by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
In the lobby of the Eddie Booth Jr.’s new office in the Elkins Construction building on West Adams Street, visitors can’t help but be drawn, like a child in a toy store, to the glass case spotted with model airplanes and helicopters.
“But that’s not a trophy case you want to be in,” said Booth, who joined Spohrer, Wilner, Maxwell & Mathews as a partner earlier this summer. “Those planes have crashed.”
There’s the AT-6 Texan that crashed in Sebastian Inlet in 1996; the 500 D Hughes Helicopter that crashed in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1986; the Mariana, Fla. Lear 35 crash from 1999; and the F-14 Tomcat crash in Nashville in 1996, otherwise known as Newsom vs. the United States. And that’s only a few.
There are seven pilots and five planes in the 14-lawyer firm of Spohrer Wilner. The firm owns a six-seater, twin engine Piper Seneca and a four-seater Twin Camanchee. Booth, who goes by “Skip,” has a four-seater Piper Cherokee Arrow he mostly uses for business.
Barry Newman has a Seneca. Chad Roberts, a maritime lawyer, has a Husky bush plane like the ones in Alaska and Sean Cronin, an ex-Navy officer who is still active in the Reserves, travels the Southeast in a P3 Orion. Two of the firm’s founding partners, Bob Spohrer and Woody Wilner are pilots. For safety and convenience, the firm also employs a full-time, professional pilot who is always on call.
The airborne corporate culture around Spohrer Wilner makes it easy to practice aviation law, a specialty that has grown in Jacksonville, where there are almost 500 “general aviation aircrafts” taking advantage of the good weather and four first rate airports — Jacksonville International, Cecil Field, Craig and Herlong.
Booth has about 2,000 hours of flight time and has flown all over the U.S. and Canada. He said planes are an efficient way for lawyers to travel in Florida.
“We don’t hesitate taking cases in hard to reach places like Pensacola, Vero Beach and Ft. Myers,” said Booth. “Driving wastes a lot of time.”
Spohrer Wilner usually has about 20 active aviation cases going at any given time.
“Planes crash for one of three reason,” said Spohrer. “It’s either man, machine or environment.”
Most aviation cases revolve around product liability issues or negligence on the part of air traffic control. And because flying comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Authority, there are often complex legal questions that require lawyers who specialize.
“We end up interviewing metallurgists, meteorologists and aircraft design experts,” said Spohrer. “It’s challenging work and we receive referrals from other firms.”
In fact, Booth found aviation law to be so highly specialized that seven years ago he developed a Florida Bar certification program and presented it before the Florida Supreme Court. In 1995, he became the first board certified aviation lawyer in the state.
Recently, Spohrer Wilner sponsored the publication of a 94-page book entitled, “Aviation’s Earliest Years in Jacksonville: 1878-1935,” which was first published by the Jacksonville Historical Society in 1977. It begins with a quote from a “local independent newspaper” called The Daily Sun and Press, which, in 1878, reported that a large balloon about a mile in the air had been seen flying over the city. It concludes with an account of the U.S. Postal Services’ Pony Express of the Air flight from Jacksonville to Chicago in 1935.
“Jacksonville has a rich aviation history,” said Booth. “Just last week was the 80th anniversary of Jimmy Doolittle’s historic transcontinental flight from then Pablo Beach to San Diego.”
It was the first time anyone had crossed the country in one day, explained Booth, adding Doolittle did it in 21 hours and 19 minutes.
“It’s a quirk of geography that Jacksonville to San Diego is the shortest distance from coast to coast. It’s about 2,090 statute miles,” said Booth, referring to the unit of measurement often used in flying that equals 1,760 yards.
Booth’s favorite cases are the ones where he gets to sue the federal government.
“We have documented proof that air traffic controllers have killed 20 people in the past 15 years,” he said.
One black spot on Jacksonville’s aviation history occurred in 1986 when Davis Love Jr., the father of golfer Davis Love III was killed at Jacksonville International Airport because of an error on the part of air traffic control.
“Love still talks about that often,” said Booth.
According to Booth, the only industry more regulated than flying is nuclear power. And usually, he said, accidents can be traced back to mechanical error or error on the part of those in charge of disseminating weather information. Incorrect procedures in vectoring aircrafts to the right altitude is also common.
“Of course there is a degree of pilot responsibility,” said Booth. “But many times people just pick the wrong day to go flying.”
Someone can become licensed to fly a single engine passenger plane in about six months. To learn how to fly a heavy jet, it takes about a year or a year and a half. But Booth said pilots never really stop learning.
U.S. manufacturers made about 1,500 small, civilian planes last year, down from the 14,000 that were made during some years in the 1970s, when everybody was learning to fly.
A brand new Piper Seneca goes for about $750,000, but most people buy them used from places such as the trade publication “Trade-A-Plane” for closer to $150,000.
“Of course that’s just the cost of admission,” said Booth. “Maintenance and insurance aren’t cheap.”
Although business aviation has become increasingly popular since Sept. 11, Booth said insurance companies set such high standards for pilot expertise and safety that there aren’t many crashes.
“Overall this is a pretty self-regulating group,” he said. “People don’t want to mess up.”