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OLYMPIC AIRWAYS v. HUSAIN [02-1348] | FindLaw
OLYMPIC AIRWAYS v. HUSAIN [02-1348]
OLYMPIC AIRWAYS v. HUSAIN, individually, and as personal representative of the ESTATE OF HANSON, DECEASED, et al., (2004)
Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which O'Connor, J., joined as to Parts I and II. Breyer, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
OLYMPIC AIRWAYS, PETITIONER v. RUBINA HUSAIN,individually and as personal representative of theESTATE OF ABID M. HANSON, DECEASED, et al.
Confirming this interpretation, other provisions of the Convention suggest that there is often no distinction between action and inaction on the issue of ultimate liability. For example, Article 25 provides that Article 22's liability cap does not apply in the event of "wilful mis-conduct or ... such default on [the carrier's] part as, in accordance with the law of the court to which the case is submitted, is considered to be equivalent to wilful misconduct." 49 Stat. 3020 (emphasis added).11 Because liability can be imposed for death or bodily injury only in the case of an Article 17 "accident" and Article 25 only lifts the caps once liability has been found, these provisions read together tend to show that inaction can give rise to liability. Moreover, Article 20(1) makes clear that the "due care" defense is unavailable when a carrier has failed to take "all necessary measures to avoid the damage." Id., at 3019. These provisions suggest that an air carrier's inaction can be the basis for liability.
When we interpret a treaty, we accord the judgments of our sister signatories " 'considerable weight.' " Air France v. Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 404 (1985). True to that canon, our previous Warsaw Convention opinions have carefully considered foreign case law. See, e.g., El Al Israel Airlines, Ltd. v. Tsui Yuan Tseng, 525 U. S. 155, 173-174 (1999); Eastern Airlines, Inc. v. Floyd, 499 U. S. 530, 550-551 (1991); Saks, supra, at 404. Today's decision stands out for its failure to give any serious consideration to how the courts of our treaty partners have resolved the legal issues before us. This sudden insularity is striking, since the Court in recent years has canvassed the prevailing law in other nations (at least Western European nations) to determine the meaning of an American Constitution that those nations had no part in framing and that those nations' courts have no role in enforcing. See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304, 316-317, n. 21 (2002) (whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution of the mentally retarded); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. ___, ___ (2003) (slip op., at 16) (whether the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the criminalization of homosexual conduct). One would have thought that foreign courts' interpretations of a treaty that their governments adopted jointly with ours, and that they have an actual role in applying, would be (to put it mildly) all the more relevant.
The Court holds that an airline's mere inaction can constitute an "accident" within the meaning of the Warsaw Convention. Ante, at 10-13. It derives this principle from our definition of "accident" in Saks as "an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger." 470 U. S., at 405. The Court says thisdefinition encompasses failures to act like the flight attendant's refusal to reseat Hanson in the face of a request for assistance.
That is far from clear. The word "accident" is used in two distinct senses. One refers to something that is unintentional, not "on purpose"--as in, "the hundred typing monkeys' verbatim reproduction of War and Peace was an accident." The other refers to an unusual and unexpected event, intentional or not: One may say he has been involved in a "train accident," for example, whether or not the derailment was intentionally caused. As the Court notes, ante, at 6-7, n. 6, Saks adopted the latter definition rather than the former. That distinction is crucialbecause, while there is no doubt that inaction can bean accident in the former sense ("I accidentally left the stove on"), whether it can be so in the latter sense isquestionable.
