Court tosses lawsuit over 2015 Germanwings crash

Almost two years to the day after a passenger plane was deliberately slammed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people aboard, a U.S. judge threw out a lawsuit against the Arizona flight school where the pilot was trained.

On March 24, 2015, Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain of Flight 9525 out of the cockpit and flew the Airbus A320 into a mountainside. The 81 families of the doomed passengers alleged in a lawsuit that Airline Training Center Arizona in Goodyear, Ariz., owned by Germanwings parent Deutsche Lufthansa, bore some responsibility for failing to screen out Lubitz.

While finding some merit in the claim, U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix ruled March 27 that since everything else about the case is tied to Germany, that’s where it must be heard. She cited the legal principle of forum non conveniens, under which judges have discretion to shift a case to a different venue depending on the facts in hand. Seventy of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are German.

“Although Arizona certainly has an interest in this litigation, it is comparatively low when considering the much higher level of public interest in the lawsuit that is likely in Germany given the number of German citizens who lost their lives,” she wrote. Humetewa said a German court, if it accepts the lawsuit, could apply any Arizona laws applicable to the case.