When wrongful-death claims arising from an accident involving a decades-old aircraft exposed an engine manufacturer to litigation in Rhode Island and Mississippi, AP&S attorneys Nicole J. Benjamin, John A. Tarantino, and Daniel J. Procaccini developed and executed an early strategy centered on narrowing discovery and preserving the manufacturer’s statute of repose defense under the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 (“GARA”).
The result protected the client from expansive discovery while resolving exposure arising from the same incident across two jurisdictions. Williams v. Avco Corp., No. 2024-144, 2026 WL 2177639 (R.I. July 29, 2026) [full text].
The Challenge:
A crash of a Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee 6 in Mississippi resulted in four separate wrongful death actions against the manufacturer of the aircraft’s engine, including one in Rhode Island Superior Court and three in Mississippi Circuit Court.
AP&S defended the manufacturer across both jurisdictions. From the outset, the team narrowed the scope of discovery and asserted a statute of repose defense.
GARA generally bars certain claims brought more than 18 years after an aircraft’s delivery to its first purchaser. Because the engine had been shipped to Piper and installed in 1972, AP&S asserted GARA’s statute of repose as an affirmative defense.
But GARA contains exceptions, and the plaintiffs pursued two of them: first, alleging the manufacturer had knowingly withheld material information from the Federal Aviation Administration, and second, asserting that replacement parts installed after delivery had restarted the repose clock.
Plaintiffs claimed those theories opened the door to broad discovery into historical design, certification, and corporate records spanning decades.
The Solution:
From the outset, AP&S sought to define the permissible boundaries of discovery under each GARA theory.
On the FAA-misrepresentation exception, AP&S argued that GARA’s text imposes a threshold pleading requirement: the exception applies only where a claimant “pleads with specificity the facts necessary to prove” a knowing misrepresentation, concealment, or withholding from the FAA. Because the complaint identified no instance in which the manufacturer had misrepresented or withheld anything from the FAA, AP&S argued that discovery could not be used to develop an otherwise unsupported theory.
On the new-parts provision, AP&S acknowledged that targeted discovery could be appropriate, while maintaining that it must remain tied to the specific replacement parts alleged to have caused the failure. The firm opposed discovery into the engine’s broader design history where it was not connected to an identified, allegedly causal component.
The Superior Court agreed with those proposed limitations and, with those parameters in place, the parties to the multi-jurisdictional litigation conducted discovery, including wreckage inspections and expert discovery.
That discovery, and especially admissions elicited during the depositions of plaintiffs’ experts, supported the manufacturer’s position that the identified replacement parts did not cause the accident.
Ultimately, the Rhode Island court granted summary judgment for the manufacturer on GARA and causation grounds. AP&S shareholder Nicole J. Benjamin, who chairs the firm’s products liability and appellate practice groups, briefed and argued the summary judgment motion and the subsequent appeal.
The Result:
The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court’s grant of summary judgment in all respects.
The Court held that GARA’s misrepresentation exception carries its own threshold pleading requirement, and that a plaintiff who has not pleaded specific supporting facts cannot obtain discovery on that theory. It further affirmed that discovery under the new-parts provision was properly confined to the identified, allegedly causal components.
The Mississippi court afforded the Rhode Island judgment full faith and credit and dismissed the parallel action, bringing the related litigation to close across both jurisdictions.
For manufacturers confronting long-tail aviation-product claims, the decision underscores the value of addressing GARA at the pleading and discovery stages—not solely at summary judgment. Unsupported FAA-misrepresentation allegations need not trigger open-ended discovery, while new-parts discovery can be confined to specifically identified components alleged to have caused the claimed injury.
The matter illustrates how early discovery discipline can protect a client’s ability to pursue a statute-of-repose defense, create an efficient record for dispositive motion practice, and coordinate a durable resolution across multiple forums.