Aviation

• Author: International Law Group

Fifteen-year-old Ms. Morris (plaintiff) was a paying passenger on a KLM flight from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam traveling by herself.

Upon waking from a nap, she discovered the hand of the man next to her caressing her left thigh from her hip to her knee. Extremely distressed, she got up and told a flight attendant what had happened to her. The attendant got her another seat. Back in England, a doctor diagnosed plaintiff as suffering from clinical depression based on a single episode of a major depressive illness.

In her English damage suit against KLM, she claimed only that the incident had caused her a mental injury. Plaintiff has gotten completely better from the incident.

A trial judge upheld her injury claim as within Article 17 of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Transportation by Air, with additional Protocol (1929) [the "Warsaw Convention"], 49 Stat. 3000; T.S. 876; 137 L.N.T.S. 11. The English version of Article 17 (the French text being authoritative) is: "The carrier is liable for damage sustained in the event of the death or wounding of a passenger or any other bodily injury [lesion corporelle] suffered by a passenger, if the accident which caused the damage so sustained took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking." [emphasis added] The Court of Appeal, however, held that Morris's claim did not constitute a "bodily injury." From this ruling, she obtained review in the House of Lords.

In an unrelated appeal from the Scottish courts, the following incidents had taken place. Plaintiff Philip King was riding on board a helicopter which Bristow Helicopters Ltd. owned and operated. As they started to take off from a North Sea floating platform in bad weather, both engines failed, causing the craft to land heavily on the deck, enveloped by smoke. The blinded passengers panicked, afraid that the helicopter was going to fall over into the stormy sea. Nevertheless, everyone was able to get out of the 'copter onto the platform.

King later developed post-traumatic stress disorder, leading to the onset of peptic ulcer disease. He sued Bristow in the Scottish courts, claiming both physical and mental injuries. (Eds. - while King's flight was not "international," a U.K. statute made Convention standards applicable.) Under his reading of article 17, the Lord Ordinary allowed proof only as to the peptic ulcer. The First Division court, however...