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DOOLEY v. KOREAN AIR LINES CO.

Opinion of the Court

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.
In a case of death on the high seas, the Death on the High
Seas Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 761 et seq., allows certain rela-
tives of the decedent to sue for their pecuniary losses, but
does not authorize recovery for the decedent’s pre-death pain
and suffering. This case presents the question whether
those relatives may nevertheless recover such damages
through a survival action under general maritime law. We
hold that they may not.

I

On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight KE007,
en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea,
strayed into the airspace of the former Soviet Union and was
shot down over the Sea of Japan. All 269 people on board
were killed.

Petitioners, the personal representatives of three of the
passengers, brought lawsuits against respondent Korean Air
Lines Co., Ltd. (KAL), in the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia. These cases were consolidated
in that court, along with the other federal actions arising
out of the crash. After trial, a jury found that KAL had
committed “willful misconduct,” thus removing the Warsaw
Convention’s $75,000 cap on damages, and in a subsequent
verdict awarded $50 million in punitive damages. The
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld
the ﬁnding of willful misconduct, but vacated the punitive
damages award on the ground that the Warsaw Convention
In re
does not permit the recovery of punitive damages.
Korean Air Lines Disaster of Sept. 1, 1983, 932 F. 2d 1475,
cert. denied, 502 U. S. 994 (1991).

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation thereafter
remanded, for damages trials, all of the individual cases to
the District Courts in which they had been ﬁled.
In peti-
tioners’ cases, KAL moved for a pretrial determination that
the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA or Act), 46 U. S. C.