International Atlas Services, Inc. v. Twentieth Century Aircraft Co., 251 Cal.App.2d 434 [59 Cal.Rptr. 495]; 49 U.S.C. 1401 ff.) An individual state, therefore, has no need to establish a separate system of registration in order to identify and record aircraft ownership. Hence, absence of state registration of aircraft is a poor argument for dispensing with any requirement for registration, state or federal, as a means for terminating the owner’s liability to passengers on transfer of title.
Absent some system of registration, a passenger has no way to know and no way to discover the true owner of. the aircraft, as the facts of the present case illustrate. Here, all public documents identified Sky Cruisers as the owner of the aircraft.. The only identification of Roberts as owner *989was a typewritten lease in his possession, a document never filed, never recorded, never made a public record, in any place at any time. Under such a loose system the possibilities of fraudulent manipulation of ownership are unlimited. In my view, an injured passenger is entitled to rely on current registration of the aircraft in determining its ownership, and he is not required to conduct discovery proceedings to unearth unrecorded documents, if such exist, in order to smoke out an undisclosed owner of the aircraft.
The legislation establishing federal regulation of aircraft ownership (49 U.S.C. § 1403(c)) reads in part: “No conveyance ... shall be valid ... against any person . . . until . . . recordation . . To my mind this declaration protects passengers with claims against the owner arising out of the operation of the aircraft, and they are entitled to rely on public documentary evidence of ownership until registration of the aircraft has been changed by a procedure comparable to that set out in Vehicle Code sections 5602 and 9905. Whether the old owner or the new owner effects the change in registration is immaterial, for each has an interest in timely registration, the old owner to terminate civil liability, the new owner to protect his property interest in the aircraft. To my mind federal registration serves both purposes.
I would reverse the judgment in favor of Sky Cruisers.
Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied October 28, 1976. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.