Clifford Law

As a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief is about to take the controls with a distinguished aviation education, airline career and “culture of safety” record behind him, it causes one to pause and think just what should the immediate and longer-term safety priorities of the agency be. After many decades of representing airplane accident victims and their families, as well as working closely with our accident investigation and safety engineering experts, the following initial…

Sarah F. King, attorney at Clifford Law Offices and Vice Chair of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (ITLA) Women’s Caucus, will be co-moderating the organization’s Trial and Practice Tips Seminar on May 10th, 2019. King will be moderating the morning program with Sarah M. Salger of Gori Julian & Associates of Edwardsville. King also will make a presentation on “Pre-Trial Motions.” Other topics to be covered include jury selection, opening statements, closing argument and a…

The Boeing and FAA sins in the 737 MAX design and certification program continue to grow in number, severity, and consequence. This may now include criminal charges, as the US DOJ and DOT Inspector General begin investigations with a grand jury, preservation requests and plenty of media hysteria. This is not the first time that a new Boeing airplane program has had incidents caused by poor system safety design and certification, with Boeing and FAA…

American Eagle Flight 4184’s crash in a rainy soybean field in Roselawn, Indiana, on Halloween night, Oct. 31, 1994, was the culmination of years of ATR turboprop airplane icing incidents and deadly crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into Flight 4184 and all the prior ATR icing incidents and crashes revealed an airplane manufacturer determined to outsell the competition via numerous aggressive design and marketing efforts, including a highly-leveraged, marginally stable lateral control…

Amidst the media reports accompanying the worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX, concluding with the reluctant Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounding, were mentions that the investigative team on the ground in Ethiopia had found “airplane configuration evidence” similar to the Lion Air Flight 610 accident. This evidence, along with the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADSB) altitude data, were strong enough evidence to indicate the likelihood that the 737 MAX’s new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS)…

On March 11, 2019, Boeing posted a news release in its online media room (which can be read here). Included were the following two sequential paragraphs: “Safety is a core value for everyone at Boeing and the safety of our airplanes, our customers’ passengers and their crews is always our top priority. The 737 MAX is a safe airplane that was designed, built and supported by our skilled employees who approach their work with the…

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max8 crashed shortly after takeoff on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 aboard after the pilots reportedly lost control of the new jet on its first flight of the day. An experienced Ethiopian Airlines pilot was at the controls as the airplane took off from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, heading to Nairobi, Kenya. Shortly after takeoff, the crew contacted Air Traffic Control (ATC) to report a problem with the…

Robert A. Clifford was discussing his participation in representing the Father of Medicine in the recent mock trial, “Trial of Hippocrates,” on Channel 9, WGN-TV news, with the station’s political analyst Paul Lisnek, on March 7th at 5:30 p.m. Clifford, along with Winston & Strawn’s Dan Webb, represented Hippocrates in the style of ancient Athens with a modern twist where the Greek physician is accused of violating his oath in caring for the dying King of Thebes….

Robert A. Clifford, founder and senior partner at Clifford Law Offices, authored an article on lawyers’ wellness entitled, “Finding a Balance.” The column appeared in the February issue of the Chicago Lawyer and it described the need for lawyers to “find a balance” in one’s work life in order to be more productive and happier. Clifford wrote about the several studies that have been conducted recently on the issue and how bar associations are tackling…