Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 161.0

524US1

Unit: $U78

[09-06-00 18:35:42] PAGES PGT: OPIN

116

OCTOBER TERM, 1997

Syllabus

DOOLEY, personal representative of the ESTATE
OF CHUAPOCO, et al. v. KOREAN AIR
LINES CO., LTD.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the district of columbia circuit

No. 97–704. Argued April 27, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998

The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA or Act) allows certain relatives
of a decedent to sue for their own pecuniary losses, but does not author-
ize recovery for the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering. Petition-
ers, personal representatives of three passengers killed when Korean
Air Lines Flight KE007 was shot down over the Sea of Japan, sued
respondent airline (KAL) for, inter alia, damages for their decedents’
pre-death pain and suffering. While their suit was pending, this Court
decided in Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U. S. 217—which
arose out of the same disaster—that the Warsaw Convention permits
compensation only for legally cognizable harm, but leaves the speciﬁca-
tion of what constitutes such harm to applicable domestic law, id., at
231; that DOHSA supplies the applicable United States law where an
airplane crashes on the high seas, ibid.; and that where DOHSA applies,
neither state nor general maritime law can permit recovery of loss-of-
society damages, id., at 230. Subsequently, the District Court in this
case granted KAL’s motion to dismiss petitioners’ nonpecuniary dam-
ages claims on the ground that DOHSA does not permit recovery for
such damages, including damages for a decedent’s pre-death pain and
suffering.
In afﬁrming, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ ar-
gument that general maritime law provides a survival action for pain
and suffering damages, holding that Congress has decided who may sue
and for what in cases of death on the high seas.

Held: Because Congress has chosen not to authorize a survival action for
a decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering in a case of death on the high
seas, there can be no general maritime survival action for such damages.
Before Congress enacted DOHSA, admiralty law did not permit an ac-
tion to recover damages for a person’s death.
In DOHSA, Congress
authorized such a cause of action for certain surviving relatives in cases
of death on the high seas, 46 U. S. C. App. § 761, but limited recovery to
the survivors’ own pecuniary losses, § 762. DOHSA’s limited survival
provision also restricts recovery to the survivors’ pecuniary losses.
In Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U. S. 618, this Court
§ 765.