The Phone Rang in the Middle of the Night
Somewhere in Texas — or somewhere in Mexico, or California, or New York, or wherever the people on that Cessna Citation Latitude called home — a phone is ringing or has already rung or has not rung yet and the silence is the worst sound in the house. A NetJets representative, or a Laredo hospital social worker, or a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper is about to tell a family that their loved one was on a private jet that came down on Loop 20 at ten o’clock at night, that one of the six people on board did not survive, and that five others are in stable condition in a hospital they have probably never visited before in a city most of them were not planning to be in.
If that is you, hear us clearly on the first thing that matters: do not give a recorded statement to anyone from NetJets, from any insurance company, from any aircraft manufacturer, or from any government agency before you have spoken with a lawyer. Not because you have anything to hide — because what you say in the first seventy-two hours, while you are in shock and grieving, will be typed up, quoted back to you, and used to shrink the value of your case for years. The preservation clock we are about to walk you through is running right now. The phone will ring again today. The first move you make should be the one that protects the next two years of your family’s recovery.
If you are one of the five survivors — in a Laredo hospital bed, possibly with burns, fractures, or smoke inhalation, watching the door because you do not yet know who is going to walk through it next — the same rule applies and the clock is the same clock. If you were the driver of the car that was struck on Loop 20, you have just become the plaintiff in both a car-accident case and an aviation-defendant case, and the aviation-defendant case is worth far more than the car-accident case alone. We built this page for all of you.
What We Know About the Loop 20 Crash
On the night of June 16, 2026, at approximately 10 p.m., a NetJets-operated Cessna Citation Latitude crash-landed on Loop 20 — State Highway 20, part of the United States Highway 59 corridor — near Saunders Street in Laredo, Texas, not far from the US-Mexico border. The aircraft had departed San José del Cabo, Mexico at about 6:18 p.m. local time. Its original destination was Austin. It diverted to Laredo. The Laredo International Airport tower reported a mechanical issue aboard the aircraft and lost contact with it shortly before the crash landing.
Six people were on board. One was killed. Five survivors were transported to a Laredo hospital in stable condition. The aircraft struck a moving car on the highway during the crash sequence, scattering debris across multiple lanes and shutting down Loop 20 in both directions. Bystanders — including a man carrying a sledgehammer and another carrying a shovel — broke cockpit glass to reach trapped occupants while the burning wreckage threatened to explode. The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board have assumed control of the investigation. Loop 20 was expected to remain closed through June 17.
We are stating these facts with restraint because the victims’ families have not yet been fully notified and the NTSB probable-cause investigation has not even begun. We are not going to speculate on mechanical cause. We are not going to name the deceased or any survivor. We will not minimize the heroism of the bystanders who ran toward a burning aircraft with hand tools. We will tell you what Texas law gives you, what the Montreal Convention does and does not take away, and what we do the moment you call.
Who Can Be Held Liable When a NetJets Aircraft Crashes on a Texas Highway
An aviation crash is not a car wreck. The defendant map is deeper, the insurance is bigger, and the theories are layered. When a NetJets aircraft comes down on a public highway after a reported mechanical failure, the people and companies who may owe you money include:
NetJets Aviation, Inc., as the Part 135 operator. NetJets is the world’s largest fractional jet ownership company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway — Warren Buffett’s conglomerate. NetJets operates under FAA Part 135, the federal rules that govern on-demand commuter and charter operations. The company is responsible for the dispatch decision, the fuel planning, the route selection, the aircraft airworthiness, and — through respondeat superior — the conduct of its pilots while they are acting in the course of their employment. The tower’s report of a mechanical issue before loss of contact is a powerful inference of negligent maintenance or airworthiness failure, and that inference points at NetJets first because the operator is the party legally responsible for the aircraft being in an airworthy condition at takeoff.
The NetJets pilot-in-command and the first officer. Pilots carry personal liability for how they handle an in-flight emergency, for fuel management, for the diversion decision, and for the execution of the emergency landing itself. Their qualification records, training files, duty-and-rest logs, simulator records, and medical certificates are central evidence. If the crew was fatigued, if a pilot was not current on the Citation Latitude, if the emergency response was improvised instead of trained, that is negligence you can name and prove.
