US man offers legal aid to Mangalore crash victim's kin

Mumbai: He is not a lawyer, not even an air crash investigator and he makes no claims to being an insurance expert. But world over, grief stricken families of air crash victims from the remotest corners of an Amazonian village to a Russian town know him by name, and share with him a "tremendous rapport", as he himself puts it and sometimes, even lunch.
He is George Hatcher, a self-described air crash consultant and advisor who helps families take on colossal aircraft companies or airlines in US courts for damages after the loss of a dear one in a crash. Many families have won millions of dollars in settlements, he says and for many, the battle is still on.
Hatcher, at 67, made his first ever trip to India last weekend and headed straight to the May 22 Air India crash site in Mangalore. He met families of the victims, spoke to young widows of Gulf-based Indian workmen even as their tiny tots played in the same room and convinced at least 10 of them that they deserved more than the mandatory compensation the airline was bound, under an international treaty, to give them. With him was Nishit Dhruva, partner of a Mumbai-based law firm M Dhruva & Partners who has joined hands with three large US law firms and setting the stage to sue Boeing, the American aircraft maker, in US courts for the biggest Indian air crash in decades.
09/07/10 Swati Deshpande/Times of India

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