Osprey Crash Lawsuit Jury Trial: Boeing and Bell Say the High Seas Act Leaves Airmen's Families a Bench Trial

The Osprey crash lawsuit jury trial question is now squarely before a federal judge in Philadelphia: on November 3, 2026, it was reported that Boeing, Bell Textron and Universal Stainless & Alloy Products had asked the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to deny a jury to the estates of the eight U.S. Air Force airmen killed when a CV-22B Osprey went down off Yakushima, Japan, on November 29, 2023. Their position is that the federal Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), which already displaced the families' Pennsylvania-law claims in April, also requires a bench trial and confines any recovery to the survivors' pecuniary losses.

The case is Boozer et al. v. Bell Textron, Inc. et al., No. 2:25-cv-04522, before U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy. If the defendants win this motion, the families lose the two features that make aviation wrongful death cases valuable in state law: a jury, and damages for grief, companionship and conscious pain. Below: where the jury fight stands, who is being sued, what caused the crash, why DOHSA controls, why DOHSA claims almost always go to a judge, what a DOHSA recovery looks like next to a Pennsylvania one, how this case compares with the other Osprey suits, and what it means for aviation plaintiffs' firms, defense contractors and insurers.

Will the Osprey crash families get a jury trial?

Probably not, on the current weight of authority, although no ruling has been entered. The defendants' argument, which Bell has made in its filings, is that DOHSA "preempts and exclusively governs Plaintiffs' claims and requires a bench trial." The families demanded a jury when they filed in August 2025, and the docket still records the case as "Jury Demanded By: Plaintiff." The opposition reported on November 3 is the defendants' answer to that demand now that the only surviving claims arise under the federal statute.

The defendants' strongest support is the text of the statute and one recent appellate decision. Section 30302 of Title 46 provides that the personal representative of a person killed on the high seas "may bring a civil action in admiralty." Civil actions in admiralty have never carried a Seventh Amendment jury right, because the Amendment preserves the jury only for "suits at common law." In In re Lion Air Flight JT 610 Crash, decided August 6, 2024, the Seventh Circuit applied that reading to the 2018 Boeing 737 MAX crash in the Java Sea and held that "if a case involving only DOHSA claims is in federal court, it must proceed in admiralty, without a jury trial." The court denied rehearing en banc on September 10, 2024, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the family's petition, Manfredi v. Boeing, No. 24-849, on April 7, 2025. The petition itself told the justices that 12 courts had ruled there is no jury entitlement under DOHSA.

The families' best argument is academic and historical rather than precedential. Commentators, including Professor Steven F. Friedell in a 2023 article on death at sea and the jury right, contend that DOHSA should be read to preserve a plaintiff's traditional choice between admiralty and common-law forums, which would allow a jury in state court or in federal court where diversity jurisdiction independently exists. No federal court of appeals has adopted that view, and the Third Circuit, which would hear any eventual appeal from Philadelphia, has not addressed it.

Who is being sued over the Osprey crash in Japan?

Three companies are defendants:

• Bell Textron Inc., the Fort Worth-based helicopter maker that co-produces the V-22 with Boeing;
• The Boeing Co., Bell's partner in the Bell Boeing V-22 joint program; and
• Universal Stainless & Alloy Products, Inc., the Pennsylvania specialty steel producer whose alloy was used in gearbox components. Aperam, the Luxembourg-based stainless steel group, completed its acquisition of Universal on January 23, 2025, at $45.00 per share in cash, an enterprise value of about $537 million, so the steelmaker now defends the suit as a wholly owned Aperam subsidiary.

The plaintiffs are the estates of all eight crew members. The lead caption name, Jessica Boozer, appears on both the district court case and the Third Circuit docket. Coverage of the April ruling described the dead as five aircrew, a direct support operator and two medical personnel.

A separate suit by the estate of Staff Sgt. Jacob "Jake" Galliher, 24, of Massachusetts, filed around the first anniversary of the crash and reported December 2, 2024, named the same three companies. That complaint alleged the defendants "had prior awareness of the high risk for crashes, including documented concerns with the alloy manufacturing for pinion gears in the aircraft's gearbox," and that the government had withheld payment from Universal over a problem with the alloy while the manufacturers kept buying it. Bell and Boeing denied the allegations and signaled they would rely on the government contractor defense. Public reporting does not establish whether that suit was later folded into Boozer.

