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15 October 2021 / Asela Wijeyaratne , Michael Hagan
Issue: 7952 / Categories: Features , Travel litigation , Aviation
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Psychological injury in travel litigation: a fresh approach?

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Michael Hagan & Asela Wijeyaratne examine a case study on recovery under the Montreal Convention for psychological injury following aviation accidents
  • The recent case of Clark v Jet2.com Ltd tested the English court’s reaction to the textual interpretation in Doe.

In an NLJ update on aviation case law in June 2019, case law from a number of jurisdictions on the vexed question of liability for psychiatric injury under the Montreal Convention was considered (‘Flying in the face of convention’, 169 NLJ 7844). This edition revisits the seminal decision of the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal in the matter of Doe v Etihad Airways, PJSC, No.16-1042 (6th Cir, 2017) and considers the authors’ own recently compromised case of Clark v Jet2.com Ltd (claim no G96YX506, County Court at Liverpool) which to our knowledge is the first attempt in the English courts to litigate the permissive ‘plain text’ interpretation of the Montreal Convention adopted in Doe.

The Warsaw Convention, which opened for signature in 1929, had the ‘primary purpose of… limiting

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