Cruz v. American Airlines

• Citation: 193 F.3d 526
• Decision Date: 12 October 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-7186,98-7186
• Parties: (D.C. Cir. 1999) Maria V. Cruz, for herself and as representative of Gustavo Cruz and Joaquin Rodriguez, minors, et al.,Appellants v. American Airlines, Inc., Appellee Consolidated with 98-7187
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

Page 526

193 F.3d 526 (D.C. Cir. 1999)

Maria V. Cruz, for herself and as representative of Gustavo Cruz and Joaquin Rodriguez, minors, et al.,Appellants v. American Airlines, Inc., Appellee

No. 98-7186 Consolidated with 98-7187

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 9, 1999

Decided October 12, 1999

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia(No. 96cv02817)(No. 97cv02883)

Leonard N. Bebchick argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellants.

Carroll E. Dubuc argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief was John E. Gagliano.

Before: Wald, Silberman, and Tatel, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Silberman.

Silberman, Circuit Judge:

Appellants seek reversal of a decision of the district court limiting their recovery for lost luggage to the amount set forth in the Warsaw Convention, and dismissing their common law fraud and deceit claims. We vacate in part the district court's entry of judgment against appellants. We hold that American Airlines' failure to comply with the baggage weight notice provisions of the Convention precludes it from relying on the Convention's liability limitations, but that appellants' common law claims are preempted by the Warsaw Convention.

I.

On December 21, 1995, fourteen members of the Cruz family arrived at National Airport, having purchased tickets for travel on American Airlines from Washington through Miami and on to their ultimate destination of Santo Domingo. Prior to boarding, each family member checked two suitcases, and was issued a baggage claim stub for each piece of luggage. These claim stubs did not indicate the weight of the suitcases.

The next day, after a delay in Miami, the Cruzes arrived in Santo Domingo. Unfortunately, five of their suitcases did not. Informed that plane weight restrictions had forced American to leave behind some of the baggage originally checked on their Miami-Santo Domingo flight, the Cruzes were told that the five suitcases would be shipped to Santo Domingo on a flight later that day. Upon their return to the airport, however, the bags were still missing (why does this sound so familiar?). The Cruzes promptly filed a missing property report with American; they also profess to have filled out, at American's request, more detailed "Declarations of Lost Property" indicating the contents and estimated value of each lost suitcase. American claimed that it did not receive any Declarations from the Cruzes for over 40 days after the Cruzes lost their luggage, and denied the Cruz family's lost-luggage claims on the ground that they did not comply with American's requirement, stated in its contract of carriage, that Declarations be filed within 30 days of the date of the loss of baggage (the "30-Day Rule").

The Cruzes sued American asserting a federal cause of action under the treaty popularly known as the Warsaw Convention,¹ which governs claims arising out of the international carriage of persons and property by air. They alleged that they had submitted the required Declarations within the 30 days prescribed by the contract of carriage. In any event, appellants argued, the 30-Day Rule itself had been unlawfully applied to them. It was not mentioned in the tariffs American is required by law to file with the Department of Transportation for its Caribbean flights, see 49 U.S.C. § 41504 (1997), and it was also, according to appellants, contrary to the express and exclusive lost-luggage provisions set forth in the Warsaw Convention. See Warsaw Convention Art. 26(2).Besides seeking the fair value of their lost luggage, the Cruzes sought a declaratory judgment that American's application of the 30-Day Rule was unlawful, and an injunction preventing American from applying the Rule to passengers on its Caribbean flights in the future. The Cruz family also invoked the district court's supplemental jurisdiction to assert claims for damages against American for fraud and deceit under Maryland law, alleging that American had a practice of intentionally misapplying the 30-Day Rule against international passengers to discourage lost-luggage claims.