Two of our sister signatories have concluded that it cannot. In Deep Vein Thrombosis and Air Travel Group Litigation, [2003] EWCA Civ. 1005, 2003 WL 21353471 (July 3, 2003), England's Court of Appeal, in an opinion by the Master of the Rolls that relied heavily on Abramson v. Japan Airlines Co., 739 F. 2d 130 (CA3 1984), and analyzed more than a half-dozen other non-English decisions, held as follows:
"A critical issue in this appeal is whether a failure to act, or an omission, can constitute an accident for the purposes of Article 17. Often a failure to act results in an accident, or forms part of a series of acts and omissions which together constitute an accident. In such circumstances it may not be easy to distinguish between acts and omissions. I cannot see, however, how inaction itself can ever properly be described as an accident. It is not an event; it is a non-event. Inaction is the antithesis of an accident." [2003] EWCA Civ. 1005, ¶ ;25, 2003 WL 21353471 (Lord Phillips, M. R.). Six months later, the appellate division of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, in an opinion that likewise gave extensive consideration to American and other foreign decisions, agreed:
"The allegations in substance do no more than state a failure to do something, and this cannot be characterised as an event or happening, whatever be the concomitant background to that failure to warn or advise. That is not to say that a failure to take a specific required step in the course of flying an aircraft, or in picking up or setting down passengers, cannot lead to an event or happening of the requisite unusual or unexpected kind and thus be an accident for the purpose of the article. A failure by a pilot to use some device in the expected and correct manner, such as a failure to let down the landing wheels or a chance omission to adjust the level of pressurisation, may lead, as has been held, to an accident contemplated by Article 17, but I would venture to suggest that it is not the failure to take the step which is properly to be characterised as an accident but rather its immediate and disastrous consequence whether that be the dangerous landing on the belly of the aircraft or an immediate unexpected and dangerous drop in pressurisation." Qantas Ltd. v. Povey, [2003] VSCA 227, ¶ ;17, 2003 WL 23000692 (Dec. 23, 2003) (Ormiston, J. A.). We can, and should, look to decisions of other signatories when we interpret treaty provisions. Foreign constructions are evidence of the original shared understanding of the contracting parties. Moreover, it is reasonable to impute to the parties an intent that their respective courts strive to interpret the treaty consistently. (The Warsaw Convention's preamble specifically acknowledges "the advantage of regulating in a uniform manner the conditions of ... the liability of the carrier." 49 Stat. 3014 (emphasis added).) Finally, even if wedisagree, we surely owe the conclusions reached by appellate courts of other signatories the courtesy of respectful consideration.
The Court nonetheless dismisses Deep Vein Thrombosis and Povey in a footnote responding to this dissent. Ante, at 11, n. 9. As to the former, it claims (choosing its words carefully) that the "conclusion" it reaches is "not inconsistent" with that case. Ibid. (emphasis added). The reader should not think this to be a contention that the Master of the Rolls' opinion might be read to agree with today's holding that inaction can constitute an "accident." (To repeat the conclusion of that opinion: "Inaction is the antithesis of an accident." [2003] EWCA Civ. 1005, ¶ ;25, 2003 WL 21353471.) What it refers to is the fact that the Master of the Rolls distinguished the Court of Appeals' judgment below (announced in an opinion that assumed inaction was involved, but did not at all discuss the action-inaction distinction) on the ground that action was involved--namely, "insistence that [Hanson] remain seated in the area exposed to smoke." Id., ¶ ;50.1 As I explain below, see Part II, infra, that theory does not quite work because, in fact, the flight attendant did not insist that Hanson remain seated. But we can ignore this detail for the time being. The point is that the English court thought Husain could recover, not because the action-inaction distinction was irrelevant, but because, even though action was indispensable, it had in fact occurred. The Court charts our course in exactly the opposite direction, spending three pages explaining why the action-inaction distinction is irrelevant. See ante, at 10-13. If the Court agrees with the Master of the Rolls that this case involves action, why does it needlessly place us in conflict with the courts of other signatories by deciding the then-irrelevant issue of whether inaction can constitute an accident? It would suffice to hold that our case involves action and end the analysis there. Whether inaction can constitute an accident under the Warsaw Convention is a significant issue on which international consensus is important; whether Husain can recover for her husband's death in this one case is not. As they stand, however, the core holdings of this case and Deep Vein Thrombosis--their rationes decidendi--are not only not "not inconsistent"; they are completely opposite.2
Equally unavailing is the reliance, ante, at 12-13, on Article 25 of the Warsaw Convention (which lifts liability caps for injury caused by a "default" of the airline equivalent to willful misconduct) and Article 20 (which precludes the airline's due-care defense if it fails to take "all necessary measures" to avoid the injury). The Court's analytical error in invoking these provisions is to assume that the inaction these provisions contemplate is the accident itself. The treaty imposes no such requirement. If a pilot negligently forgets to lower the landing gear, causing the plane to crash and killing all passengers on board, then recovery is presumptively available (because the crash that caused the deaths is an accident), and the due-care defense is inapplicable (because the pilot's negligent omission also caused the deaths), even though the omission is not the accident. Similarly, if a flight attendant fails to prevent the boarding of an individual whom she knows to be a terrorist, and who later shoots a passenger, the damages cap might be lifted even though the accident (the shooting) and the default (the failure to prevent boarding) do not coincide. Without the invented restriction that the Article 20 or 25 default be the accident itself, the Court's argument based on those provisions loses all force. As for the Court's hypothetical of the crew that refuses to divert after a passenger collapses, ante, at 11-12: This would be more persuasive as a reductio ad absurdum if the Eleventh Circuit had not already ruled out Article 17 liability in substantially these very circumstances. See Krys v. Lufthansa German Airlines, 119 F. 3d 1515, 1517-1522, 1527-1528 (1997). A legal construction is not fallacious merely because it has harsh results. The Convention denies a remedy, even when outrageous conduct and grievous injury have occurred, unless there has been an "accident." Whatever that term means, it certainly does not equate to "outrageous conduct that causes grievous injury." It is a mistake to assume that the Convention must provide relief whenever traditional tort law would do so. To the contrary, a principal object of the Convention was to promote the growth of the fledgling airline industry by limiting the circumstances under which passengers could sue. See Tseng, 525 U. S., at 170-171. Unless there has been an accident, there is no liability, whether the claim is trivial, cf. Lee v. American Airlines Inc., 355 F. 3d 386, 387 (CA5 2004) (suit for "loss of a 'refreshing, memorable vacation' "), or cries out for redress.
