£78m for family of Briton in Canyon helicopter horror
After decades of service, the shame of being dismissed left Carl a shell of a man, unable to leave the house. Now, he’s been vindicated by a tribunal — and given a payout of nearly £800,000
THE parents of a British tourist killed with his wife in a helicopter crash in the Grand Canyon have been awarded £ 78 m i l l i o n in compensation.
The family of Jonathan Udall, 31, will receive £19 million from the operator of the helicopter, Papillon Airways, and a further £59.3 million from the aircraft’s French manufacturer, Airbus Helicopters SAS.
Philip and Marlene Udall’s lawyer, Gary Robb, said they wanted the settlement terms to be made public to raise awareness about aircraft fuel tanks they say are prone to rupturing.
‘The parents say the fuel tank was basically a fire bomb,’ Mr Robb said.
Newlyweds Jonathan and Ellie Udall, 29, boarded the helicopter in Boulder City, Nevada, in February 2018. The family’s lawsuit alleged the aircraft was unsafe because it lacked a crash-resistant fuel system which is now required for aircraft built after the
Federal Aviation Administration issued new regulations in 2020.
Mr Robb said some helicopter manufacturers had voluntarily replaced older fuel tanks but many had not. ‘The Udall family wants to shine a spotlight on this issue so the industry will take note and voluntarily seek to correct this public health issue,’ he added.
‘They don’t want anyone else to go through what their son went through in an otherwise surviva
ble accident – not a broken bone. He would have walked away.’
The Airbus EC130 B4 crashed just before sunset. Three of the British tourists on board were pronounced dead at the scene: veterinary receptionist Becky Dobson, 27, her boyfriend and car salesman Stuart Hill, 30, and Mr Hill’s brother, 32-year-old lawyer Jason Hill. Mr and Mrs Udall died of complications from burn injuries.
All of them were on the trip to celebrate Stuart Hill’s birthday. Pilot Scott Booth fractured his lower left leg, and passenger Jennifer Barham had a spinal fracture. They also suffered severe burns
but survived. Both of Mr Booth’s legs have since been amputated.
The Hill brothers’ mother, Sandra, said last night that she and her husband David had decided not to seek compensation.
‘The Udalls are the only family who went down that route,’ she added. ‘We said we didn’t want to be involved from early on. I didn’t want a price put on my sons’ heads.’
Mr Robb said helicopter manufacturers had been aware the oldfashioned, hard-plastic fuel tanks were prone to rupturing during hard landings.
‘The fuel pours on to the passengers, then ignites. It’s just horrible,’
he said. ‘The three people on the right side of the aircraft never escaped. They were completely burned in their seats.’
The National Transportation Safety Board said turbulent winds were a probable cause of the loss of control and tail-rotor effectiveness before the hard landing.
It said it found no evidence of mechanical problems but noted the helicopter lacked a crashresistant fuel system. The aircraft in Papillon’s fleet were not required to have them, but the company has since fitted them with fuel tanks that expand and seal on impact instead of rupturing.
‘He would have walked away’
‘Have you got a pen? I want to add an extra nought to the estimated cost’
Unlike several of my colleagues, i was looking forward to attending a mandatory ‘race education’ seminar arranged by my employer, lloyds Bank. i was keen to learn more about this important issue and how best to treat my colleagues in the workplace.
But little did i know, as i logged on to the virtual meeting on July 16, 2021, that it would mark the end of my near 30-year career.
Because, in the meeting, i mistakenly uttered the n-word while trying to provide an example of what constitutes inappropriate language after the trainer’s lack of understanding of a question i asked on the subject.
i appreciate that it is a highly inflammatory term, but i had no racist intent at all. i suffer from dyslexia and as a result of my condition i often speak before my brain has had a chance to process my thoughts. This was a typical example of my disability clouding my judgment. it was an honest mistake.
But months later — after a painful and protracted disciplinary process — i was fired for gross misconduct.