The NetJets in-house or contracted Part 145 maintenance provider. The repair station that signed off on the aircraft’s last inspection, that performed the work order that may have caused or failed to prevent the mechanical failure, is a separate defendant. Airworthiness Directives issued by the FAA on the Citation Latitude — covering the fuel system, the autopilot, the ice protection system, and other components — must be reviewed for compliance. A deferred AD or a missed inspection is a discovery target that can carry punitive exposure.
Textron Aviation Inc., as the manufacturer of the Cessna Citation Latitude. Textron builds the airframe in Wichita, Kansas. Texas law recognizes three products-liability theories — manufacturing defect, design defect, and failure to warn — under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 82.001 et seq. If the mechanical failure originated in a defective component, a defective assembly process, or an inadequate warning to the operator, Textron is strictly liable. Component subcontractors — Honeywell, Garmin, Rockwell Collins for the avionics — are additional defendants as the discovery narrows the failure origin.
Pratt & Whitney Canada, as the engine manufacturer. The Citation Latitude is powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306D1 engines. If the mechanical issue originated in an engine component — a fuel control unit, a turbine blade, a bearing — P&W Canada is in the case. Recent service bulletins, ADs on the engine, and the component’s history of in-service events are all evidence.
The driver and any occupants of the car struck on Loop 20. They are victims, not tortfeasors. Their status as third parties on the ground matters for two reasons: first, they have full Texas state-law negligence claims against NetJets that are not subject to the Montreal Convention; second, those claims can be the highest-value individual recovery in the entire event if the motorist suffered a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury. We address them separately below because they are too often overlooked.
Texas Law on Aviation Wrongful Death and Catastrophic Injury
Texas law applies to this crash because the aircraft came down in Texas and most or all of the plaintiffs and the conduct-in-fact occurred in Texas. Here is the spine of the law that governs your case.
The deadline. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 gives you two years from the date of the crash to file suit for personal injury and two years from the date of death to file for wrongful death. Two years is the legal deadline — but it is not the practical deadline. The evidence clock runs in days and weeks, not years, and we will show you exactly which clocks are dying right now.
Modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar. Section 33.001 says a plaintiff who is more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing. A plaintiff who is 50 percent or less at fault has their recovery reduced by their percentage. This is the rule NetJets will use against the Loop 20 motorist: ‘You should have seen it coming, you should have pulled off the road, you should have braked harder.’ The answer to that argument is built from the Event Data Recorder in the struck vehicle, from the damage pattern, from the witness videos, and from accident reconstruction. Comparative fault is a fight, not a bar, and it is won with evidence.
The Texas Wrongful Death Act. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 71.001-71.003 governs who may file and what they may recover. Standing is limited to the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the deceased — and to adopted children and adoptive parents on equal footing. Adopted children and parents by adoption have the same standing as blood relatives. Damages include pecuniary loss (the financial support the deceased would have provided), loss of companionship and society, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. Texas does not impose a general cap on these damages in aviation cases — caps exist only in medical malpractice under § 74.301.
The survival action. Section 71.021 allows the estate to bring a separate claim for the decedent’s own pre-death conscious pain and suffering. This is why instantaneous-death cases and slow-death cases are valued differently in Texas: the longer the decedent was conscious after the impact, the larger the survival recovery. Survival damages also include any punitive damages the estate can prove on clear and convincing evidence under § 41.003 — gross negligence, malice, or fraud. Texas abolished punitive damages within the wrongful-death statute itself, which means the only path to punitives is the survival claim.
Products liability against Textron and P&W. Section 82.001 et seq. recognizes strict liability for manufacturing defects, design defects, and failure to warn. A manufacturing defect is a component that left the factory different from the design. A design defect is a design that is unreasonably dangerous even when built as specified. A failure-to-warn claim alleges the manufacturer knew or should have known of a danger and did not adequately warn the operator. Each theory is independent, and we plead all three.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.002(a): ‘A person is liable for damages arising from an injury that causes an individual’s death if the injury is caused by the person’s or his agent’s or servant’s wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default.’
