Opinion ID: 3195507
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Abdullah

Text: In Abdullah, we considered the preemptive effect of federal in-flight seatbelt regulations on state law negligence claims for a flight crew’s failure to warn passengers that their flight would encounter severe turbulence. Id. at 365. One of the plane’s crew members had illuminated the fasten seatbelt sign in accordance with the federal regulations, but none of the crew had given the passengers an additional verbal warning of expected turbulence. Id. at 365, 371 & n.11. When the turbulence hit, the plaintiffs suffered serious 15 injuries. Id. at 365. After the jury found American Airlines liable and awarded the plaintiffs damages, the district court ordered a new trial, holding that the Federal Aviation Act preempted the territorial standards for aviation safety, and thus, that the jury should not have been instructed on a territorial standard of care. Id. at 365-66. We affirmed, explaining that the Federal Aviation Act and federal regulations “establish complete and thorough safety standards for interstate and international air transportation and that these standards are not subject to supplementation by, or variation among, jurisdictions.” Id. at 365. Although we held that federal law preempts state law standards of care in the field of air safety, we also held that it preserves state law remedies. Id. at 364. As such, within the field of air safety, Abdullah instructs that plaintiffs may bring state law causes of action that incorporate federal standards of care. Id. at 365. Our analysis in reaching this conclusion focused on the text and legislative history of the Federal Aviation Act, which was adopted primarily to promote safety in aviation and gave the FAA broad authority to issue safety regulations. Id. at 368-69. We observed that the FAA, in exercising this authority, “has implemented a comprehensive system of rules and regulations, which promotes flight safety by regulating pilot certification, pilot pre-flight duties, pilot flight responsibilities, and flight rules.” Id. at 369 (footnotes omitted). We then reviewed several cases from the Supreme Court and our sister Circuits that had found federal preemption with regard to discrete matters of in-flight operations, including aircraft noise, City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal Inc., 411 U.S. 624, 633 (1973); pilot regulation, French v. Pan Am Express, Inc., 869 F.2d 1, 6 (1st 16 Cir. 1989); and control of flights through navigable airspace, British Airways Bd. v. Port Auth. of N.Y., 558 F.2d 75, 84 (2d Cir. 1977). Abdullah, 181 F.3d at 369-71. We paid special heed to 14 C.F.R. § 91.13(a), which proscribes “operat[ing] an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another,” and observed that it provided a catch-all standard of care. Id. at 371.5 Thus, we concluded that state law standards of care within the “field of aviation safety” were preempted, and we instructed that “a court must refer . . . to the overall concept that aircraft may not be operated in a careless or reckless manner” in addition to any specific regulations that may be applicable. Id. Importantly for our purposes, although we stated in broad terms that the Federal Aviation Act preempted the “field of aviation safety,” id., the regulations and decisions we discussed in Abdullah all related to in-air operations, see 14 C.F.R. § 1.1 (“Operate, with respect to aircraft, means use, cause to use or authorize to use aircraft, for the purpose . . . of air navigation including the piloting of aircraft . . . .”), and the catch-all standard of care that we held a court “must refer to” applied only to operating, not designing or manufacturing, an aircraft. See 14 C.F.R. §§ 1.1, 91.13. We confirmed the limits of our holding in Abdullah a decade later in Elassaad, 613 F.3d at 121, where we clarified that a flight crew’s oversight of the disembarkation of 5 The full text of this regulation reads: “Aircraft operations for the purpose of air navigation. No person may operate an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.” 14 C.F.R. § 91.13(a). 17 passengers after an airplane came to a complete stop at its destination was not within the preempted field of aviation safety. By drawing a line between what happens during flight and what happens upon disembarking, we made clear that the field of aviation safety described in Abdullah was limited to in-air operations. Id. at 127-31 (“[T]he [Federal Aviation Act’s] safety provisions appear to be principally concerned with safety in connection with operations associated with flight.” (emphasis added)). Abdullah thus does not govern products liability claims like those at issue here. 6 Indeed, as discussed further below, products liability claims are not subject to the same catch-all standard of care that motivated our field preemption decision in Abdullah; the design regulations governing the issuance of type certificates are not as comprehensive as the regulations governing pilot certification, pilot pre-flight duties, pilot flight responsibilities, and flight rules discussed there; and our postAbdullah case law cautions us against interpreting the scope of the preempted field too broadly. See Elassaad, 613 F.3d at 131. This conclusion is consistent with other courts that have interpreted Abdullah. For example, the Ninth Circuit, which had previously adopted Abdullah’s conclusion that the Federal Aviation Act preempts state law standards of care in 6 Appellees point to our passing reference in Elassaad that the certification and airworthiness requirements for aircraft parts concern aspects of air safety. 613 F.3d at 128. The certification process, however, had no relevance to the pertinent issues in Elassaad, so this statement constituted dicta. See In re Nat’l Football League Players Concussion Injury Litig., 775 F.3d 570, 583-84 n.18 (3d Cir. 2014). 18 the field of aviation safety, has held that products liability does not fall within that preempted field. Martin ex rel. Heckman v. Midwest Express Holdings, Inc., 555 F.3d 806, 809-11 (9th Cir. 2009) (Kozinski, J.). Even the district courts that believed Abdullah compelled them to extend the preempted field to products liability claims, including the District Court in this case, have noted that such a holding was at odds with the federal regulatory scheme governing aviation design and manufacturing. See Sikkelee, 45 F. Supp. 3d at 460 (“Yet having endeavored to reconcile Abdullah with the federal regulatory scheme that governs aviation design and manufacturing, this Court—either by way of its own error or that of the precedents it has followed—has reached holdings that it imagines have little to do with Congressional intent.”); see also Pease, 2011 WL 6339833, at -23 (stating that Abdullah’s reasoning is overbroad). Having concluded that Abdullah does not control here, we must now determine whether Congress intended the Federal Aviation Act to preempt products liability claims.