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# Aspen charter crash the focus of L.A. trial
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/aspen-charter-crash-the-focus-of-l-a-trial/
- Published: 2003-06-30T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T02:26:24.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Crime, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Lawyer attempts to show that pilots erred in crash*

*By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer*

“We never wanted to talk about this,” a lawyer told jurors in a trial over the spectacular March 29, 2001 crash of a Gulfstream III charter jet just short of the runway in Aspen, Colorado. “But death wasn’t instantaneous.”

With that, attorneys representing a grandmother of two passengers on the plane and the parents of another attempted to portray a pair of highly experienced pilots as reckless, and the owners of Avjet, the company that employed them, as arrogant.

The two-week trial in the case, playing out in Los Angeles Superior Court, affords a rare glimpse of the events leading up to the crash of the jet, which was carrying 15 passengers from Los Angeles to a Thursday evening party in Aspen. After pilots lost sight of the runway in swirling snow, the jet crashed, killing all 18 on board, including one young woman who used to work for City TV in Santa Monica.

Lawyers for survivors — including Brian Panish of Santa Monica — are attempting to show the pilots were pressured by passengers into landing in Aspen despite its impending noise curfew and deteriorating weather.

Avjet maintains the pilots acted correctly at each decision point and never heard passengers complain about a possible diversion of the flight to the nearby town of Rifle. They say the pilots simply lost sight of the runway at the critical last moments of the flight.

Avjet and the charter jet industry need to be taught a lesson, Panish insisted in asking for an award of punitive damages in the case.

Avjet’s lawyer, Martin Rose, admitted the charter company’s negligence in the mishap. But there was no evidence to suggest that company or its pilots acted out of malice or oppression, he said.

To get punitive damages, lawyers must show both an interval of time between injury and death, and that the company acted as “vile, base, contemptible, loathsome,” Judge Susan Bryant-Deason told the jury.

The issue of whether death was instantaneous has an oddly legal twist. California law doesn’t allow punitive damages to be awarded in wrongful death cases unless the victims were actually injured in some measurable period before death.

That period — 1.1 seconds or.7 second, depending on whose measurements are accepted — elapsed between the time the left wing of the plane clipped the ground, snapping off nine feet of it, and the moment it smashed into the wall of a ditch short of the runway and erupted in a fireball.

None of the passengers even experienced another heartbeat between the time the plane hit and its fiery breakup, Aspen coroner Steve Ayers testified in the case. But the plaintiffs called a witness who insisted that death was not instantaneous, opening the door to punitive damages.

Relatives of the other 12 passengers on the plane accepted undisclosed settlements from Avjet, which didn’t dispute its responsibility. But Lyle and Laurese Witham, whose 22-year-old daughter, Marissa, died in the crash, plowed on. Lyle Witham is an ex-Continental Airlines pilot and his son, Jonathan, currently flies for the carrier.

“They are pilots,” Panish told jurors. “They knew this wasn’t just an accident, and that is why we’re here.”

Marissa Witham worked for the newsroom at Fox 11 television in West Los Angeles and was a former employee of City TV in Santa Monica. Videotapes she made at UCLA as an aspiring reporter and anchor were played for the jury. She had a promising future, co-workers testified.

Aurora Garcia, the grandmother of two brothers on the flight, Jose and Joseph Aguilar, also joined in the case and refused the settlement offer. A Mexican citizen, she sat quietly at closing arguments while the translation was whispered in her ear.

Panish portrayed the pilots, Bob Frisbie and Peter Kowalczyk, as error-proned. He alleged they were hired without a background check and that Frisbie overshot a runway in one prior episode. They listed 22 violations of various aviation codes, noting the jet’s spoilers had been improperly deployed for nine seconds to slow it down on its approach to Aspen on the fateful evening.

Panish asked for $40 million in compensatory damages, requesting $1 million per year for each of the Withams remaining life expectancy. The law, attorneys noted, can't compensate for a “priceless” life. But it can award for the loss of society, comfort and affection.

Defense attorney Martin Rose, a leading aviation legal specialist, countered that Avjet wanted to “fully compensate” the relatives of victims. But he suggested jurors award a total of $2 million in the case: $500,000 for each of the Aguilars and $500,000 to Marissa Witham’s parents.

Rose characterized Avjet as a highly specialized charter outfit whose pilots have an average of three times the experience as some commercial airline pilots. To suggest that Frisbie, the pilot, risked the lives of the passengers was to suggest he had a death wish, the attorney said. No witness suggested the accident was anything more than a terrible mistake, he said.

Evidence in the case included the last 32 minutes of cockpit tapes in which pilots discussed diverting their plane to Rifle in case they couldn’t see the runway in Aspen. Their company suggested a departure of no later than 3:45 p.m. for the one-hour, 48-minute flight from Los Angeles to Aspen in order to beat the Aspen curfew of 6:58 on the night in question. They left at 4:11 p.m.

The final approach into Aspen requires a “step-down” procedure. During that approach, the pilots could see the runway at each critical decision moment, evidence showed. But during the last 20-30 seconds of the tape, one uttered, “Where’s it at?”

The final moments of the tape showed the pilots likely starting a “missed approach,” which had been done by two prior planes that night. The engines whined and pilots reported speed picking up.

“Ref plus five,” and moments later, “ref plus ten,” one pilot reported, referring to the speed pickup. Then pilot Frisbie sharply jerked up on the steering column of the plane, spontaneously triggering the cockpit microphone and picking up the flight’s final moments.

A “cruel trick” of Aspen terrain is Shale Bluffs, which rises sharply to the right of the airport, Rose noted. The pilots apparently turned their aircraft sharply to the left at the last second to avoid the terrain. “The next step,” Rose narrated, “was to raise the gear.”

“At that point, they ran out of altitude and ran out of luck,” he said. The plane’s left wing then dug a 72-foot trough in the ground before its final impact, sparking what Rose called an argument over “nanoseconds.”

The jury will begin deliberating this morning. If at least nine decide on punitive damages, the trial will enter the damages phase. Five women allegedly told about James Bond movie

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 30, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/063003.pdf?ref=smdp.com)