When does psychiatric injury sustained onboard become compensable? Katherine Deal QC & Asela Wijeyaratne review the latest evidence
- Aviation case law updates; psychiatric injury and the Montreal Convention.
This article considers recent cases in Australia, the US and Scotland on the vexed question of liability for psychiatric injury under the Montreal Convention.
The Warsaw Convention, which opened for signature in 1929, had the ‘primary purpose of… limiting the liability of air carriers in order to foster the growth of the fledgling aviation industry’ (Transworld Airlines Inc v Franklin Mint Corp 466 US 243 (1984), citing conference minutes). One of the varied ways it did so was to limit liability to ‘bodily injury’.
The Montreal Convention 1999, the successor multilateral treaty to which the UK is a party, has the stated purpose of providing a ‘modernized uniform liability regime for international air transportation’. As with the Warsaw Convention, it provides, among other things, for strict liability in certain circumstances for ‘bodily injury’, up to a financial limit. The Montreal Convention has effect in English law by virtue of a
