Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 18, 1991 TAG: 9104180110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Airlines are obliged by world treaty only to pay for physical injury or death to passengers during international flights, the court declared. It turned aside psychic injury claims by passengers on an Eastern Airlines flight that nearly ditched in the Atlantic Ocean eight years ago.
The decision conflicts with a ruling by Israel's supreme court interpreting the same treaty to assure protection against purely emotional injuries such as fright and shock.
In a second legal defeat for travelers Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that passengers on ocean cruises may be forced to go to courts far from their home states to sue a cruise line for harm suffered while on board.
That ruling rejected the claim of a Washington state couple that they should be allowed to sue in federal court in their own state because they could not afford to go to Florida to sue a cruise line over the woman's injury, which she suffered during a shipboard fall.
Their ticket, typical for cruise line passage, specified in fine print on the back that any lawsuits against the cruise company had to be pursued in Florida.
The court's ruling on psychic "trauma" in international flights settled a controversy that has continued for years among aviation lawyers. Lower courts had split on whether the Warsaw Convention, a treaty dating from 1929, protected travelers from emotional injuries - unrelated to any physical harm - during an in-flight incident.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, who wrote the decision, noted that international airlines are strictly liable for any harm to passengers when that harm is covered by the treaty, so mental injuries should be considered covered only if they were clearly intended. The court found that they were not covered.
The decision came in the case of Eastern Airlines vs. Floyd, which involved a flight from Miami bound for the Bahamas.
Soon after takeoff, one of the plane's engines stopped, and the crew turned the aircraft around to go back to Miami. The two other engines suddenly failed, too, and the crew announced that the plane would be ditched in the Atlantic. But as the plane fell, the crew restarted an engine, and flew the plane safely back to Miami.
Twenty-five lawsuits were filed by passengers claiming emotional injury. Those claims are barred by the new decision.
by CNB