Robert A. Clifford

The passengers on United Airlines Flight 232 were thrown from the plane when it crash-landed in flames into a soybean field in Iowa in 1989. The jury took less than three hours to return a verdict of $28.2 million on behalf of a 70-year-old woman with permanent injuries. Robert Clifford, airplane crash attorney, also obtained a $15 million settlement for a father who lost his wife and daughter and an additional $250,000 donated for a bereavement center at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago in their names.

Tarom Airlines Flight 371 crashed in Bucharest, Romania, on March 31, 1995, while en route to Brussels, Belgium, killing all 60 people aboard. Therese Chung, a business consultant, was killed on the flight. The Romanian Transport Ministry found that the cause of the Airbus crash, and French and Belgian experts agreed, was that the pilot became affected by health problems shortly after takeoff causing the aircraft to go into a spin when the throttle fell idle. The co-pilot was able to switch on the autopilot, but this function refused to carry out the procedure because the necessary parameters were not met, according to the chief inspector of the Romanian Civil Aviation Authority. Richard Burke flew to France to take the depositions of airline employees, then settled the matter for $4.7 million.

A 60-year-old student pilot dies when plane crashes during instruction flight from Wisconsin to Minnesota.