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The Germanwings Tragedy and Claims for Negligent Retention

There has been a lot of news about the terrible crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, which resulted in the death of 150 people when the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, (apparently) intentionally crashed the plane into the French Alps. Reports are that Lubitz had suicidal tendencies and had been declared medically unfit to fly.

What may soon follow are lawsuits against Germanwings and Lufthansa (which owns Germanwings) for claims similar to what New York calls "negligent retention":
A claim for negligent supervision or retention arises when an employer places an employee in a position to cause foreseeable harm, harm which the injured party most probably would have been spared had the employer taken reasonable care in supervising or retaining the employee.
Vione v. Tewell, 12 Mic.3d 973, 979, 820 N.Y.S.2d 682 (Sup.Ct., New York County, 2006).
Under New York law, a claim for negligent hiring, supervision or retention, "in addition to the standard elements of negligence," requires "a plaintiff [to] show: (1) that the tort-feasor and the defendant were in an employee-employer relationship; (2) that the employer `knew or should have known of the employee's propensity for the conduct which caused the injury' prior to the injury's occurrence; and, (3) that the tort was committed on the employer's premises or with the employer's chattels."
Bouchard v. New York Archdiocese, 719 F.Supp.2d 255, 261 (S.D.N.Y. 2010).

When an employer knew, or should have known about a person's bad or dangerous tendencies before they hired the person, and hired them anyway, the claim would be for "negligent hiring".

You run an airline company, you need to know the psychological state of mind of your pilots because, if they have suicidal tendencies, it is foreseeable that they may intentionally crash the airplanes they are flying. Such a shame.
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