David Johnson collapsed with chest pains minutes into his flight from Miami to Boston and waited hours for medical attention as the American Airlines crew completed the trip as scheduled.

Now, Johnson's family is waiting to see if the airline will be held responsible for his death.

An eight-member jury began deliberating Monday afternoon after a five-day trial in U.S. District Court in Portland. Jurors had not reached a verdict Monday evening.

At issue is whether the extra time Johnson spent in the air is what ultimately killed him. His wife has sued for damages, charging that airline employees were negligent because they did not turn the plane around and rush Johnson to a hospital. The airline argued that quicker treatment would not have mattered, and that the delay was not the cause of his death.

Johnson lived for 13 months after the flight, but with a damaged heart that never recovered. "This is a flight that should have been diverted, and had it been diverted significant time could have been saved," said Johnson's lawyer, William Robitzek. "They wasted two hours."

On March 30, 2000, Johnson, 62, and his wife, Elizabeth, were returning from a business trip to Florida with some real estate colleagues from Lewiston.

Just after American Airlines Flight 1700 left the runway in Miami, Johnson told his wife he wasn't feeling well and was going to the bathroom.

She reminded him that the fasten-seat-belt sign was still on but he went anyway.

Moments later, a member of the flight crew asked Elizabeth Johnson if her husband had a history of heart disease. Johnson, who did not have a history of heart disease, was lying in the aisle, complaining of chest pains and sweating profusely.

What happened next was the central dispute of the trial.

Members of the flight crew were sufficiently concerned about Johnson to ask if there was a doctor on board and to break out the advanced first aid kit that included a bottle of oxygen.

But they did not declare a medical emergency or tell the pilot that Johnson needed immediate attention. The plane continued to make its scheduled landing in Boston at 4:30 p.m., and Johnson was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital where surgeons operated.

He survived, but as a "cardiac cripple," Robitzek said. "Damage in the heart muscle led to damage in the life."

Johnson tried to return to work, but couldn't stay awake, Robitzek said. He died 13 months later.

His death, Robitzek said, resulted from the actions of the crew in the first minutes after he collapsed.

If the plane had turned around while still in Florida, or stopped at three other possible locations before landing in Boston, Johnson could have gotten the care he needed. Any one of those stops would have gotten Johnson into surgery sooner and could have saved his life, Robitzek said.

When the flight attendant asked Elizabeth Johnson if her husband had a heart problem, it showed that "she had all the information she needed to communicate to the pilot that there was a medical emergency," Robitzek said.

American Airlines lawyers said the flight attendants acted reasonably.

Michael Fitzhugh said Johnson's symptoms looked more like heartburn than a heart attack, and that early in the flight he sat up and sucked on ice cubes.

A doctor on board, James Otis, a neurologist from Mass General, spoke to Johnson, and the flight attendants deferred to his opinion. It was not until the plane was near New York that Otis determined Johnson was having a heart attack, and said he thought Johnson would get treatment faster flying to Boston than landing in New York and fighting traffic.

"It was well-managed," Fitzhugh said. "There is no evidence of any negligence."

Fitzhugh said there was also no evidence that the delay in treatment was what eventually caused Johnson's death. There was no autopsy conducted, and a second heart attack could have been what killed him.

Fitzhugh told the jury to put sentiment aside and decide against the widow.

"I know I'm asking you to do something hard," Fitzhugh said. "Mrs. Johnson is a nice woman who has lost a nice man. My client is entitled to justice and sometimes justice is harsh."

Staff Writer Gregory D. Kesich can be contacted at 791-6336 or at:

gkesich@pressherald.com