Garmin Ltd. comes up in an odd lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Kansas.
Meet Henry Bartle, who lives in Oregon and owns several amateur-built airplanes. One is an experimental, kit-built plane that he started putting together in 2000.
About five years later, he was almost done but needed some help getting the airplane’s navigation and electronics wrapped up. So he asked neighbor Chris Schulte, a Garmin (Nasdaq: GRMN) employee, if he would use his employee discount to buy a navigational system designed by the company, which has its operational base in Olathe.
Schulte and a few other friends helped Bartle wire up the plane so that he could install his Garmin navigational system.
Then, on Feb. 26, 2008, Bartle was flying the plane in Riverside County, Calif., when he crashed, injuring himself and three passengers.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash and found that the engine lost power because of an electrical overload. Passengers on the plane sued Bartle, who in turn sued the company that designed the engine ignition system he used.
As those lawsuits advanced, Bartle decided to sue Garmin, claiming that the company was liable because his neighbor, the Garmin employee, was negligent in designing the plane’s ignition system and that his participation in helping Bartle put the plane together constituted a joint venture with Garmin.
That brings us to the here and now. Garmin’s insurers, which include Lloyd’s of London and Berkshire Hathaway International Insurance, are bringing Bartle to court, seeking to have a judge declare that Bartle is not insured by them and that they face no liability.
John Cowden, partner with Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice LLC, represents the insurers in the case.
The lawsuit says Garmin agrees with its insurers that it was no part of a joint venture because the company had no involvement with the development of the airplane. The lawsuit also stipulates that Schulte was not working in his capacity as a Garmin employee when he helped with the plane.