Racked by stress, i struggled to sleep and experienced severe back pain. i was put on a cocktail of drugs, from the strong painkiller codeine to anti-anxiety medication. i stopped leaving the house. i couldn’t bring myself to exercise and gave up coaching my local junior rugby team at home in Andover, Hampshire.
i put on weight and my cholesterol rose to a dangerously high level. My friends and family were worried for my wellbeing — but their pain was nothing compared to the shame and terror i was experiencing.
Thankfully, late last year — two-and-a-half years after that fateful seminar — an employment tribunal found i was wrongfully dismissed and discriminated against by lloyds on the grounds of my disability.
And just this week, i was awarded almost £800,000 in compensation (before legal costs and tax — i will take home only around £350,000) while the bank faces a total bill, including fees, of nearer to £1 million.
As i look back on the darkest years of my life, i realise i was the victim of an insidious corporate culture in which an arguably wellintentioned ‘zero-tolerance’ policy on racism translated to a grotesque and inhumane practice of firing employees without a fair or balanced process. By the time of the race seminar, i had been working at lloyds and its affiliated companies in various roles for nearly three decades.
i loved my job in the vital banking industry, doing everything from data processing to reconciliations and change governance. it might not sound glamorous, but i’m proud to have provided comfortably for my two children, to have risen to a senior role and even found time to serve as an elected borough councillor and mayor in my home town.
it was partly because of my standing as an experienced, respected and trusted colleague that i was asked in 2021 to mentor three junior employees. it so happened that one of them was black, another was of Asian descent and the third from eastern europe.
As a 58-year-old white man working closely with these three younger colleagues, i thought it would be beneficial for me to brush up on the latest politically- correct language and etiquette so as to not cause any offence. So when we were told to complete the Race education For line Managers course as part of lloyds’s Race Action Plan, i saw it as an opportunity to do exactly that.
i can’t be alone in thinking that the language the PC brigade deem acceptable often seems to change just as soon as one gets a grip on it. For example, saying ‘ coloured person’ is seen as unacceptable these days, but ‘person of colour’ is not. nevertheless, the last thing i’ve ever wanted to do is hurt anyone else’s feelings.
i remember the day of the course vividly. i was working remotely, sitting in my study overlooking a nature reserve. it was a bright, sunny morning and at 11am i logged into the seminar on the Microsoft Teams software, excited to learn more.
it began with warm words from the lead trainer, who happened to be a black lady. She told us to ‘speak freely’ as this was a ‘safe space’ where we need not worry about saying the ‘ wrong thing’. Rather, we were encouraged to ‘ask questions . . . learn and be clumsy’.
Perhaps i was being naive, but i believed her.
After what felt like a didactic lecture on institutional racism, she moved on to telling us about the difference between ‘ intent’ and ‘effect’ with regards to language. And so i asked what i thought was a perfectly innocent question: ‘if you hear a person of an ethnic minority use a word that might be considered offensive if used by a person not of that minority, how should you handle the situation?’
i was concerned about unwittingly saying the wrong thing — and wanted to know how to avoid that.
My dyslexia — which was informally diagnosed during my school years and confirmed by a doctor as part of the subsequent tribunal — means i often struggle to articulate myself.
From the vacant expression of my trainer on screen and the thundering silence that followed my question, i assumed i had not been clear.
This is nothing unusual for me given my dyslexia and i’ve developed a strategy of either rephrasing my point or providing an example.
On this occasion — to my eternal regret — i chose the latter and added: ‘The most common example being the use of the word “n*****” in the black community.’
in hindsight, of course, i should not have said the word out loud. But it
We were told not to worry about ‘saying the wrong thing’
I tried to say sorry but was told to ‘shut up’ or be kicked out
was an honest mistake — and after all, this was a ‘safe space’ for saying ‘clumsy things’, wasn’t it?
nothing could have prepared me for the reaction from the lead trainer. She quickly became extraordinarily agitated, shouting at me with wild hand gestures. i tried to apologise but was told to ‘shut up’ or else i’d be kicked out of the meeting.