That the flight attendant explicitly refused Husain's pleas for help after the third request, rather than simply ignoring them, does not transform her inaction into action. The refusal acknowledged her inaction, but it was the inaction, not the acknowledgment, that caused Hanson's death. Unlike the previous responses, the third was a mere refusal to assist, and so cannot be the basis for liability under Article 17. The District Court's failure to make the distinction between the flight attendant's pretakeoff responses and her in-flight response undermines its decision in two respects. First, the court's findings as to airline and industry policy did not distinguish between reseating a passenger while in flight and reseating a passenger while still on the ground preparing to take off. In fact, some of the evidence on this point specifically related only to in-flight behavior. See id., at 1132 (testimony of a chief cabin attendant that the flight attendant should have reseated Hanson immediately after Husain's third request); ibid. (testimony of a company official that its policy is to move passengers "who become ill during flights" (emphasis added)). To establish that it is company policy to reseat an asthmatic does not establish that it is company policy to do so before takeoff, while the attendants are busy securing the plane for departure and before anyone has started smoking. In other words, there may have been nothing unusual about the initial insistence that Hanson stay seated, and for that reason no "accident." We do not know the policy in this more specific regard. The District Court made no findings because it applied an erroneous legal standard that did not require it to distinguish among the three requests. But even if the flight attendant's insistence that Hanson remain seated before takeoff was unusual or unexpected, and hence an accident, it was not a compensable cause of Hanson's death. It was perhaps a but-for cause (had the flight attendant allowed him to move before takeoff, he might have lived, just as he might have lived if he had taken a different flight); but it was not a proximate cause, which is surely a predicate for recovery. Any early insistence that Hanson remain seated became moot once the attendant later told Husain and her husband they were free to move about.
FOOTNOTESFootnote 1 Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air, Oct. 12, 1929, 49 Stat. 3000, T. S. No. 876 (1934), note following 49 U. S. C. §40105.
Footnote 2 Dr. Hanson and respondent did not know at the time that, despite Ms. Leptourgou's representations, the flight was actually not full. There were 11 unoccupied passenger seats, most of which were in economy class, and 28 "non-revenue passengers," 15 of whom were seated in economy class rows farther away from the smoking section than Dr. Hanson's seat. 116 F. Supp. 2d, at 1126.
Footnote 4 The Warsaw Convention's governing text is in French. We cite to the official English translation of the Convention, which was before the Senate when it consented to ratification of the Convention in 1934. See 49 Stat. 3014; Air France v. Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 397 (1985).
Footnote 5 After a plaintiff has established a prima facie case of liability under Article 17 by showing that the injury was caused by an "accident," the air carrier has the opportunity to prove under Article 20 that it took "all necessary measures to avoid the damage or that it was impossible for [the airline] to take such measures." 49 Stat. 3019. Thus, Article 17 creates a presumption of air carrier liability and shifts the burden to the air carrier to prove lack of negligence under Article 20. Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 497, 521 (1967). Article 22(1) caps the amount recoverable under Article 17 in the event of death or bodily injury, and Article 25(1) removes the cap if the damage is caused by the "wilful misconduct" of the airline or its agent, acting within the scope of his employment. See 49 Stat. 3019, 3020. Additionally, Article 21 enables an air carrier to avoid or reduce its liability if it can prove the passenger's comparative negligence. See id., at 3019.
Footnote 6 The term "accident" has at least two plausible yet distinct definitions. On the one hand, as noted in Saks, "accident" may be defined as an unintended event. See Webster's New World College Dictionary 8 (4th ed. 1999) ("a happening that is not ... intended"); see also American Heritage Dictionary 10 (4th ed. 2000) ("[l]ack of intention; chance"); Saks, 470 U. S., at 400. On the other hand, as noted in Saks, the term "accident" may be defined as an event that is "unusual" or "unexpected," whether the result of intentional action or not. Ibid. See Black's Law Dictionary 15 (6th ed. 1990) ("an unusual, fortuitous, unexpected, unforeseen, or unlooked for event, happening or occurrence" and "if happening wholly or partly through human agency, an event which under the circumstances is unusual and unexpected by the person to whom it happens"); see also American Heritage Dictionary, supra, at 10 ("[a]n unexpected and undesirable event," "[a]n unforeseen incident"). Although either definition of "accident" is at first glance plausible, neither party contests the definition adopted by the Court in Saks, which after careful examination discerned the meaning of "accident" under Article 17 of the Convention as an "unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger." 470 U. S., at 405.
