Aviation

• Author: International Law Group

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 left New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Paris and Rome. A few minutes later, the aircraft seemed to blow up in midair and drop into the Atlantic Ocean about eight nautical miles off the south shore of Long Island, New York. None of the 230 persons aboard survived. Relatives and estate representatives of 213 passengers and crew members brought suits in various federal courts against TWA, the Boeing Company and Hydro-Aire, Inc., the latter having manufactured the aircraft's fuel pumps. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred all wrongful death cases arising from the accident to the Southern District of New York for combined pretrial proceedings in February 1997.

In July of that year, defendants filed a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) to dismiss plaintiffs' claims for nonpecuniary damages for failure to state a claim. Movants contended that the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) applied to the case and restricted recovery to pecuniary damages. In June 1998, the district court, in a written opinion, denied defendants' motion. See In re Air Crash off Long Island, New York, on July 17, 1996, 96 Civ. 7986 (June 2, 1998).

The court reasoned that Congress intended by the term "high seas" in DOHSA to limit the Act to non-sovereign waters or "international waters not subject to the dominion of any single nation." Therefore, DOHSA's damage limitations did not apply to this incident since it took place more than a marine league, but less than twelve nautical miles, from the shoreline. If DOHSA does not apply, plaintiffs may be entitled to nonpecuniary damages, e.g., for pre-death pain and suffering and survivor's grief. Under the Interlocutory Appeals Act, 28 U.S.C. Section 1292(b), defendant secured appellate review. As a matter of first impression, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirms in a divided opinion.

The Court of Appeals first points out that the Supreme Court's view was that the historical absence of a common law claim for wrongful death on land meant that no such claim existed within general admiralty jurisdiction. For a substantial period, the federal courts engaged in a confusing effort to expand state wrongful death statutes or to make use of foreign law to provide for recovery on the high seas. It was well into the twentieth century before the Supreme Court recognized such an admiralty claim with its unanimous opinion in Moragne v...