The Montreal Convention — What It Means, What It Doesn’t
Because this flight originated in San José del Cabo, Mexico, the Montreal Convention applies to the passengers on board. The Montreal Convention is the international treaty (implemented in the United States through 49 U.S.C. § 40105) that governs liability for international air carriage. You need to know three things about it.
First, Article 17 creates strict liability up to a limit. NetJets is strictly liable for death or bodily injury caused by an accident on board the aircraft during international carriage, up to 113,100 Special Drawing Rights — an IMF unit of account that converts to roughly US$153,000 per passenger at current rates. The carrier cannot escape this floor by arguing pilot error or acts of God. If a passenger was on the plane and died or was injured, NetJets owes the first 113,100 SDRs without defense.
Second, above the limit, the presumption shifts. Under Article 21, NetJets can defeat claims above 113,100 SDRs only if it proves that the damage was not caused by its negligence or that the damage was caused solely by the negligence of a third party. This is a rebuttable presumption that works in the passenger’s favor. NetJets cannot simply say ‘it was a mechanical failure’; it has to prove the mechanical failure was not its fault.
Third, the ground victim is not bound by Montreal. The driver of the car struck on Loop 20 was not a passenger on the aircraft. The Montreal Convention does not apply. The motorist’s claim against NetJets is a pure Texas state-law negligence claim with no international cap and no Article 17 strict-liability floor either. This is why the ground-victim claim can be the highest-value individual recovery in the entire event: full Texas damages, uncapped, no Montreal ceiling.
The Montreal Convention is not a shield NetJets can hide behind in this case. It is a floor it cannot escape and a presumption it must overcome — and the ground victim walks past it entirely.
The 30-Day Clock — NTSB Party Status and the Evidence Race
An aviation case is won or lost in the first thirty days. Here is what is dying on the clock right now and what we send out the day you call.
FAA air traffic control voice recordings. The recordings from Laredo Tower and from Houston ARTCC — the radar facility that handled the flight as it transited Texas — capture the aircraft’s last communications, the tower’s report of the mechanical issue, the moment of lost contact, and any distress calls. FAA Order 8020.11 controls retention, and the practical default deletion window runs 45 to 120 days. We file the FOIA request and the preservation demand immediately so the recordings cannot be quietly recycled.
Flight Data Recorder (FDR) data. The Citation Latitude carries a digital flight data recorder that captures hundreds of parameters — airspeed, altitude, engine performance, control inputs, system faults, autopilot behavior — in the seconds and minutes before impact. The NTSB secures the FDR immediately. To get access to the readout and to participate in the investigation, a party must file a request under 49 CFR § 831.11 within a narrow post-accident window. If you wait, the window closes. We file the request.
NetJets maintenance records, AD compliance logbooks, work orders, and MEL/CDL usage. Federal regulations require NetJets to keep maintenance records under 14 CFR § 91.417, but retention is not the same as preservation — records are routinely destroyed in normal business cycles. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The letter freezes every logbook entry, every work order, every inspection sign-off, every deferred maintenance item, and every MEL/CDL release from the day before the crash forward.
NetJets pilot records. Qualification files, training records, duty-and-rest logs, simulator records, medical certificates — all subject to routine HR purges. Spoliation letter goes out immediately.
FlightRadar24 and ADS-B third-party tracking. Independent verification of the flight path, altitude changes, speed, and the diversion to Laredo. FlightRadar24 retains data for approximately 90 days. We preserve it now by formal request and by screenshot.
Witness videos and bystander photographs. The sledgehammer-and-shovel rescue is on video. The burning wreckage is on video. The upside-down aircraft is on video. That evidence is circulating on social media right now and will be taken down, restricted, or corrupted as the news cycle moves. We identify the witnesses and preserve the footage before it disappears.
The damaged car struck on Loop 20. The vehicle’s Event Data Recorder captures pre-impact speed, braking, throttle, and steering inputs — federal standard data, like the black box in your car. The vehicle is at impound. We move immediately for an inspection order before the vehicle is released, auctioned, or scrapped.
