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A jury decided yesterday that Pan American World Airways was liable for damages because its security procedures failed to protect passengers in the 1988 explosion of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a bombing that took 270 lives.
The verdict, in a civil case in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, opened the way for trials on individual claims for damages that legal experts estimated could total about $300 million. Pan Am is bankrupt, but its insurance companies are responsible for paying damages to the families of victims.
More than 30 of the family members, several of them weeping, embraced after the verdict was announced on the fourth day of deliberations in the 11-week trial. Appeal Planned
Eleanor Bright of Brookline, Mass., whose husband was killed in the explosion, described the tense moment just before the verdict. She said, "One of the jurors turned to me and smiled, and then I think I knew what the outcome would be."
Richard Mack of Evanston, Ill., whose brother was killed, said he had felt for three and a half years that the air disaster should not have happened. "And this jury," he said, "just vindicated that through their verdict."
Continue reading the main storyLawyers for Pan Am and its security subsidiary, which was also found liable, said they would appeal. Issue Was Liability
The Lockerbie explosion, attributed to a terrorist bomb planted in a suitcase, blew up a Boeing 747 jetliner heading from London to New York on Dec. 21, 1988. All 259 people on the plane and 11 more on the ground were killed. The issue in dispute was whether Pan Am could be held liable in the lawsuits filed by the families of more than 200 of the passengers.
In a similar lawsuit last year, a jury awarded $2.7 million to the widow of a passenger killed in the terrorist bombing of a T.W.A. flight from Rome to Athens. The airline, held liable for willful misconduct involving inadequate security, has appealed the case.
In a separate criminal investigation, the United States and Britain have been seeking extradite two Libyan intelligence officials accused of being behind the bombing.
To determine liability in the case decided today, the jury was asked two questions. First, did Pan Am engage in willful misconduct? And if so, was it a substantial factor in causing the disaster? It answered yes to both questions.
Under an international treaty, damages for each victim are limited to $75,000 unless willful misconduct is found.
Judge Thomas C. Platt, who explained the laws to the jury of eight women and four men, said, "Willful misconduct is the intentional performance of an act with knowledge that performance of that act will probably result in injury or damage -- or it may be the intentional performance of an act in such a manner as to imply disregard of the probable consequences of the performance of the act." Security Violation Cited
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Lee S. Kreindler, stressed that Pan Am had violated a security regulation that required the "positive matching" of baggage with passengers. He said Pan Am had allowed an unaccompanied suitcase containing the bomb to be transferred from a flight from Malta to a Pan Am flight in Frankfurt, and then to Flight 103 in London.
"The core of the case, of course, is the abandonment of positive matching," Mr. Kreindler said. He added that the airline's security system was "sick because management determined it was going to cut back on funds."
A lawyer for Pan Am, Clinton H. Coddington, argued that the airline was an innocent victim of the bombing and that it had "spent a lot of money on security." He said the bomb could have slipped through airport security in Frankfurt or London with no fault on the part of Pan Am.
Mr. Coddington told the jury that the plaintiffs wanted "private vengeance" against Pan Am because "the terrorists responsible for the bombing are beyond their reach."
He said the terrorists must be laughing about the effort to blame Pan Am. If the jurors returned a verdict against the airline, he suggested, they would be haunted by the "laughter of the terrorists."
The jurors informed Judge Platt on Thursday that they were divided and having difficulty. They resumed deliberations after the judge urged them to try to reach a verdict.
Pan Am issued a statement by its former chairman, Thomas G. Plaskett, moments after the verdict and before the judge reimposed an order prohibiting principals in the case from discussing it.
"On behalf of the 30,000 former employees of Pan Am, I appreciate the sincerity with which this jury undertook its task," the statement said. "That this trial has failed to solve the mystery that is the Lockerbie disaster is no fault of theirs.
"Indeed, much of what we do know with certainty about Lockerbie was not shared with this jury, and so today's verdict, much like the whole affair, remains clouded by uncertainty. We shall endeavor through the appeals process to shed some light on this uncertainty."
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