Family sues over surgeon's crash

The plane's equipment was problematic from the start, the suit states.
WARREN -- A renowned Warren ear surgeon's 2003 death in a plane crash was the result of troublesome equipment that the manufacturers knew about, his family says in a lawsuit.
The estate of Dr. Franklin M. Riser, administered by his sister Dr. Melisa Rizer of Columbus, filed a personal injury and wrongful death action Wednesday seeking more than $150,000 and a jury trial. The case is assigned to Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Named as defendants are Mooney Airplane Co. and Mooney Aerospace Group of Texas; Honeywell International of Columbus; Honeywell General Aviation Business Corp. of New Jersey; Winner Aviation Corp., which has operations at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport; Garmin International of Kansas; and four John Does whose names and addresses are not known.
'Catastrophic failures'
Dr. Rizer was killed March 20, 2003, while on an instrument approach to Runway 17 of Leesburg Executive Airport in Leesburg, Va. He was the pilot, and the aircraft experienced "catastrophic failures, including avionics and instrumentation failures," the lawsuit states.
Mooney designed and manufactured the Mooney M20R Ovation; Winner Aviation provided maintenance and repair; Honeywell designed, made and sold avionics systems and flight instrumentation; and Garmin designed, made and sold avionics equipment and instrumentation including global positioning systems, the legal action continues.
The John Does were involved in instruction, training or servicing of the aircraft.
Plane's condition
The estate says Mooney misrepresented the aircraft's condition as new when in fact it had about 40 hours of flying time and "had undergone major circuitry rewiring, repairs, troubleshooting modifications and other alterations."
Immediately after delivery to Dr. Rizer the plane "suffered a continuous stream of avionics and other instrumentation failures during the operation of the aircraft" from Texas to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. These were "presumably troubleshot and reportedly repaired by Winner Aviation," the suit states.
The estate is represented by Cleveland lawyer Jamie R. Lebovitz and Warren attorney Charles L. Richards. The estate says each defendant was aware of crashes that had occurred as a result of Honeywell and Garmin instrumentation malfunctions and still failed to correct the problems. Specifically mentioned are the autopilot flight director system by Honeywell and the global positioning systems avionics package by Garmin.