Court Opinion

ID: 9488110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:36:44.769572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:42.187119
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The Airline Deregulation Act (“ADA”) preempts private causes of action “relating to rates, routes, or services of any air carrier.” 49 U.S.C. § 1305(a)(1) (Supp.1994). The gravamen of Ms. Harris’ personal injury claim is that the flight crew negligently failed to provide for her safety by not protecting her from Doe’s abusive behavior. The majority, however, goes astray in characterizing Ms. Harris’ claim in terms of a single piece of evidence she offers to prove negligence: that the flight crew gave Doe more to drink after observing his abusive behavior toward her, thus aggravating the risk of emotional and physical harm. Fixating on the allegation that drinks were served to Doe, the majority holds that Ms. Harris’ personal injury claim is preempted because it “relates to” the “service[ ]” of beverages by airline carriers. In so holding, the majority has created an inter-circuit conflict with the Fifth Circuit. See Hodges v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 44 F.3d 334 (5th Cir.1995) (en banc), Smith v. America West Airlines, Inc., 44 F.3d 344 (5th Cir.1995) (en banc).
Frances Hodges, a passenger on a Delta Airlines flight, was injured when a case of rum fell on her from an overhead compartment. Ms. Hodges claimed that Delta was negligent in allowing the rum to be stored in the overhead compartment. In considering Delta’s preemption defense, the Fifth Circuit acknowledged that “[a] facile analogy to Morales and the ERISA pre-emption eases could suggest that ‘services’ includes all aspects of the air carrier’s ‘utility’ to its customers, hence, any tort claim may ‘relate to’ services as a result of its indirect regulatory impact on the airlines practices.” Hodges, 44 F.3d at 337-38. However, the court rejected the Morales analogy, noting that “neither the ADA nor its legislative history indicates that Congress intended to displace the application of state tort law to personal physical injury inflicted by aircraft operations, or that Congress even considered such preemption.” Id. at 338. The Fifth Circuit reasoned that by enacting regulatory statutes requiring air carriers to maintain liability insurance for “bodily injuries to or the death of any person, or for loss of or damage to property of others, resulting from the operation or maintenance of aircraft” (49 U.S.C.App. § 1371(q) (1994)), “Congress explicitly preserved airlines’ duty to respond to tort actions, inferentially state law actions, for physical injury or property damage.” Hodges, 44 F.3d at 339. Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit held that the ADA did not preempt Ms. Hodges’ negligence claim for personal injury.
In a companion case to Hodges, the Fifth Circuit also held that the ADA did not preempt a personal injury claim brought by passengers charging America West Airlines with negligence for the airline crew’s failure “to warn or protect ticketed passengers against hazards which were known or should have been known to them” by allowing a visibly deranged person, a hijacker, to board. Smith, 44 F.3d at 346. Noting that economic deregulation was the key to the ADA, the court held that the boarding “services” preempted under the ADA were “limited to economic decisions concerning boarding, e.g., overbooking or charter arrangements, and *1478contractual decisions whether to board particular ticketed passengers.” Id. at 346-47. The Fifth Circuit reasoned that, “[i]f appellants ultimately recover damages, the judgment could affect the airline’s ticket selling, training or security practices, but it would not regulate the economic or contractual aspects of boarding.” Id. at 347.
Ms. Harris’ case is on all fours with Smith. The two cases cannot be distinguished based upon any material difference in the facts. If we apply the reasoning of Smith to the facts of Ms. Harris’ case, the result becomes clear. Ms. Harris sued for negligence based upon the flight crew’s failure to protect her from Doe’s abusive behavior and for exacerbating the known risk of emotional and physical injury by serving Doe more alcohol. Since economic deregulation is the key to the ADA, however, beverage “services” preempted under the ADA are limited to economic decisions regarding the provision of drinks, e.g., whether or not to provide drinks on any flight, and contractual decisions about whether to charge for the drinks or provide them free. Id. If Ms. Harris were ultimately to recover damages in this case, the judgment could affect the airline’s training or security practices regarding how to protect passengers from harassment, but it would not regulate the economic or contractual aspects of the airline’s provision of beverages. Id. If the Fifth Circuit’s analytical framework is applied to Ms. Harris’ claim, it is plainly not preempted by the ADA.
Finally, the majority’s reliance on American Airlines, Inc. v. Wolens, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 817, 130 L.Ed.2d 715 (1995) is misplaced.1 Wolens held that the ADA did not preempt claims for an airline’s breach of contractual obligations established by its own frequent flyer program. In the course of that opinion, the Supreme Court suggested that personal injury claims against airline carriers were not preempted by the ADA. Id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 825 n. 7 (noting that “American does not urge that the ADA preempts personal injury claims relating to airline operations”); id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 827 n. 9 (noting that even the dissent’s “ ‘all is preempted’ position leaves room for personal injury claims”). See also id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 827 (STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“In my opinion, private tort actions based on common-law negligence or fraud, or on a statutory prohibition against fraud, are not preempted”); id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 830 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (“my view of Morales does not mean that personal injury claims against airlines are always preempted”).
I respectfully dissent.

. The only other two cases the majority discusses also fail to provide support for its holding that Ms. Harris' claim is preempted because the cases did not involve personal injury claims. See Morales v. Trans World Airlines, 504 U.S. 374, 389, 112 S.Ct. 2031, 2040, 119 L.Ed.2d 157 (1992) (holding that the ADA preempts state consumer protection guidelines on fare advertising); West v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 995 F.2d 148, 151 (9th Cir.1993) (holding that the ADA does not preempt a state law claim for compensatory damages for flight overbooking under Montana’s good faith and fair dealing laws).