What caused the Yakushima Osprey crash?

The Air Force Accident Investigation Board, whose report was released on August 1, 2024, found that the crash of CV-22B tail number 10-0054, call sign Gundam 22, assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing, began with a mechanical failure in the left proprotor gearbox. A high-speed planetary pinion gear cracked; fragments of it ground against the sun gear until the gearbox failed catastrophically. Supplemental documents pointed to multiple inclusions in the gear's specialty alloy, which can seed fatigue cracks. That alloy finding is the factual hook for the product liability claims against Universal Stainless.

The board also assigned blame to people. The crew received gearbox warnings almost 50 minutes before impact, and the pilot's decision to keep flying rather than land at the nearest suitable site was found to be a contributing factor. Investigators faulted the V-22 program office for failing to share safety data that would have told crews how serious those warnings could be, and reporting on a non-public Safety Investigation Board report indicated that similar gear failures had occurred as early as 2013. The aircraft hit the water about a half mile off Yakushima during a training exercise, and all eight airmen were killed.

The Pentagon responded by grounding the entire V-22 fleet, about 400 aircraft across the Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy, on December 6, 2023. Naval Air Systems Command lifted the grounding effective March 8, 2024. Japan's Self-Defense Forces separately grounded their 14 Ospreys.

Those findings cut both ways in litigation. The metallurgy supports defect theories against the gear's maker and supplier. The pilot-decision finding and the program office's failure to share data give the defendants comparative-causation and government-knowledge arguments, the latter feeding directly into a contractor defense.

What is the Death on the High Seas Act and why does it apply to the Osprey crash?

DOHSA is a 1920 federal statute, now codified at 46 U.S.C. §§ 30301-30308, that creates the exclusive wrongful death remedy when a death "is caused by wrongful act, neglect, or default occurring on the high seas beyond 3 nautical miles from the shore of the United States." The suit is brought by the decedent's personal representative for the benefit of the decedent's spouse, parent, child or dependent relative.

The key phrase is "from the shore of the United States." Courts measure the three-mile line from American territory, not from the nearest land, so waters a half mile off a Japanese island are "high seas" for DOHSA purposes even though they are inside Japan's territorial sea. That is why a crash in sight of Yakushima falls under a statute that most people associate with shipwrecks and oil rigs.

Congress carved out one exception that does not help these families. Since 2000, DOHSA has not applied to a commercial aviation accident occurring 12 nautical miles or less from the U.S. shore, and for commercial aviation accidents farther out the statute allows nonpecuniary damages for loss of care, comfort and companionship. A military training flight is not commercial aviation, so the original, narrower remedy governs.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held DOHSA exclusive where it applies. In Offshore Logistics, Inc. v. Tallentire (1986), a 5-4 decision written by Justice O'Connor involving a helicopter that crashed on the high seas, the Court held that DOHSA displaces state wrongful death statutes, reasoning that applying state law would be as damaging to uniformity as it was illogical. In Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham (1978), it barred loss-of-society damages under general maritime law where DOHSA applies. In Dooley v. Korean Air Lines Co. (1998), arising from the 1983 downing of KAL Flight 007, it barred a general maritime survival action for the decedents' pre-death pain and suffering.

Why did the judge dismiss the Osprey families' Pennsylvania law claims?

Judge Murphy granted Bell's motion to dismiss in early April 2026, holding that DOHSA preempts the state-law claims in their entirety. The dismissal was without prejudice, and the order gave the estates 21 days to replead under the federal statute. Bloomberg Law described the result as ejecting the claims from what it called "the more friendly purview" of Pennsylvania law.

The families had tried to stay in state law by arguing that the wrongful conduct, defective design, manufacture and supply of a gear, happened on land in the United States, so the death was not "caused by" anything "occurring on the high seas." The court rejected that reading. "Plaintiffs do not cite – nor can we find – a decision holding that DOHSA does not extend to a death on the high seas when the precipitating tortious conduct occurred on land," Judge Murphy wrote. Accepting the argument, he reasoned, would largely return high-seas wrongful death actions to the states, contrary to the statute's text and what he called the unanimous consensus of the courts. Reporting on the ruling noted that three federal courts of appeals have applied DOHSA where the injury occurred on the high seas even though the alleged negligence occurred on land.