The wreckage itself. The NTSB retains custody of the airframe and engines. Under 49 CFR Part 831, a properly designated party may have a Technical Advisor present for the NTSB examination. We seek party designation early so we are in the room when the wreckage is opened, when the engines are torn down, and when the fuel system and control surfaces are examined.
The 30-day NTSB party-status window is the single most urgent deadline on this page. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
What Damages Are Recoverable in a Texas Aviation Case
Texas law permits full compensation for the harm this crash has caused. Here is what the case is actually worth, walked category by category.
Economic damages. Past and future medical expenses — including air-ambulance transport, emergency surgery, ICU care, burn treatment, rehabilitation, and lifetime care for catastrophic injuries. Lost earning capacity, which is substantial when the passengers on a NetJets flight are high-net-worth individuals with significant future income. Funeral and burial expenses for the deceased. Property damage to the struck vehicle.
Non-economic damages under the Texas Wrongful Death Act. Pecuniary loss — the financial support the deceased would have provided to the spouse, children, or parents. Loss of companionship and society — the everyday presence of the person who is gone. Mental anguish — the grief, the sleeplessness, the empty chair. Loss of inheritance — what the deceased would have accumulated and left to the family had they lived. Texas does not cap these damages in aviation cases.
Survival damages. The estate’s separate claim for the decedent’s own pre-death conscious pain and suffering. If the deceased was alive and conscious for any period after impact — watching the fire, feeling the injuries, aware of what was happening — the estate recovers for that conscious suffering. Survival damages also include any punitive damages the estate can prove under § 41.003 on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence, malice, or fraud.
Punitive damages. Texas allows punitive damages on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence — a conscious indifference to a known danger. Ignored mechanical warnings. Falsified maintenance logs. A pilot flown despite known fatigue. A deferred Airworthiness Directive. A pattern of cutting corners that puts paying passengers at risk. Punitive damages are not capped in Texas aviation cases and can multiply a compensatory award by several times. Against a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary with reputational exposure, punitive leverage is real.
Loss of consortium. The spouse’s separate claim for the loss of the marital relationship — affection, sexual relations, household services, comfort. Available in addition to the wrongful-death recovery.
Pre-impact terror. Texas recognizes recovery for the conscious suffering of impending death. If passengers were aware the aircraft was in distress — heard the mechanical warning, saw the fire, knew the impact was coming — that terror is compensable. Five passengers and the deceased may all have pre-impact terror claims. This element scales with the length of the conscious period before impact.
The honest value range. Per-death recoveries in commercial aviation cases typically run from $3,500,000 to $50,000,000 or more depending on earning capacity, age, dependents, conscious-suffering period, and punitive leverage. Aggregate exposure across the five injured passengers and the Loop 20 motorist can exceed $100 million. The struck motorist on Loop 20, if they suffered a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury, may have the highest individual recovery because they are not bound by any Montreal Convention cap. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — that is the honest framing.
The NetJets Defense Playbook — What They Will Do in the Next 72 Hours
NetJets is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The company has been litigating aviation claims for decades and its rapid-response team is already deployed. Here is what is coming and how we counter it.
Play one: the sympathy call. Within hours, a NetJets ‘family liaison’ or claims representative will call. The voice will be warm. The representative will express sorrow. They will ask you to ‘just tell us what your loved one told you about the flight’ or ‘help us understand what happened from your perspective.’ That call is being recorded. The recording will be typed up, indexed, and used against you for years. Counter: do not give a recorded statement, period. Direct every call to us. We will handle NetJets’ counsel with the professional distance this moment requires.
Play two: the quick settlement check. For the survivors, a check may arrive within days. The check will come with a release — a document that forever closes your right to future compensation. The check will be sized to the medical bills you have today, not the lifetime consequences you cannot yet see. Counter: a settlement check never arrives faster than the medical record. We wait for maximum medical improvement before any number is discussed.
Play three: the ‘act of God’ framing. NetJets will say the mechanical failure was unforeseeable — an inherent risk of flight that no operator could prevent. The argument is designed to invoke the common-law doctrine and avoid liability above the Montreal floor. Counter: federal regulations require specific maintenance, AD compliance, pre-flight inspection, and crew training. Every one of those is a discovery target. The mechanical issue did not appear from nowhere; it had a maintenance history, and we will find it.
