Lost in the Stacks: Falling Through Clouds

Deep in the three-million acre Superior National Forest the search plane finally spied the missing six-seater aircraft carrying a pilot, his sister-in-law, and her two little girls. With burned wreckage scattered over the forest, the search plane’s pilot knew that there would be no survivors, but miraculously he was wrong: the two little girls, Grace and Lily, were alive.

Alive, yes, but with bad third-degree burns on many parts of their small bodies. Even though he was bereft over the loss of his wife, Toby Pearson immersed himself in the grim world of burn recovery – skin graft surgeries, compression garments, face masks – that his little daughters bravely faced. It would be a long, expensive, and emotionally-trying process, but as the mounting medical costs threatened to overwhelm him, Toby knew that eventually the aviation insurance held by the pilot would cover the bills.

Then the bombshell hit: the insurance company refused to pay the Pearsons because they claimed the pilot had lied or misrepresented himself on his application for aviation insurance. Assured by experts that there was no possible way they could win, Toby and his lawyer nevertheless took on the huge insurance company and the intricacies of aviation liability law and fought for justice for Grace and Lily. Falling Through Clouds by Damian Fowler is the gripping true story of a plane crash, survival, and the law suit that would have lasting effects on aviation liability law.