Presumably out of sheer terror, everyone stayed silent — their computers firmly on ‘mute’. The seminar ended about half an hour later.
i was mortified. later on, i spoke with a colleague who had also attended the meeting. We agreed that i should not have used the word but that there was no malice behind it and the context was clearly unique. i would later discover that the lead trainer was so ‘traumatised’ by my language that she apparently took five days off work.
On the day of the seminar, the race education outfit informed lloyds what had happened. However, i heard nothing in the weeks after and therefore assumed that there would be no repercussions over my innocent blunder. Three weeks later, lloyds informed me on the phone that it had started an initial investigation. Why did the bank take so long? i never found out.
My line manager told me not to worry. i relayed to her what had happened and she seemed confident that this was not a serious matter.
But a month later, i was told i would face a formal disciplinary. Despite that, i still continued to work and even carried on mentoring my junior colleagues as before.
nevertheless, the looming disciplinary made me feel stressed and anxious. My shoulders froze, making every move painful: the doctor told me this was related to severe stress. i started taking medication. My anxiety became crippling and i could rarely sleep.
i tried desperately to engage with the procedure and give my side of the story, but i was repeatedly shut down and told my assistance and evidence were not required and my questions and challenges not answered. it felt like a show trial — with an inevitable conclusion. i soon
realised it was far better PR for the company to dismiss a ‘racist’ rather than rigorously consider the facts. On December 14, 2021, five months after the seminar, I was called to a video meeting informing me that I had been fired for gross misconduct.
I was unemployable. Anyone asking for a reference from Lloyds would be made aware that I had been dismissed for racism.
My relationship with my then partner, already suffering, was put under unimaginable strain and fell apart. My former colleagues were warned against speaking to me by Lloyds. It was the lowest moment of my life. I was lucky that my family stood by me. My blood pressure shot up. I developed acid reflux and severe stomach pain.
Liver scans showed scarring and suspected fibrosis from stress. But in the face of what I knew to be a grave injustice, I refused to give up. I lodged an appeal as soon as I could, paying lawyers £3,000 for help in drafting the necessary letters. I stressed that not only was my mistake an honest one, but that at no point had the disciplinary manager properly accounted for my dyslexia.
Yet my pleas fell on deaf ears. The judgment had been passed. The company had found me guilty and nothing I could do or say would change that.
It felt like a six-month show trial straight out of the Kremlin playbook after which my appeal was turned down.
It was only when I began litigation proceedings against Lloyds in August 2022 that my luck changed. I heard about the Free Speech
My life was almost ruined for the smallest of mistakes
Union and in February 2023 — in desperation — reached out to them for help.
They instructed Doyle Clayton solicitors — experts in employment law — to fight my case. Finally, in a fair and just hearing over video-link last summer, I was able to explain how my dyslexia had contributed to the case without being ignored or shut down.
No one who knew about my situation was at all surprised when the tribunal panel delivered their unanimous verdict in August: Lloyds had wrongfully dismissed me and even discriminated against me on grounds of my dyslexia. The panel confirmed that my remark was part of a well- intentioned relevant question’ and that ‘dyslexia affected [my] ability to formulate [my] question’. Since news of my victory broke earlier this year, numerous former Lloyds colleagues have sent messages of support. Everyone knows that justice has finally been served.
But the truth is that I lost the job I love and the life I knew. And not because I did anything wrong, but because Lloyds refused to examine properly the case against me — perhaps for fear of being hounded by woke ideologues who smelled the blood of a white middle-aged man. Lloyds was never ‘by your side’, as its adverts claim. do not expect an apology — but I hope that my case sets a precedent for others suffering similar injustice. also hope large corporations take better notice of neurodiversity within their workforce and that the tribunal process can be simplified to help those — like — who feel powerless.
For now, I remain unemployed. Winning my case at tribunal was thing, but clearing my name public is another. Despite everything I’ve been through, I still believe in the benefits of race-based education workplaces, schools and other institutions. But these must be genuine attempts to help employees navigate our increasingly sensitive society.
Not, as I experienced, an Orwellian witch-hunt against a hapless but well- intentioned employee — whose life was almost ruined for the smallest mistake.