Play four: the pilot-error deflection. NetJets will say the pilots handled an unforeseen emergency reasonably and the crash was unavoidable once the mechanical failure occurred. Counter: pilot records, training files, simulator sessions, duty-and-rest logs, and the FDR readout will tell us whether the crew’s response was textbook or improvised. If the crew was fatigued, if a pilot was not current, if the emergency checklist was not followed to the letter, that is negligence with a name attached.
Play five: the Montreal Convention ceiling. NetJets will argue the recoverable damages are capped by the international treaty. Counter: Article 17 strict liability applies up to 113,100 SDRs, but the rebuttable presumption under Article 21 works in the passenger’s favor above that floor. And the Loop 20 motorist is not bound by Montreal at all.
Play six: the Texas comparative-fault attack on the motorist. For the driver of the car struck on Loop 20, NetJets will argue comparative fault — that the motorist should have braked harder, swerved differently, or pulled off the road. Texas’s 51% bar under § 33.001 is the lever. Counter: the EDR data, the damage pattern, the witness videos, and accident reconstruction will establish that the motorist had no realistic opportunity to avoid the crash sequence. Comparative fault is a fight, not a bar — and it is won with evidence.
The Driver of the Car on Loop 20 — The Victim Most Often Overlooked
The national news cycle is about the airplane. The five survivors in the Laredo hospital and the family of the deceased will dominate the coverage. The driver of the car that was struck on Loop 20 — the Texas motorist who was simply driving home, or driving to work, or driving a child to school — will become the forgotten victim unless someone makes sure they are not.
Here is why the motorist’s case matters and why it may be the most valuable individual claim in this event.
The motorist is not bound by the Montreal Convention. The motorist’s claim is a straight Texas negligence claim against NetJets for operating an aircraft that crashed into a public highway. Texas law permits full compensatory damages — medical, lost wages, pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life — with no general cap. If the motorist suffered a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury, the lifetime cost of care runs into the millions of dollars before any lost wages are counted.
The 51% comparative-fault bar is the live defense issue. NetJets will argue the motorist could have avoided the crash. We answer that argument with the EDR data from the struck vehicle — pre-impact speed, braking, throttle, steering — and with the witness videos showing the aircraft coming down on the highway in a timeframe no driver could have anticipated. Comparative fault is a fight, and the evidence wins it.
If you are the Loop 20 motorist, or a passenger in the struck car, you need an attorney who will prosecute your case against a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary with the same intensity that the airline-passenger cases receive. Our firm handles both. Your car accident case and the aviation-defendant case are prosecuted together, with one team, one strategy, one result. Our practice in this area is detailed at our Texas car accident lawyer page.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built — The Proof Story
Here is how a commercial-aviation case is won, told by someone who has run cases like this.
Week one. Preservation letters go to NetJets, Textron Aviation, Pratt & Whitney Canada, and the Part 145 maintenance provider. A FOIA request hits the FAA for the Laredo Tower and Houston ARTCC voice recordings and radar data. An NTSB party designation request is filed under 49 CFR § 831.11 — the 30-day window for designation is narrow. Witness identification begins; the bystander videos are preserved by formal request to the uploaders and by direct outreach. A vehicle hold order is sought for the struck car on Loop 20 so the EDR data can be downloaded before the vehicle is released.
Weeks two through four. FDR readout is requested through the NTSB party process. NetJets maintenance records, AD compliance logbooks, work orders, and MEL/CDL usage are demanded in discovery. Pilot qualification files, training records, duty-and-rest logs, simulator records, and medical certificates are demanded. FlightRadar24 data is preserved. NetJets dispatch records, flight-following logs, weather briefings, and NOTAMs are demanded. The struck vehicle’s EDR is downloaded.
Months one through six. Court-recognized experts are retained: a Citation Latitude pilot expert to evaluate crew response, a Citation Latitude maintenance expert to evaluate the mechanical failure history, an accident reconstructionist to evaluate the crash sequence from radar, FDR, and witness data. Depositions begin — NetJets operations personnel, maintenance technicians, dispatchers. The struck vehicle’s EDR data is correlated with the witness videos and the crash physics.