Footnote 7 The Court cited approvingly several lower court opinions where intentional acts by third parties--namely, torts committed by terrorists--were recognized as "accidents" under a "broa[d]" interpretation of Article 17. Ibid. (citing lower court cases).
Footnote 8 Specifically, Article 25 removes the cap on air carrier liability when the injury is caused by the air carrier's "wilful misconduct." 49 Stat. 3020. Because there can be no liability for passenger death or bodily injury under the Convention in the absence of an Article 17 "accident," such "wilful misconduct" is best read to be included within the realm of conduct that may constitute an "accident" under Article 17.
Footnote 9 The dissent cites two cases from our sister signatories United Kingdom and Australia--Deep Vein Thrombosis and Air Travel Group Litigation, [2003] EWCA Civ. 1005, 2003 WL 21353471, *650 (July 3, 2003), and Qantas Ltd. v. Povey, [2003] VSCA 227, ¶ ;17, 2003 WL 23000692, ¶ ;17 (Dec. 23, 2003) (Ormiston, J. A.), respectively--and suggests that we should simply defer to their judgment on the matter. But our conclusion is not inconsistent with Deep Vein Thrombosis and Air Travel Litigation, where the United Kingdom Court of Appeals commented on the District Court and Court of Appeals opinions inthis case, and agreed that Dr. Hanson's death had resulted from an accident. The United Kingdom court reasoned: "The refusal of the flight attendant to move Dr. Hanson cannot properly be considered as mere inertia, or a non-event. It was a refusal to provide an alternative seat which formed part of a more complex incident, whereby Dr. Hanson was exposed to smoke in circumstances that can properly be described as unusual and unexpected." EWCA Civ. 1005, ¶ ;50, 2003 WL 21353471, at *664, ¶ ;50.
Footnote 10 We do not suggest--as the dissent erroneously contends--that liability must lie because otherwise "harsh results," post, at 5 (Scalia, J., dissenting), would ensue. This hypothetical merely illustrates that the failure of an airline crew to take certain necessary vital steps could quite naturally and, in routine usage of the language, be an "event or happening."
Footnote 11 The Montreal Protocol No. 4 to Amend the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Carriage by Air (1975) amends Article 25 by replacing "wilful misconduct" with the language "done with intent to cause damage or recklessly and with knowledge that damage would probably result," as long as the airline's employee or agent was acting "within the scope of his employment." S. Exec. Rep. No. 105-20, p. 29 (1998). In 1998, the United States gave its advice and consent to ratification of the protocol, and it entered into force in the United States on March 4, 1999. See El Al Israel Airlines, Ltd. v. Tsui Yuan Tseng, 525 U. S. 155, 174, n. 14 (1999). Because the facts here took place in 1997-1998, Montreal Protocol No. 4 does not apply.
FOOTNOTESFootnote 1 The Court quotes only part of the relevant discussion. Here is what the Master of the Rolls said about our case in full:
Footnote 2 To the extent the Court implies that Deep Vein Thrombosis and Povey merit only slight consideration because they were not decided by courts of last resort, see ante, at 11, n. 9, I note that our prior Warsaw Convention cases have looked to decisions of intermediate appellate foreign courts as well as supreme courts. See Air France v. Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 404 (1985). Moreover, Deep Vein Thrombosis was no ordinary decision. It was authored by the Master of the Rolls, the chief judge of England's civil appellate court--a position thought by many to be even more influential than that of a Law Lord. See, e.g., Smith, Bailey & Gunn on the Modern English Legal System 250 (4th ed. 2002); Denning: A Life of Law, BBC News (Mar. 5, 1999), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/290996.stm (as visited Jan. 20, 2004) (available in Clerk of Court's case file).
That there are "substantial factual distinctions" between the cases, ante, at 11, n. 9, is surely beside the point. A legal rule may arise in different contexts, but the differences are relevant only if the logic of the rule makes them so. Deep Vein Thrombosis and Povey hold in no uncertain terms that inaction cannot be an accident; not that inaction consisting of failure to warn of deep vein thrombosis cannot be an accident. Maintaining a coherent international body of treaty law requires us to give deference to the legal rules our treaty partners adopt. It is not enough to avoid inconsistent decisions on factually identical cases. FindLaw Career Center
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