we don t even know if there s been a crash. we don t know what happened. and there doesn t appear to be on the near horizon any answers that are going to be forthcoming to these families. on top of that i m sorry. go ahead. i was going to say that on top of the fact there s been 12 days here where people have no answers to what s going on, don t know what happened to their loved ones in those 12 days or in the last minutes of this flight if in fact it did crash, we also have some investigation suggesting that other people perhaps besides the pilots may have gained access to the cockpit. so in effect, that means there s 237 suspects on this aircraft in aaddition to the two pilots. so those kinds of issues are not something that the families need to be dealing with. and frankly, i think all the speculation out there as to what happened on this accident when we don t have the facts is not doing a service to the families. michael, we appreciate that thought. all of your thoughts.
including airlines. michael, let me ask you, do these families have any recourse legally if they get frustrated enough by the malaysian investigation, there s no international court, there s no way to change jurisdiction to force changes in who leads this investigation? well, no. under international treaties that apply to this accident, both the ko annex 13 investigations as well as the montreal convention, jurisdiction is reposed in either malaysia or china or the place of domicile of the passengers. so they do have legal recourse through that process. but to compel the malaysian government to do more than what it s been doing, it requires actions in malaysia. i will say that in the united states we have something called the family assistance act that was passed about 20 years ago. that has been applied most recently to result in a fine of $500,000 against asiana airlines
resolved. it took 11 years. and they stuck with it for 11 years. i have to tell you, we had 157 depositions. wow. and they stuck with it. because they have such drive to get the truth out. they have one driving force. and that is they don t want what happened to them to ever happen to any other family. and every single one of my clients has said that. i don t want this to happen to anyone else. and so they want the truth to come out. and it really helps. do you have a story like that, michael? the air france thing went on i know more than 70 victims of that crash were never found. is there a person or family you met that sticks with you? oh, absolutely. they all stick with us. this is incalculable sense of grief and loss these families have. here we don t even know what happened some 12, 13 days after the accident. i mean, it s one thing for a family to lose a loved one in a horrible crash and deal with the immediacy of that. it s quite something else when
[ speaking foreign language ] as the world watches and guesses, the loved ones of the folks on flight 370, they are twisting in the wind of uncertainty. sadly the longer this goes on the more it seems like families won t get answers for a very long time. it took two years to find the wreckage of air france flight 447 on the ocean floor in the south atlantic, even though debris was found five days after that plane went missing. joining me now, aviation trial attorney michael verna won a $23 million settlement for the victims of flight 447. also joining us our cnn friend mary schiavo, former inspector general of the d.o.t., now represents victims of negligence by transportation companies,