1. There is nothing in the fact that the deceased pilot's wife is named in the proceedings. She is likely to be simply the personal representative of his estate.
2. The AAIB does not establish blame, although its findings may be used as evidence in the process of establishing blame.
3. There is no requirement to establish blame in general - the question of blame arises when one person attempts to sue another (or his estate).
4. The Claim may have been brought at the instigation of the Jockey personally (who, regardless of other considerations, has doubtless suffered considerable financial loss as a result of what happened) or, as has been pointed out above, if the Jockey had taken out and paid for his loss of income insurance policy, providing him with income in the event that he became too incapacitated to do his job, it may have been a term of that policy that the jockey was obliged to sue any possible wrongdoer i.e. if he wanted to be paid out under the policy he had no choice but to sue whether he liked it or not.
5. This is a battle of insurance companies - it is highly unlikely to be "personal" and is (leaving aside for the moment the more general arguments about the corrosive effect of a compensation culture and/or the effects of the Warsaw Convention) quite unremarkable. In law, as a passenger in a car or and aeroplane, the one person not at fault is you - there's an understandable presumption that something happened that should not have happened to the driver/pilot or car/plane so in situations such as this there is, on the face of things, a pretty good chance of recovering something. That presumption can, of course, be rebutted.
6. Is it right that a pilot who plainly battled to save his ship should suffer the ignominy of being "blamed" after his death for monetary reasons? I'm afraid that it is, unless our entire legal system changes to one that compensates people regardless of whether anyone else is "to blame" or not. The risk of this happening to us as pilots or drivers is the price we pay for being able to obtain and rely on insurance. I think it should also be remembered that being to blame in a legal sense is often very different from being to blame in a sense that would attract public criticism. Not a car journey or flight takes place without us doing or not doing something "wrong" in the sense that with hindsight we might to it a little differently in the interest of perfection. In the vast majority of circumstances, nothing comes of it. For the unlucky, a combination of circumstances means that a lapse makes the difference between a safe journey and an accident. There but for the Grace of God we go. This is, of course, not always the case - some errors are stupid, very stupid, reckless or suicidal. But in cases like this where if there was any lapse by the pilot (which is some way from being established) then I doubt very much that the imposition of "blame" by law amounts to nearly enough to eclipse, to the non-lawyers eye, what he did right.
7. I therefore doubt that this is a story about which to be too outraged.