A Multnomah County jury has found a helicopter engine-maker liable for a crash that killed nine Southern Oregon firefighters four years ago and that it must pay $70 million in damages.

The case pitted pilot William Coultas and his co-pilot’s family members against General Electric Co. The verdict finds GE was negligent because of a design defect in the Sikorsky helicopters. Oregon-based Carson Helicopters sent the crew to help put out forest fires in Northern California in the summer of 2008. The wreck happened shortly after the copter took off. The chopper was airborne less than a minute when it clipped a tree and fell from the sky, bursting into flames, The Associated Press reported.

“The verdict directly contradicts an investigation by the National Transportation and Safety Board, which concluded the two engines, the GE Engines, were operating normally throughout the accident flight,” says Rick Kennedy, a spokesman for GE.

But those reports aren’t admissible in trials of this kind. Kennedy says GE will file an appeal. 

The federal report on the crash found the helicopter was overweight. But various accounts of survivors and involved parties have hotly disputed what actually went wrong.

This story originally appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting.