"Aaliyah's parents sue Virgin Records The parents of Aaliyah filed a lawsuit against Virgin Records and others Monday, alleging they were negligent in not preventing the plane crash that killed the singer and actress and members of her entourage last year.
Aaliyah and eight others died last Aug. 25 when their twin-engine Cessna crashed just after takeoff in the Bahamas, where the 22-year-old R&B star had been shooting a music video.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Aaliyah's parents, Diane and Michael Haughton, in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that the overloaded plane was the wrong one for the charter flight to Florida and that the pilot was unqualified to fly it.
The suit was filed just two days after a report the Bahamian government was wrapping up its investigation and planned to cite pilot error, inexperience and excess weight as the three main contributing factors to the crash.
Aaliyah's sudden death came just as her career was beginning to soar. Her second movie role in vampire drama "Queen of the Damned" was almost complete and her self-titled, hit third album had just been released
Virgin Records, a unit of London's EMI Group , several video production companies and Blackhawk International Airways, the charter operator, were all named as defendants in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The lawsuit claims that Virgin and the other companies named knew that the pilot was inexperienced and that the 10-seat Cessna 402-B was not an appropriate aircraft, factors that "could and would result in a crash.''
Representatives of Virgin Records and Blackhawk could not be immediately reached for comment.
Families of two other passengers also filed lawsuits in Los Angeles Monday in complaints that mirrored the suit by Aaliyah's parents.
Two similar lawsuits were filed in February by the families of two hairdressers killed on the same flight, claiming that Virgin had put "profits over safety."
On Saturday the South Florida Sun-Sentinel quoted the lead investigator into the crash as saying that the official probe of the crash was all but concluded. The newspaper said investigators in the Bahamas were only waiting for toxicology tests on the late pilot before completing their report.
Those tests were sought because the pilot had pleaded no contest to cocaine possession in a Fort Lauderdale court 12 days before the crash, the newspaper said.