Can Plaintiffs Collect Millions after International Airline Disasters?
The new Intercarrier Agreement modifying The Warsaw Convention theoretically exposes the airlines to unlimited liability. But the amount of damages for the plaintiffs is still dependent upon the laws applied by the country that has jurisdiction over the lawsuits. It is dependent upon the extent to which compensatory damages will be recoverable according to the law of the passengers’ domicile (home) or permanent place of residence. In a typical Warsaw Convention case, an American would be subject to recovery of damages under U.S. law; a Danish passenger for example, would collect damages in accordance with the law of Denmark; a Brazilian passenger would collect damages in accordance with the law of Brazil. This may sound straightforward, but these issues can be very complicated in the U.S. courts because of choice of law issues involving a determination of which states’ laws should apply to measure damages. A U.S. court handling an international air crash case by an American plaintiff u