Conceding for the purposes of litigation that it had both lost the Cruzes' luggage and improperly denied their lost luggage claim, American moved to dismiss all of appellants' claims in excess of the compensation provisions set forth in Article 22(2) of the Warsaw Convention, which limits air carrier liability to $9.07 per pound of luggage lost or damaged in the course of air transportation. The Cruzes responded that American's failure to state the weight of each suitcase on the baggage stubs, as required by Article 4(3)(f) of the Convention, precluded American from relying on the Convention's liability limitations. The district court ruled in favor of American and limited appellants' recovery to $9.07 per pound, using the default "deemed weight" set forth in American's tariffs to calculate damages when the weight of a suitcase was disputed or not known. See Cruz v. American Airlines, Inc., Civil Action No. 96-02817, Mem. Op. at 16-17 (D.D.C. Oct. 24, 1997). The court held that, as American's concessions resolved appellants' lost-luggage claims, the Cruzes no longer had standing to challenge American's alleged misapplication of the 30-Day Rule, see id. at 25-26, and that appellants' common law claims were preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act, 49 U.S.C. § 41713(b)(1) (1997). See id. at 35. After filing a motion for reconsideration and pursuing other procedural avenues in the district court--including filing a separate class action raising similar substantive claims²--the Cruzes appealed.

II.

As noted, the Cruzes seek relief under the Warsaw Convention, which governs claims arising from international air transportation. The primary issue in this case is simply whether American's liability for losing the Cruzes' baggage is limited by Article 22(b) of the Treaty to $9.07 a pound. Appellants argue no; American did not comply with that Article because the Treaty's liability limitation is conditioned on a carrier's compliance with Article 4(4) which states that:

if the carrier accepts baggage without a baggage check having been delivered, or if the baggage check does not contain the particulars set out at [Article 4(3)](d), (f) and(h) above, the carrier shall not be entitled to avail him self of those provisions of the Convention which exclude or limit his liability. (Emphasis added.)

Article 4(3)(f) requires carriers to include the "number and weight of the packages" on its luggage tickets. It is undisputed that American did not do so. Appellants therefore contend that American has lost its Warsaw Convention damage limitation and that they are entitled to recover the full value of the luggage.

The district court accepted American's argument that Article 4(4) does not oblige a carrier to comply with all the "particulars" of (d), (f), and (h) of that Article; a carrier loses its liability limitation protection only if it complies with none of the particulars. While acknowledging that "no other courts" shared in its reading of Article 4(4), Mem. Op. at 11, the district court reasoned as follows:

Article 4(4) directs that "if the baggage check does not contain the particulars set out at (d), (f) and (h) above, the carrier shall not be entitled to avail himself of those provisions of the convention which exclude or limit his liability." The Court notes that the provision employs the conjunction "and" rather than "or." In the ordinary case, the word "and" should retain its conjunctive meaning.... Considering the conjunctive meaning of the word "and," the plain language of this provision directs that liability is lifted only if all three "particulars" are missing.

Id. at 10-11 (emphasis in district court's opinion) (citations omitted). As the disputed luggage tickets contained two of the three "particulars," the district court concluded that American's failure to record the weight of each suitcase did not preclude the carrier's recourse to the Convention's liability limits. Id. at 11.

We do not agree. Although we recognize that the district court's interpretation is linguistically possible, we do not think it is a reasonable construction. It is rather clear to us that the word "and" means that Article 4(4) of the Convention obliges a carrier to comply with each of the three particulars.

American claims that appellants were hardly prejudiced by its failure to weigh the pieces of baggage and record the specific weights on the baggage tags because its practice was to weigh (and charge extra) only for bags that exceed 100 pounds.³ All bags on which no extra charge is imposed are deemed to weigh 100 pounds. That is simply another way of arguing that Article 4(3)(f)'s requirement makes little real sense. There is no apparent purpose in the requirement that the carrier actually weigh each bag and record the weight on the ticket, so long as a carrier's deemed-weight rules favor its passengers. Still the language of the Convention is unyielding and we have no warrant to dispense with portions we might think purposeless. As the Supreme Court has noted in its interpretations of the Warsaw Convention, "where the text is clear, we have no power to insert an amendment." Chan v. Korean Air Lines, Ltd., 490 U.S. 122, 134 (1989).

We therefore reject the reasoning employed in Martin v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 563 F. Supp. 135 (D.D.C. 1983), relied upon by American and discussed at length by the district court. Mem. Op. at 8, 12-15. In that case, as well as ours, a default "deemed weight" was established in the airline's tariffs to "provide[ ] an alternative means of fixing the amount of liability," and the Martins (like the Cruzes) were made aware of the liability limitations of the Convention and the availability of additional insurance. Id. at 140; Mem. Op. at 15. The Martin court, explicitly...