The families then sought an immediate appeal. On Monday, June 29, 2026, the Third Circuit denied their petition for permission to appeal, docketed as No. 26-8029. That denial was not a ruling on the merits; it simply means the DOHSA question waits until final judgment. In the meantime, the case proceeds under the federal statute, and that, in turn, set up the jury dispute.

Why do DOHSA claims usually go to a judge, not a jury?

Four doctrines combine to keep DOHSA cases away from juries:

1. The statutory text. Section 30302 authorizes "a civil action in admiralty." The Seventh Circuit in Lion Air treated those words as Congress's choice of a forum that has no jury.
2. The Seventh Amendment. The jury guarantee covers "suits at common law." Admiralty is historically a separate, judge-tried jurisdiction, so no constitutional jury right attaches to a claim that exists only in admiralty.
3. Rule 9(h) and the saving-to-suitors clause. In ordinary maritime cases, a plaintiff with an independent basis for federal jurisdiction, such as diversity, can decline to designate the claim as an admiralty claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(h), and the saving-to-suitors clause of 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1) preserves common-law remedies, including a jury. The Manfredi petition argued that DOHSA plaintiffs in diversity cases should get the same option. The district court in Lion Air rejected arguments that either DOHSA's own savings language or diversity jurisdiction preserves a jury right, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
4. No surviving non-admiralty claim. Courts sometimes send joined admiralty claims to a jury when they travel with a claim that carries a jury right, the logic of Fitzgerald v. United States Lines Co. (1963) in the Jones Act context. Here, the April ruling eliminated every Pennsylvania-law claim, which leaves no common-law anchor for a jury.

That combination explains why the defendants moved now. Once the state claims were gone, the case became, in the Seventh Circuit's words, one "involving only DOHSA claims," precisely the posture in which Lion Air forbids a jury.

The question is not fully closed. Lion Air binds only the Seventh Circuit, the Supreme Court's cert denial set no precedent, and the Third Circuit has not spoken. A Philadelphia judge could, in theory, accept the historical argument that DOHSA kept the old election of forums. But the families would be asking him to break with the dozen courts the Manfredi petition counted as rejecting a DOHSA jury right.

What damages can families recover under DOHSA?

DOHSA allows "fair compensation for the pecuniary loss sustained by the individuals for whose benefit the action is brought," apportioned among them. In practice that means lost financial support, lost services the decedent would have provided, loss of nurture and guidance to minor children to the extent courts treat it as pecuniary, and funeral expenses. Courts have generally read the pecuniary-loss limit to exclude punitive damages as well.

The contrast with the state law the families wanted is stark.

Issue	DOHSA (46 U.S.C. ch. 303)	Pennsylvania Wrongful Death and Survival Acts
Fact-finder	Judge sitting in admiralty (Lion Air); jury question pending in Boozer	Jury on demand
Who sues	Personal representative, for spouse, parent, child or dependent relative	Personal representative, for statutory beneficiaries and the estate
Grief, loss of society, companionship	Not recoverable for non-commercial crashes (Higginbotham)	Recoverable in a wrongful death action as loss of services, society and comfort
Decedent's conscious pain before death	Not recoverable through a general maritime survival claim (Dooley)	Recoverable in a survival action
Punitive damages	Generally unavailable	Available on proof of outrageous conduct
Commercial aviation exception	Nonpecuniary damages allowed beyond 12 nm for commercial aviation only	Not applicable
Geographic trigger	Death caused on the high seas more than 3 nm from the U.S. shore	Ordinary choice-of-law rules

For eight young service members, several of them officers in their early 30s, pecuniary damages are not trivial: lost lifetime earnings and support for spouses and children can reach seven figures per estate. But the nonpecuniary and punitive components that often drive aviation verdicts, particularly where the evidence suggests a manufacturer knew about a defect, drop out entirely. That is what the families meant to avoid by pleading Pennsylvania law, and what the April ruling took away.

Can military families sue the government over the Osprey crash?

No, not in tort. Under the Feres doctrine, which dates to Feres v. United States (1950), the federal government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to service members that arise incident to military service. A training flight is the paradigm of service-incident activity, so the Air Force's own role, including the program office's failure to share gear-failure data, cannot be the basis of a damages claim against the United States. Families instead receive military survivor benefits, such as the death gratuity and Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance, and pursue the contractors who designed, built and supplied the aircraft.

