Opinion ID: 724998
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The law of the court to which the case is submitted

Text: 19 Article 18 of the Warsaw Convention presumes an air carrier liable for loss or damage to goods in transit, but Article 22(2) limits that liability to 250 francs per kilogram, or approximately $9.07 per pound. Warsaw Convention, Arts. 18, 22(2). However, under Article 25(1) and (2), the Convention eliminates the limitation of liability where the wilful misconduct of the carrier causes the loss or damage. Id., Art. 25(1) & (2). Under that Article, a complaining party must prove both wilful misconduct and proximate cause in order to avoid the general rule of limited liability. 20 Specifically, Article 25, as translated, states: 21 (1) The carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of the provisions of this convention which exclude or limit his liability, if the damage is caused by his wilful misconduct or by such default on his part as, in accordance with the law of the court to which the case is submitted, is considered to be equivalent to wilful misconduct. 22 (2) Similarly the carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of the said provisions, if the damage is caused under the same circumstances by any agent of the carrier acting within the scope of his employment. 23 Id., Art. 25(1) & (2) (emphases added). Thus, Article 25(2) makes it clear that an air carrier is liable for the wilful misconduct of its employees acting within the scope of their employment. More pertinently, Article 25(1) makes it clear that wilful misconduct must be defined in accordance with the law of the court to which the case is submitted. Id., Art. 25(1). 24 The language of Article 25(1), adopted in subsection (2) by use of the word similarly, is clear. The only reasonable interpretation of the reference to the law of the court to which the case is submitted is as a reference to the law of the forum jurisdiction. More importantly, the only reasonable construction of Article 25's reference to the law of the forum jurisdiction is deference to that law for the purposes of defining dol or wilful misconduct. In other words, Article 25 unambiguously deprives an air carrier of limited liability for damage caused by its dol, or that which is considered to be equivalent to dol, interpreted as wilful misconduct, under the law of the forum jurisdiction. Id., Art. 25(1). 25 Because we conclude that the language of Article 25(1) clearly calls for the application of the law of the forum jurisdiction, we must reject the international interpretation of Article 25 advanced by Brink's. In other words, because Article 25(1) unambiguously defers to the law of the forum jurisdiction for the content of wilful misconduct, we must reject any notion that this language is merely a reference to local terminology or, as Brink's describes it, a vehicle for translating the difficult civil concept of dol. 26 Although we recognize that the term dol, or wilful misconduct, as we have translated it, is a civil law concept, and one that is not readily capable of translation, the conflict over the content of wilful misconduct arises out of conflicting policies, not difficulty of translation. Compare Rustenberg Platinum Mines, Ltd. v. South African Airways, [1979] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 19, 23 (Eng.C.A.) (concluding that an employee who commits theft while carrying out functions entrusted to him is acting within the scope of his employment), with Rymanowski v. Pan Am. World Airways, 70 A.D.2d 738, 739, 416 N.Y.S.2d 1018, 1020 (3d Dep't 1979) (concluding that an employee who commits theft is not acting within the scope of his employment because acts such as theft are not committed in furtherance of the employee's duties), aff'd, 49 N.Y.2d 834, 427 N.Y.S.2d 795, 404 N.E.2d 1336 (1980). In other words, we believe that the drafters of the Convention recognized the possibility of conflicting national policies with respect to imputing liability to a carrier, but unmistakably resolved any conflict by deferring to the law of the forum jurisdiction. 27 Even were we to ignore the plain language of Article 25 and conclude that the difficulty of interpreting the term dol alone justified resort to interpretive techniques, traditional interpretive techniques do not support the concept of an international standard advanced by Brink's. First, the participants at the Warsaw Convention were not ignorant of the widely divergent laws governing liability for the acts of servants. As one scholar relied upon by Brink's noted, the participants to the Convention appreciated the difficulty of determining what acts should be imputed to a carrier but did not draw any lines. H. Drion, Limitation of Liabilities in International Air Law pp 205-206, at 248 (1954). 28 Second, the minutes of the Warsaw Convention offer little guidance on the ultimate question presented here--the liability of an employer for the acts of an employee. Id. p 206. Third, the international authorities cited by Brink's similarly offer little guidance to American courts. Although these authorities universally conclude that theft by an employee must be imputed to the employer for purposes of liability, they do not address the question of which body of law governs under Article 25, presumably because no real conflict arose in those cases. See, e.g., Rustenberg Platinum Mines, Ltd. v. South African Airways, [1979] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 19, 23 (Eng.C.A.) (concluding that English courts share view generally accepted in other countries that a master is liable for the acts committed by a servant in the course of carrying out the duties entrusted to him). Finally, although the participants to the Warsaw Convention desired uniformity, and although the opinions of sister signatories are entitled to considerable weight, Air France v. Saks, 470 U.S. 392, 404, 105 S.Ct. 1338, 1344-45, 84 L.Ed.2d 289 (1985) (quoting Benjamins v. British European Airways, 572 F.2d 913, 919 (2d Cir.1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1114, 99 S.Ct. 1016, 59 L.Ed.2d 72 (1979)), the participants in the Convention recognized that uniformity was not always possible, and thus, envisioned application of local law to certain questions. See Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd., --- U.S. ----, ----, 116 S.Ct. 629, 635, 133 L.Ed.2d 596 (1996) (noting incontrovertible application of national law to certain issues and infeasibility of uniformity under Article 24). 29 In short, the literal language of Article 25 refers to the law of the forum jurisdiction for a determination of what conduct constitutes wilful misconduct by an air carrier. Moreover, even traditional interpretive techniques, foreclosed by the clarity of Article 25, would not produce a definitive, let alone contrary, interpretation of Article 25. Thus, the law of the United States determines what conduct will deprive an air carrier of limited liability protection. 30