Maine's highest court has ruled that the city of Lewiston is immune from a lawsuit in connection with a plane crash four years ago that killed three Lewiston High School students. The case called into question the city's responsibility for the actions of the independent contractor it hired to fly the plane.

In June of 2006, Lewiston High School was running a summer camp for students in the school's Air Force Junior ROTC program. Three student cadets, Shannon Fortier, Nicholas Babcock, and Teisha Loesburg, participated in an orientation flight in a single-engine plane.

At around 4:30 p.m., the plane crashed into Barker Mountain, killing the three high school students and the 24-year-old pilot. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error. Another teenager who had flown with the pilot said he had a history of showing off, flying barefoot and performing dangerous maneuvers.

All three families of the students sued and received settlements from Twin Cities Air Services, which provided the aircraft and pilot. But the families also filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city of Lewiston and the Lewiston School Department.

"The families of the students should have had a day in court," says Terry Garmey, the attorney representing the families, who presented evidence that the Lewiston High employee in charge of the ROTC program knew that the pilot had performed reckless maneuvers on other flights. The ROTC leader was a career air force pilot and had allegedly observed the other pilot make a landing that he himself described as unusual.

"The school chose to have an enterprise, a good program, that required flights. This is the method by which they fulfilled that obligation. We alleged, and believe we could have proven, that in so doing that they had actual knowledge that this was going to be a dangerous situation and didn't act on that knowledge," Garmey says.

Normally under the Maine Tort Claims Act, the city and the school department are not legally responsible for the work of an independent contractor and are therefore immune from wrongful-death lawsuits.

"We had obviously hired Twin Cities to provide these orientation flights for the kids but we didn't specify pilots or planes or anything -- they made all those choices," says Edward Benjamin, the attorney representing the city of Lewiston. "It was their expertise, obviously, flying the aircraft, not the school's."

But last year a superior court judge ruled that the city was not immune. Benjamin immediately appealed that ruling, bringing the case before the state Supreme Court. "There was an important legal principle at stake here," he says. "That is, if we hire independent contractors to do certain functions for us, that we're not responsible for their actions in carrying out those independent duties."

In a 4 to 3 decision, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court has agreed with Lewiston's claim that the Maine Tort Claims Act makes it immune from the lawsuit. In a dissenting opinion, three justices said governmental immunity shouldn't apply to Lewiston because it was "using" the plane at time of the accident.