Litigation rages on over 2016 circumnavigation claims

On September 19, 2016, Zheng (Julie) Wang completed a monthlong circumnavigation in a Cirrus SR22. AOPA reported she was living in Florida at the time, working as chief flight instructor for a Part 141 flight school, and was recognized by AOPA China as the first woman born in China to complete a solo flight around the world—a distinction that came with a prize worth around $150,000 at the time.

More than one case has already been disposed of, including cases filed in New York state court (later moved to federal court); in Beijing and Wuhan, China; and in Palm Beach County in Florida, where a jury on April 8 awarded Wang $6.3 million, with another $1 million awarded to Wang’s husband, James Fretcher, an attorney who has challenged the claims of his wife’s rival pilot in court.

Jingxian “Saki” Chen was not present for the civil trial, or the verdict, according to court records, but resumed activity in the case three days later, filing (on her own behalf) a motion to set aside the verdict. Chen told the court she resides in Shanghai, and that she lost access to the email account on file with the court, and did not receive notices. Chen asserted that the other parties in the case had failed to notify her by phone or mail, a claim that is also disputed.

The Florida case does not directly involve The Ninety-Nines, though the international organization of women pilots was sued by Wang in 2018, with the organization’s New York-New Jersey Section also named as a defendant.

According to a status report on the litigation included in the organization’s 2021 Annual Report, Wang demanded $2 million in a lawsuit filed in 2018 after negotiations broke down over a website posting.

“Julie Wang’s lawyer found that the New Jersey Chapter had published on its website that Saki [Chen] was the first Chinese woman to complete the flight. He sent a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter to The Ninety-Nines. The webmaster immediately removed the words to which he objected. The lawyer was not satisfied with the correction made by the New Jersey Chapter. We exchanged letters, wherein we tried to settle the issues but Julie and her husband were determined to sue The Ninety-Nines to obtain publicity for Julie and money from The Ninety-Nines.”

According to court records, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in the organization’s favor, granting a motion for summary judgment that Wang immediately appealed, though that appeal case appears to have ended when a filing deadline was missed.

Meanwhile, courts in China were also hearing arguments over the same flights.

A fragment of a press release posted on Facebook October 23, 2019, reports that a Beijing trial court ruled that Chen’s claim to have circumnavigated before Wang was not supported by facts. Among the reported findings by that court, Chen had hired another pilot to help her complete her own circumnavigation, had conceded that Wang completed her flight first, and “Initiated the Propaganda Attack” by challenging Wang’s record.

Chen is listed as the current chairman of China’s section of The Ninety-Nines on the organization’s website, which, as translated by Google, describes her as “a private pilot and lawyer of FAA in the United States,” who translated the first book on general aviation law in Chinese. “She is the first woman in China and even in Asia to challenge the round-the-world flight.”

The Palm Beach Post, reporting on the ongoing Florida case April 23, noted that courts in Beijing and Wuhan, China, both dismissed Chen’s claims, and “the Wuhan court found that Chen had not even proven she was a certified pilot, let alone that she had completed a circumnavigation.”

The Palm Beach County case began in April 2019, when Chen sued Fretcher and China General Aviation LLC, a Florida company created by Fretcher, seeking damages in excess of $15,000 “to redress repeated acts of defamation and other tortious acts,” accusing Fretcher of waging a media and social media campaign to discredit her claimed superlative in favor of his wife’s.

Circuit Judge Carolyn Bell dismissed Chen’s claims on October 5, 2023—on procedural grounds, and without offering an opinion about who flew around the world first. The counterclaims filed in the case by Wang and Fretcher, however, continued, leading up to the $7.3 million jury verdict handed down this month.

In a motion and related affidavit filed April 11, Chen told the court that she had lost access to a Hotmail account used to receive court notices in July or August of 2024, and did not receive notices from the court as a result. She also cited “medical conditions in late 2024” that delayed her discovery of the email issue. Chen told the court it had been a “surprise” to learn of the verdict from a post by Wang on social media in China.

Chen’s motion to set aside the verdict was disputed in subsequent filings by attorney Gregory Light, who represents Wang and Fretcher in the Florida case. In an April 23 filing, Light asked the court to delay the deadline for a draft final judgment based on the jury’s verdict, in light of Chen’s April 11 move to set the verdict aside and resume the trial.

“While the Motion to Set Aside may be meritless, legally insufficient, and Counter-Plaintiffs certainly oppose the [motion], it might be reversible error to enter Final Judgment while there is an undisposed motion to set aside pending,” Light wrote. In a separate filing, he included a photo of an envelope addressed (in English) to Chen in Shanghai that was poised to be dropped in a mail slot.

It’s not yet clear whether the Florida court will ultimately rule on the veracity of the competing claims of an aeronautical “first,” an issue that other U.S. courts have, so far, avoided, with decisions focused instead on legal procedure.

Wang currently flies for a major U.S. airline, Fretcher confirmed in an email exchange. He posted his wife’s collected receipts from her 2016 circumnavigation on a website that includes photos, videos, documents, GPS tracks, and other details of her journey.

Chen, who included a copy of a failed email receipt in her April 11 filing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and for a current photo, that was emailed to the account used to file the recent court documents.