That structure is why Osprey litigation always names Bell, Boeing and their suppliers, and why every one of those cases eventually confronts the government contractor defense.

Does the government contractor defense protect Boeing and Bell?

It may, and the bench-versus-jury question affects how it plays out. The defense comes from Boyle v. United Technologies Corp. (1988), which bars state-law design defect claims against military equipment contractors when (1) the United States approved reasonably precise specifications, (2) the equipment conformed to them, and (3) the contractor warned the government about dangers known to the contractor but not to the government. Courts apply the same framework in DOHSA cases; the Eleventh Circuit in LaCourse v. PAE Worldwide (2020), for example, held DOHSA exclusive and then applied the defense to a contractor whose aircraft maintenance followed Air Force specifications.

The Galliher allegations target the second and third prongs: that the alloy did not conform to specifications, and that the manufacturers knew of the alloy problem the government had flagged. The Air Force board's finding that the program office itself failed to share safety data could help the defendants argue the government already knew what they knew. Whether a judge or a jury weighs that evidence matters. Contractor-defense disputes turn on technical documents and engineering testimony, and defendants generally prefer that a judge, not a jury moved by eight deaths, decide whether a warning was adequate.

How do the Osprey crash lawsuits compare?

Three Osprey wrongful death matters illustrate how location, not fault, drives the procedural posture.

Case	Crash	Forum	Defendants	Governing law	Jury?	Status
Boozer v. Bell Textron, No. 2:25-cv-04522	Nov. 29, 2023, CV-22B, about half a mile off Yakushima, Japan; 8 Air Force deaths	E.D. Pa. (Murphy, J.)	Bell Textron, Boeing, Universal Stainless	DOHSA (state claims dismissed April 2026)	Demanded; defendants oppose (reported Nov. 3, 2026)	Pending; 3d Cir. refused interlocutory appeal June 29, 2026
Galliher estate suit	Same crash; one decedent	U.S. federal court	Bell Textron, Boeing, Universal Stainless	Pleaded under state law (2024)	Not reported	Status not publicly reported
"Swift 11" families' suit	June 2022, MV-22B, near Glamis, California; 5 Marine deaths	U.S. District Court in California	Bell Textron, Boeing, Rolls-Royce	State law and federal claims; crash on land	Demanded	Fraud and contract counts trimmed; negligence and concealment theories proceed

The Swift 11 crash, which a military report tied to a clutch-related failure in the right engine, happened over land in California. DOHSA does not reach it, so those families keep their jury and access to nonpecuniary damages, even though they face the same contractor-defense arguments. Families can lose relatives to alleged defects in the same aircraft type and end up with sharply different remedies because one aircraft came down on land and the other came down offshore.

Timeline of the Osprey crash lawsuit

Date	Event
Nov. 29, 2023	CV-22B 10-0054 crashes off Yakushima during training; all eight airmen killed
Dec. 6, 2023	V-22 fleet of about 400 aircraft grounded
Mar. 8, 2024	NAVAIR lifts the grounding
May 2024	Families of four Marines killed in the 2022 Glamis crash sue Bell, Boeing and Rolls-Royce
Aug. 1, 2024	Air Force releases accident report blaming a cracked pinion gear and the decision to keep flying
Aug. 6, 2024	Seventh Circuit holds DOHSA-only cases are tried without a jury (Lion Air)
Dec. 2, 2024	Galliher estate's wrongful death suit reported
Jan. 23, 2025	Aperam completes acquisition of Universal Stainless
Apr. 7, 2025	Supreme Court denies review in Manfredi v. Boeing, No. 24-849
Aug. 8, 2025	Eight estates file Boozer v. Bell Textron in E.D. Pa. with a jury demand
Early Apr. 2026	Judge Murphy holds DOHSA preempts all state-law claims; 21 days to replead
June 29, 2026	Third Circuit denies petition for permission to appeal
Nov. 3, 2026	Defendants' opposition to a jury trial reported

What it means for aviation plaintiffs' firms, contractors and insurers

For plaintiffs' aviation and wrongful death firms. The case confirms that pleading around DOHSA by locating the tort on land does not work, at least in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and that the Third Circuit will not entertain the issue before final judgment. Case valuation for offshore military and charter crashes should assume a bench trial and pecuniary-only damages unless and until an appellate court breaks with Lion Air. That makes economic damages experts, life-care and earnings models, and evidence of services and guidance to children the core of the case rather than an afterthought. Firms considering a jury argument should build the record now: an independent diversity basis, a clear refusal to invoke Rule 9(h), and a preserved Seventh Amendment objection, so that a Third Circuit appeal after final judgment can squarely present the question the Supreme Court declined in 2025.

