A federal court in Nevada today sent a case growing out of a helicopter crash back to state court after it had been removed by the aircraft's manufacturer, Airbus. Airbus claimed that the Federal Aviation Administration had designated the company as a stand-in for the FAA for certain certifications and supplemental design changes. Under a federal statute that protects federal officers carrying out their duties from unfriendly state courts, Airbus had removed the lawsuit from state court to federal court.

      In briefs written by CCL, the Plaintiffs argued that mere compliance with federal regulations and the authority to "self-certify" does not qualify a private manufacturer as a federal officer for purposes of the removal statute. Philip Morris had unsuccessfully made the same argument in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, claiming that when it took over tar and nicotine testing from the Federal Trade Commission and used the same methodology to determine the levels of those chemicals in cigarettes that it qualified for federal officer removal. In 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit applied the same reasoning that the Supreme Court did in Watson v. Philip Morris, to hold that Boeing was not a federal officer for removal purposes. 

      In today's decision, Riggs v. Hecker, the U.S. District Court found the Seventh Circuit's decision, Lu Junhong v. Boeing, persuasive and ordered the case returned to state court.