Months six through eighteen. Full discovery, expert reports exchanged, mediation prep. The NTSB probable-cause report lands within twelve to eighteen months and is the inflection point — it can corroborate or contradict our theory, and it becomes exhibit A at trial. A Stowers demand is made against NetJets’ primary carrier once the evidence supports a verdict above the policy limits.
Trial. Federal court in the Western District of Texas — Del Rio or San Antonio divisions — if diversity supports removal. State court in Travis County if the decedent was a Texas resident and the jury climate favors the plaintiff. Voir dire probes aviation attitudes, corporate-wealth bias, and any pre-existing opinions about NetJets, Berkshire Hathaway, or Warren Buffett. If punitive damages are pursued, the trial is bifurcated under Tex. R. Civ. P. 174(b) so the liability phase stays clean.
The number at the end is built from every one of those steps. There is no shortcut, and there is no case where the evidence does the work that investigation skips.
Why Our Firm
Aviation cases against Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries are not ordinary docket entries. They are fought by elite defense counsel with bottomless budgets and a decade of aviation-defense experience. The law firm on the other side has to bring something to that fight besides a willingness to take the case.
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — the firm you know as Attorney911. Ralph has spent twenty-seven years in courtrooms, including federal court in the Southern District of Texas, fighting corporate defendants. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which is why the firm’s pages read the way they do — he explains like a storyteller because he was trained to find the truth inside a complicated set of facts and put it in the order a jury can hold. He was a championship-team point guard at Cheshire Academy before journalism and law, inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2021. The firm has recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998, and Ralph’s courtroom record includes the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation. You can read more about Ralph on his attorney bio page.
Lupe Peña is the firm’s associate attorney who brings the perspective this case needs from the other side of the table. Lupe spent years inside a national insurance defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, where reserves are set in the first forty-eight hours, where recorded statements are engineered, where Colossus-style settlement software discounts the injuries it cannot see. Lupe knows how the defense builds its file because he built defense files. Now he builds plaintiffs’ files with the same discipline, in English and in Spanish. Lupe is fully bilingual and the firm serves Laredo and Webb County families Hablamos Español as a baseline, not an add-on. You can read more about Lupe on his attorney bio page.
The firm handles aviation, trucking, refinery, offshore, construction, and catastrophic-injury cases across Texas. The fee is contingency — you pay nothing unless we win. The consultation is free. The preservation letter, the NTSB party-status request, the FOIA demand, the expert retention — all of it happens on our dime, because that is how contingency representation is supposed to work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I do in the first 24 hours after learning a loved one was on the Loop 20 crash?
Do not give a recorded statement to NetJets, to any insurance company, to any aircraft manufacturer, or to any government investigator. Direct every call to a lawyer you have retained. Preserve any text messages, emails, or voicemails from NetJets or its representatives. Begin documenting everything you know about your loved one’s life — employment, earnings, dependents, medical history, daily routines — because that documentation becomes the foundation of the wrongful-death damages claim. And call us. The 30-day NTSB party-status window is already counting down.
Does Texas have a deadline to file a plane crash lawsuit?
Yes. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 gives you two years from the date of the crash for personal injury and two years from the date of death for wrongful death. Two years is the legal deadline. The evidence deadline is far shorter — FAA recordings are deleted within months, witness memories fade within weeks, and the NTSB party-status window is thirty days. Do not let the two-year number lull you into waiting.
What is the Montreal Convention and how does it affect my case?
The Montreal Convention is the international treaty that governs liability for international air carriage. Because this flight departed San José del Cabo, Mexico, the Convention applies to the passengers on board. Under Article 17, NetJets is strictly liable for death or injury caused by an accident on board the aircraft up to 113,100 Special Drawing Rights (roughly US$153,000 per passenger). Above that limit, under Article 21, NetJets can defeat liability only by proving the damage was not caused by its negligence — a rebuttable presumption that works in the passenger’s favor. The driver of the car struck on Loop 20 is not bound by the Convention at all.
Can I sue NetJets even though the flight was international?
