El Al Israel Airlines v. Tseng, Tsui Yuan (01/12/1999)
El Al Israel Airlines v. Tseng, Tsui Yuan (01/12/1999)
By: Sara Burnett, Medill News Service
Questions presented
May an airline passenger sue an international airline in state court for injuries not covered under the Warsaw Convention?
Brief
On May 22, 1993, New Yorker Tsui Yuan Tseng went to Kennedy Airport to catch an El Al Israel Airlines flight to Tel Aviv. After routine security questioning by an El Al Israel security guard, Tseng was classified as a ""high risk"" passenger because some of her answers were considered ""illogical."" She was taken to a private room where she was told to remove her shoes, jacket and sweater, then instructed to lower her blue jeans to mid-hip level. A female security guard searched her, including her breasts and groin area, outside of her clothing. Guards also searched her baggage.
Tseng was cleared and allowed to board her flight, where she realized that she was missing her camera, $1,000 in cash and a diamond Rolex watch and that several items in her bag were damaged. An El Al Israel representative in Tel Aviv told her she would have to file a claim in New York. Upon return, Tseng wrote to El Al Israel detailing the experience and listing the missing items.
Unsatisfied with the airline's response, Tseng filed a personal injury claim in New York state court arising from the search and a property claim for her lost and damaged property. Tseng alleged that the search left her ""really sick and very upset"" and ""emotionally traumatized and disturbed,"" and caused her to seek medical and psychiatric treatment. She did not suffer physical injuries from the search.
El Al Israel, arguing it was a ""foreign state,"" removed the case to federal court, where it claimed the suit was governed by the Warsaw Convention, a 1929 international treaty establishing uniform laws for international air travel. The Convention set a liability limit of $145,000 for personal damages resulting from accidents.
The court agreed that the Warsaw Convention governed. It ruled that the search constituted an ""accident"" and using the treaty's damages formula, the court awarded Tseng $1,034.90. The court rejected Tseng's personal injury claim because under the Convention a plaintiff must prove that the accident resulted in ""physical injury,"" which Tseng failed to do.
On appeal, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the search did not constitute an accident and was therefore not covered by the Warsaw Convention. An ""accident,"" the appeals court held, involves crashes, hijackings or other disasters, not ""typical occurrences that a passenger is presumed to have accepted"" as part of normal international air travel.
Because the Convention did not cover her personal injury claim, the court said Tseng could pursue the claim in state court, where she could sue for emotional injuries, not just physical injuries.
The court reasoned that the Convention did not preempt state law, and that the overriding goal of the treaty was to ensure passenger protection.
The airlines' petition for certiorari was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1998.
On Jan. 12, 1999, the Court reversed, holding that the Warsaw Convention precludes a passenger from maintaining an action for personal injury damages under local law when her claim does not satisfy the conditions for liability under the Convention. In an 8-1 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted for the majority that the Court had twice before reserved decision on the exclusivity of the Warsaw Convention. In the lone dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens conceded that his disagreement has limited practical significance both ""because the issue has been conclusively determined for future cases by the recent amendment to the Warsaw Convention,"" and because it affects only a narrow category of past cases.