Opinion ID: 744754
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Contrary Arguments Refuted

Text: 38 Two arguments have been advanced in support of the proposition that the Convention is wholly exclusive. We reject both. The first is a structural argument advanced in Great Britain. See Sidhu [1997] 1 All E.R. at 205-07. In the view of the English courts, Article 17 is intended to provide exhaustively for the circumstances under which a carrier may be held liable. See id. at 207. According to the House of Lords, the purpose of Article 17 is to prescribe the circumstances, that is to say the only circumstances, in which a carrier will be liable in damages to the passenger for claims arising out of his international carriage by air. Id. Interpreted in this fashion, the English courts read Article 24's reference to cases covered under article 17 to mean those cases within the Convention not covered by Articles 18 (baggage) and 19 (delay), rather than to distinguish between incidents of personal injury that are or are not within the provisions of the Convention. See id. 39 We recognize that a construction of the Convention by our sister signatories is entitled to considerable weight, Saks, 470 U.S. at 404, 105 S.Ct. at 1344, but remain unpersuaded to follow the course laid out in Sidhu. For one thing, the Convention is not an exhaustive set of rules and guidelines dealing with international air travel, as is evident from its formal title. As one commentator explained, the Convention was not intended to govern the entire relationship between air carriers and passengers ..., and does not propose to unify all such rules. Ras, Warsaw's Wingspan, supra, at 589; see Mankiewicz, The Liability Regime, supra, at 13, 91. 40 For another, neither the text nor the travaux preparatoires reveal an aim to provide in an exhaustive way for the liability of the carrier for all personal injuries. It is widely accepted that one of the two primary purposes of the Convention was to shield carriers from financial catastrophe following in the wake of a major accident. See MacDonald v. Air Canada, 439 F.2d at 1405; Andreas F. Lowenfeld & Allan I. Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 Harv. L.Rev. 497, 499 (1967). To that end, the Convention limits airline liability for accidents. But the Convention does not purport to insulate carriers from the ordinary risks of doing business, such as keeping their facilities in good repair. An injury to a passenger caused, for example, by a failure of a carrier to keep its walkways in a safe condition is hardly the type of catastrophic incident that would likely force even a fledgling airline out of business, and cannot be assumed to have been within the contemplation of the drafters of the Convention. 41 Given the self-described limitation of the Convention, it seems illogical to extend its scope beyond that for which it explicitly provides. 3 It is not tenable to believe the Convention meant to address the more ordinary type of personal injury without some express statement in the text to that effect. Such reading would lead to the absurd result of allowing carriers to escape liability for their negligence--or even their intentional torts--so long as the event giving rise to the injury was not an accident occurring on an airplane or in the course of embarking or disembarking as narrowly circumscribed by the definition of Article 17's meaning. 42 For example, it is generally accepted that a passenger injured while riding an escalator in the airline terminal does not have recourse under Article 17. See, e.g., McCarthy, 56 F.3d at 317 (passenger's slip on escalator not in the course of embarking or disembarking); Abu Hamdeh v. American Airlines, Inc., 862 F.Supp. 243, 247-48 (E.D.Mo.1994) (same); Rolnick, 551 F.Supp. at 264 (same). Were we to read Article 17 to provide the exclusive remedy for personal injury, a carrier would not be liable for injuries caused by the malfunctioning of an escalator, notwithstanding the fact that it may have recklessly disregarded its duty to keep it in proper repair. Beyond the inequity of forcing the passenger to bear the cost of an airline's negligence, safeguarding an airline from this sort of liability removes the incentive for it to maintain its premises properly--an important goal of domestic tort law. See W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 4, at 25 (5th ed. 1984) (When the decisions of the courts become known, and defendants realize that they may be held liable, there is of course a strong incentive to prevent the occurrence of the harm.); cf. Day, 528 F.2d at 34 (airlines are in better position to assess risks and prevent accidents). 43 The second argument advanced in support of holding the Convention wholly exclusive is that permitting state law claims under any circumstances contravenes the Convention's goal of uniformity. See Potter, 98 F.3d at 885. This argument is flawed in two respects. First, while uniformity is certainly one of the two primary goals of the Convention, such a goal has not always been found feasible in all areas of international travel. Second, even where possible, uniformity cannot justify altering the operating structure of the Convention. See Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U.S. 217, ----, 116 S.Ct. 629, 636, 133 L.Ed.2d 596 (1996) (rejecting application of general maritime law to all Convention cases regardless of whether maritime law would naturally apply). We have read Zicherman to instruct specifically that the Convention expresses no compelling interest in uniformity that would warrant us in supplanting an otherwise applicable body of law, here state law. See Pescatore v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 97 F.3d 1, 11 (2d Cir.1996). Even to accept the argument that uniformity should prevail where the Convention does not apply does not support the ultimate proposition that the Convention must therefore provide the exclusive remedy, because uniformity could be achieved equally as well by allowing recovery outside the Convention, under a uniform body of law. Of course, once the Convention is ruled inapplicable the carrier may, in a liability suit against it under domestic law, interpose all the defenses available to it under that law.