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How Your Donations Are Helping
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The process of discovery is well under way with piles of documents being sent, received, and reviewed by each side. As the lawsuit now moves into its second year, depositions will soon begin. Attorneys for both sides will have the opportunity to interview plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, and experts, to clarify the issues and evidence and to prepare for trial. This is where donations can make an enormous impact. Written discovery, depositions and trial are labor intensive for the attorneys, and therefore quite costly. There will be dozens of depositions, each one of which will take several hours of billable attorney time. There are a number of issues in the case which have never been heard in court, and therefore have the ability to make legal aviation case history which can be used throughout the country in future cases. Because of this, the importance of a vigorous defense is crucial not only to this particular case, but also to pilots across the country, all of whose futures will likely be affected by the rulings here. The defendants will incur several tens of thousands of dollars of additional legal fees during each one of these phases. The plaintiffs, attempting to create their own personal form of airspace regulation despite the explicit intentions of the United States Congress, will never see the same sort of legal fees. Since one of them is also the group's attorney, he is able to not charge the other plaintiffs for his services. So the overall financial picture is highly skewed in the plaintiffs' favor. The goal of the GA Legal Defense Fund is to level the playing field so that the issues can have a fair hearing in court and all pilots will be protected in the future. Because the GA Legal Defense Fund is an entirely volunteer organization, very close to 100% of all donated funds will go directly to the legal costs of defending pilots' rights and freedoms. Thanks to generous donations from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association [whose donation was made directly to the legal team defending the lawsuit, NOT to this fund] as well as many private individuals, the pilots involved in this lawsuit have so far been able to defend against this attack on congressionally mandated freedoms that could ultimately threaten not only every pilot in the United States, but anyone engaged in any other noise-generating activity. This could include boats, lawn mowers, motorcycles, trains, and almost anything else. If individuals can effectively regulate where and how aircraft can fly in federally designated legal airspace, then where is the limit drawn? How would pilots know which areas are legally safe, and which are not? What is there to stop people from suing over school buses driving down a rural street, or trucks on a highway? Or a LifeFlight helicopter landing in a church parking lot to pick up a critically injured patient (this is a real example which occurs periodically only 1/4 mile from one of the defendants' homes)? Not to mention the obvious problems it would create for all of general aviation throughout the country. Allowing this sort of precedent to take hold would be the beginning of a very slippery slope without clear boundaries.
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General
Aviation Legal Defense Fund