Yes. The Montreal Convention does not eliminate liability — it creates a floor and a presumption. Above the 113,100 SDR floor, NetJets has the burden of proving it was not negligent. Texas state-law negligence claims against NetJets are available to all plaintiffs in addition to the treaty-based claims. And the Loop 20 motorist’s claim is pure Texas negligence with no treaty overlay.
Who else can I sue besides NetJets?
Textron Aviation Inc. as the manufacturer of the Cessna Citation Latitude, under Texas products-liability law (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 82.001 et seq.), if a manufacturing or design defect caused the mechanical failure. Pratt & Whitney Canada as the engine manufacturer if the engines were the failure origin. The Part 145 maintenance provider that performed the last inspection or work order. The individual pilots if their conduct fell below the standard of care. Component subcontractors — Honeywell, Garmin, Rockwell Collins — as discovery narrows the failure origin.
What if the NTSB investigation takes years — can I wait?
You cannot wait for the NTSB report before you act. The NTSB probable-cause report typically lands twelve to eighteen months after the crash, but your civil case can proceed in parallel. Discovery proceeds, experts are retained, depositions are taken. The NTSB report becomes a powerful exhibit at trial — but your case is not on hold while Washington finishes its investigation. We move now.
Is there a cap on damages in Texas aviation cases?
No general cap on compensatory damages in aviation cases. Texas caps exist only in medical malpractice under § 74.301 and do not apply here. Punitive damages are available through the survival action on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence under § 41.003. Punitive damages are not subject to a statutory cap in Texas aviation cases and can multiply a compensatory recovery.
I was the driver of the car struck on Loop 20 — do I have a case?
Yes, and it may be the highest-value individual claim in this event. Your claim is a straight Texas negligence claim against NetJets, not bound by the Montreal Convention and not subject to any international cap. Your damages include medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life. If you suffered a brain injury or a spinal injury, the lifetime cost of care runs into the millions. NetJets will argue comparative fault under § 33.001 — that you should have braked harder or swerved. We answer that argument with the EDR data from your vehicle, the witness videos, and accident reconstruction. Our Texas car accident lawyer page covers the framework in more detail.
What if NetJets contacts me for a recorded statement?
Decline. Direct the call to your lawyer. Recorded statements taken in the first seventy-two hours, while you are in shock or grief, are used to lock in admissions about medical history, awareness, fault, and damages that are nearly impossible to walk back later. NetJets’ rapid-response team is trained to obtain these statements. The professional move is to let counsel handle the call. Our guide on what not to say to an insurance adjuster applies to aviation adjusters in full.
Why does it matter that NetJets is owned by Berkshire Hathaway?
It matters in two opposing directions. Berkshire Hathaway’s wealth means the insurance tower is enormous — the recoverable policy limits plus self-insured retentions can run into nine figures per incident. That is the ceiling of what your case can recover. It also means the defense will be fought by the most experienced aviation counsel in the country, and Berkshire Hathaway’s reputational exposure creates leverage for settlement once the evidence is strong. Punitive damages are a real threat to a brand-conscious holding company, and we use that threat carefully and ethically as part of the negotiation.
The First Call Costs Nothing
If your loved one was on the Cessna Citation Latitude that crashed on Loop 20 on the night of June 16, 2026 — if you are one of the five survivors recovering in a Laredo hospital — if you were the driver of the car struck on the highway — the call you make in the next twenty-four hours decides the next two years of your family’s recovery.
The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The NTSB party-status request is filed. The FAA FOIA request is submitted. The witness videos are preserved. The struck vehicle’s EDR is downloaded before it can be erased. The expert team is retained. Lupe Peña serves your family fully in Spanish — Hablamos Español. The phone is answered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Our firm has recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998, including the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation. Ralph Manginello brings twenty-seven years of federal-court trial experience. Lupe Peña brings years of inside knowledge of how the defense builds its files — because he built them. We work these cases on contingency, we move fast, and we do not get paid unless you do. You can read more about how the firm’s wrongful death practice and brain injury practice operate, or reach our contact page directly.
This page is legal information about the law that applies to the Loop 20 crash of June 16, 2026, not legal advice for your specific case. Calling the firm is free and confidential. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.