For defense contractors and component suppliers. The ruling strengthens a familiar defense playbook for offshore crashes: move early to dismiss state-law claims under Tallentire, then strike the jury demand under Lion Air. A bench trial on a Boyle defense, with technical specifications and Air Force correspondence in the record, is a materially better forum for a defendant than a jury presented with a 50-minute warning timeline and eight deaths. Suppliers should note that a specialty-alloy maker sits alongside the airframe manufacturers, and that the alloy-inclusion finding in a government accident report is the kind of fact that sustains claims past the pleadings.

For aviation and products liability insurers. DOHSA's damages limits sharply narrow the tail on offshore military crash claims. Reserves for these eight estates can be modeled on pecuniary loss, with no exposure to punitive damages or loss-of-society awards, unlike the Glamis land-crash case, which retains jury and nonpecuniary exposure. Insurers covering suppliers should expect contribution and indemnity disputes among co-defendants over whose component failed, since that allocation, not the damages ceiling, will drive how the pecuniary award is shared.

For military families and their advisers. The case underscores that where a service member dies matters as much as why. Survivor benefits are the primary federal remedy under Feres; suits against contractors are possible, but over the ocean they proceed under a 1920 statute that compensates economic dependency rather than grief.

What happens next in the Osprey crash lawsuit

Judge Murphy must decide whether to strike the jury demand. Given Lion Air, the defendants have the better of the existing authority, but the issue gives the families a preserved appellate question that the Third Circuit has never resolved. After that ruling, the case will move through fact and expert discovery on the gearbox, the alloy and the program office's knowledge, followed by summary judgment motions in which the government contractor defense will likely be the central issue. Any appeal on DOHSA preemption or the jury question would come only after final judgment, given the Third Circuit's refusal to take the case early.

No trial date, settlement discussions or damages figures have been publicly reported.

FAQ

Will the Osprey crash families get a jury trial?

The court has not ruled. Boeing, Bell Textron and Universal Stainless argue that the Death on the High Seas Act requires a bench trial, and the leading recent appellate decision, the Seventh Circuit's 2024 Lion Air ruling, held that a federal case pleading only DOHSA claims must be tried in admiralty without a jury.

What is the Death on the High Seas Act?

DOHSA, 46 U.S.C. §§ 30301-30308, is the exclusive federal wrongful death remedy for deaths caused on the high seas more than three nautical miles from the U.S. shore. It authorizes a "civil action in admiralty" by the decedent's personal representative and limits recovery to pecuniary loss, except for certain commercial aviation accidents.

Why does DOHSA apply when the plane crashed near Japan?

The three-mile line is measured from the shore of the United States, not from the nearest land. Waters a half mile off Yakushima are therefore "high seas" under DOHSA, and Judge Murphy held the statute applies even though the alleged defects arose on land in the United States.

What damages can families recover under DOHSA?

Only pecuniary losses: lost financial support, lost services and, in many courts, the economic value of nurture and guidance to minor children, plus funeral expenses. Grief, loss of companionship, the decedent's pre-death pain and punitive damages are generally unavailable for non-commercial crashes.

Who is being sued over the Yakushima Osprey crash?

Bell Textron Inc., The Boeing Co. and Universal Stainless & Alloy Products, Inc., the alloy supplier now owned by Aperam. The United States cannot be sued in tort for the deaths because of the Feres doctrine.

What caused the Osprey crash off Japan?

The Air Force accident board found that a high-speed planetary pinion gear in the left proprotor gearbox cracked and failed, and that the pilot's decision to keep flying for nearly 50 minutes after warnings contributed. The board also faulted the V-22 program office for not sharing safety data about earlier gear failures.