Warsaw Convention

11 Pages 2868 Words

Many victims and their lawyers struggled in vain to satisfy this extremely difficult legal burden of proof. Only a few were successful, most notably in the Pan Am 103 disaster, where Pan American Airlines was found liable for willful misconduct in failing to prevent a bomb from being smuggled aboard Flight 103.
Last year, a United States Federal District Court in Florida found that American Airlines was guilty of "willful misconduct" for the 1995 Cali Columbia Flight 965, Boeing 757 flight disaster. Apparently, the airline’s pilots crashed into the mountains because they were confused as to their exact location while flying IFR. Based on the finding of "willful misconduct," the Flight 965 plaintiffs expected to be able to collect the full measure of their damages. The families of the flight passengers were recently shocked when the United States 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the Federal District Court Judge in Florida. The appellate judges held that the trial judge employed standards that were too liberal in enabling plaintiffs to establish that the airline was guilty of willful misconduct. Now without proof under the stricter test that the airline’s pilots knowingly flew recklessly, the families will face the traditional $75,000 liability limit.

The United States Signed A Treaty Agreeing to the Warsaw Convention
The Warsaw Convention was the result of a 1929 international air carrier meeting held in Warsaw, Poland, which resulted in a treaty ratified by the United States in 1934. The Convention was an agreement by the airlines to limit their liability for damages to victims of international airline accidents. The fear in 1929 was that a major airline disaster would put a fledgling airline out of business and result in a morass of conflicting legal claims under different countries’ laws. A positive benefit to society from the Convention was the creation of a uniform system of legal jurisdiction for handling int...