A Florida lawsuit against Montana’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy that alleged his negligence caused the plane he was training in to crash into a home, was dismissed earlier this month following a notice of settlement.
The 2019 crash killed his instructor and injured one of the residents.
Polk County 10th Judicial Circuit Judge Michael McDaniel issued an order on Sept. 11 dismissing the Ngalamulume family’s suit against Sheehy and the company that maintained the plane he was training in on Feb. 23, 2019, when it crashed into the family’s home in Winter Haven, Florida.
Attorneys for the family, Sheehy and the company had a day earlier filed a joint stipulation for dismissal of the case in which they agreed that each party would pay their own attorney’s fees and costs.
On July 3, the attorney for the plane maintenance company, Amphibians Plus LLC, filed a notice with the court that it had settled the claims between the Ngalamulume family and the company, and it would be finalized within 60 days.
But the notice did not mention Sheehy; both he and Amphibians Plus were the named defendants in the case.
It remains unclear whether Sheehy was party to the likely settlement, as neither his campaign nor nearly all the attorneys involved in the case responded to questions from the Daily Montanan. The court docket for the case does not include a copy of the settlement, which are often kept private by the attorneys and parties involved.
Last year when the Daily Beast first reported on the lawsuit and Sheehy’s involvement, it noted that the final report on the plane crash from the National Transportation Safety Board pointed the finger at Sheehy’s flight instructor for missteps that caused the crash.
Because the case was dismissed with prejudice, the family cannot file another lawsuit in the same venue against Sheehy claiming he was negligent and caused the crash.
The first amended complaint, filed in 2021, alleged two counts of negligence against Sheehy, one from Guillaume and Esmerance Ngalamulume for property damage to their home from the crash, and another from their daughter, Carmelle Ngalamulume, for bodily injuries she suffered in the crash, disability, mental anguish, and loss of earning capacity.
According to filings in the case, the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the crash and other documents associated with the investigation, including Sheehy’s interview with investigators, Sheehy and another man were receiving training from instructor James Wagner on a multi-engine sea plane to gain another certification.
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, by that time had more than 800 hours of flight logged and had a commercial pilot, single-engine for land, single-engine for sea, and flight instructor certifications. He had started his aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace in Bozeman five years earlier.
Sheehy and the other man training, Timothy Cherwin, had each done one flight already that day, taking turns flying and observing while Wagner trained them. Sheehy told investigators that they had refueled and inspected the plane before Sheehy was to take his second flight of the day, in which they were going to practice procedures for when one engine failed and for water landings.
Cherwin opted not to ride along for the flight as he had with Sheehy’s first. After takeoff and about 300 feet above ground level, according to Sheehy’s interview with an NTSB investigator, Wagner reduced the throttle on the left engine — the critical engine — causing it to fully lose power. Wagner took the flight controls while both tried to restart it, according to the documents.
But the engine would not restart. Sheehy was retracting the landing gear and was trying to retract the plane’s flaps as Wagner decided they would miss the forced landing site they had selected, according to his interview. Wagner turned the plane left toward a closer landing site, but it likely slowed below its minimum control airspeed, according to the NTSB report. The left wing dropped, and the plane crashed nose-first into the home.
Sheehy wrote in a statement to the NTSB he did not lose consciousness in the crash and immediately crawled over to Wagner to check his pulse. He wrote that Wagner’s head was severely injured and “he was clearly not going to make it.” He said he called 911 and went to help the family inside the house.
“A guy across the street then cut the power, and I took my shirt off to help the lady who was injured,” he wrote. “At that time the first responders showed up and took it from there.”
The NTSB report said Sheehy suffered “minor injuries” and that Carmelle Ngalamulume was “seriously injured.”
Sheehy told KBUL News Talk in 2019 that neighbors deserved credit for their bravery after the crash and provided the radio station a photo of himself with one of those neighbors right after the crash, showing him shirtless, bruised and bloody.
The final NTSB report said Wagner’s decisions to simulate the critical engine failure at such a low altitude provided “little margin” for successfully maintaining flight and that his failure to maintain enough airspeed “resulted in a loss of control.”
“The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be: A total loss of left engine power for reasons that could not be determined, and the instructor’s failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering for a forced landing, which resulted in a loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the instructor’s decision to conduct a simulated engine failure at low speed,” the report concluded.
In Sheehy’s interview, he told the investigator that Wagner had not told him he would simulate failure of the critical engine or at such a low altitude. The report says Sheehy said he “didn’t know what (Wagner) was thinking.” He said he believed that Wagner’s reducing the engine throttle flooded the engine and would not allow it to restart.
An autopsy confirmed Wagner died of blunt impact injuries. The left engine was later tested and started immediately and ran at all power settings without interruption, the final NTSB report said.
It also noted that a Federal Aviation Administration pamphlet on flying twin-engine planes says the left engine on them is the critical engine whose failure would most adversely affect the plane’s performance and handling. It also cautions heavily against performing low-altitude engine failure training.
“Low altitude engine failure is never worth the risks involved,” the pamphlet is cited as saying. “Multiengine instructors should approach simulated engine failures below 400 feet (above ground level) with extreme caution, and failures below 200 ft (above ground level) should be reserved for simulators and training devices.”
The final report was not published until Dec. 3, 2020, well after the initial lawsuit had been filed. In the suit filed in 2021, the Ngalamulumes’ attorneys alleged Sheehy “performed specific acts of negligence by failing to follow the instructions of the flight instructor during the flight, making a recovery by the flight instructor impossible.”
In Sheehy’s answer to the complaint, his attorney denied most of the claims made in the suit and also provided affirmative defenses, including that since Sheehy was the student pilot and did not yet have a multi-engine sea rating, Sheehy was not the pilot in command of the plane at the time of the accident. The NTSB report referred to Sheehy as the pilot and Wagner the flight instructor.
Sheehy’s answer also says that as the pilot in command, Wagner was responsible for the aircraft, and it accuses him of failure to properly operate the plane, failure to properly instruct Sheehy, and failure to utilize industry standards for flight instruction. It also says the plane’s owner, ESP Aviation, would be the one responsible for Wagner since he was their employee.
Later in the case, Sheehy’s attorney contended again that he “did not engage in any decision-making that led to the crash and was not flying the aircraft at the time of the crash.”
The case moved along through 2022 and 2023, but in May of this year, the court set a case management conference for July 3. The day of that conference, Amphibians Plus’s attorney filed the notice the parties were trying to settle the case, and the court five days later said it would check back on a possible settlement in 60 days.
The joint stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, signed by all parties’ attorneys, was filed on Sept. 10, and the final order of dismissal with prejudice was signed on Sept. 11.
What remains unclear is whether Sheehy was party to the purported settlement and the terms of the agreement.
Rolando Santiago, one of the attorneys for the Ngalamulumes, said Wednesday he could not access case files because the office was closed due to the incoming Hurricane Helene. He pointed the Daily Montanan to the lead counsel for the plaintiffs, Seattle-based Anthony Marsh.
Marsh did not return multiple phone messages and emails this week asking whether Sheehy was party to the settlement or about its terms.
Sheehy’s attorney, New York-based Jennifer Huang, did not return an email seeking clarification on whether Sheehy was party to the settlement. Amphibians Plus’s attorney, Miami-based Roberto Torricella, did not return a phone message and email Wednesday asking if Sheehy was involved in the settlement.
Sheehy faces incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Green Party candidate Robert Barb, and Libertarian Sid Daoud in November.
