Google co-founder and billionaire Sergey Brin has been taken to court in a wrongful-death lawsuit, according to a report by The New York Post.
The widow of a pilot who was flying the seaplane from California to his private island in Fiji when it ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, alleges that Brin is partially to blame for her husband’s death and the ensuing struggle to retrieve his body.
Pilot Lance Maclean and his co-pilot Dean Rushfeldt were killed after the plane plunged into the Pacific, close to the Half Moon Bay coast, around 48km southwest of San Francisco.
The lawsuit was lodged by Maclean’s widow Maria Magdalena Olarte, and named Google as a co-defendant because it partially owned the plane. It was also lodged against the maintenance company that installed the fuel system and hired the pilots.
Brin’s $8 million twin-engine aircraft was equipped with an “unauthorised and illegally installed auxiliary fuel system” that malfunctioned several hours into the May 20, 2023 flight, according to the complaint filed in state court in Santa Clara County, California, earlier this month, said the report in The New York Post.
Olarte also accused Brin of attempting to destroy evidence at the crash scene by obstructing recovery efforts, said the report.
