Court Holds Montreal Convention Does Not Apply To Incident In Terminal, But Accident Analysis Interesting

In Boyd v. Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft, the district court dismissed the plaintiff's Montreal Convention claims arising from injuries allegedly sustained when she was knocked to the ground while proceeding in a wide corridor of the airport toward Customs. The court held that the Montreal Convention did not apply because the injuries were not sustained "in the course of any of the operations of ... disembarking," focusing on: (1) the passenger's activity at the time of the injury, (2) where the passenger was located, and (3) the extent to which the carrier was exercising control over the passen-ger at the moment of injury, the factors set forth in Day v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 528 F.2d 31 (2d Cir. 1975).

Perhaps more interesting than the ultimate holding, however, is the court's discussion of the definition of accident; specifically, whether the accident analysis includes a second prong focusing on whether the event causing injury "was a malfunction or abnormality in the aircraft's operations" (i.e., that the airline played a causal role in the incident). This second prong, which, for example, has been applied in the First Circuit and in a...