Seventh Circuit Finds Admiralty Jurisdiction In Asiana Airlines Lawsuits

Judy Nemsick is a Partner and Leonie Huang is an Associate in Holland & Knight's New York office.

HIGHLIGHTS:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit confirms that admiralty jurisdiction is available in aviation cases when an injury sustained on land is caused by events over navigable waters, provided that the cause bears a "substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity." The court found that Asiana Flight 214 had a sufficient maritime nexus because it was a "trans-ocean flight, a substitute for an ocean-going vessel." In litigation arising from the July 2013 accident of Asiana Flight 214 at the San Francisco International Airport, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the District Court's remand decision, holding that there was federal admiralty jurisdiction.1 Applying the test set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Executive Jet Aviation, Inc. v. Cleveland2 and refined in Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co.,3 the three-judge panel determined that:

the cause of the accident likely occurred over the navigable waters of San Francisco Bay the accident bore a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity because it occurred during a flight across the Pacific Ocean District Court's "Inevitability" Test Rejected

In remanding the lawsuits, the District Court had found that "admiralty jurisdiction is available only when an accident becomes inevitable while the plane is over water," and insisted on proof that the record show beyond a reasonable doubt that the aircraft was doomed while flying over water. (See Holland & Knight's alert, " Aviation Defendants Contend with Challenges to Federal Jurisdiction," June 6, 2014.) The Seventh Circuit disagreed with this "inevitability standard," finding that it "lacks a provenance in the Supreme Court's decisions or in any appellate opinion." Significantly, the panel held that the jurisdictional allegations (including those in Boeing's notice of removal) "control unless it is legally impossible for them to be true (or to have the asserted consequences)."

The plaintiffs' own theory of liability, which apportioned blame to Boeing based on disengagement of the autothrottle, was based on conduct that occurred 4.5 nautical miles from the seawall. The panel noted that "if Boeing is liable at all, it must be because something about how this system was designed or explained created an unacceptable risk of an accident - and the system's...