Dagi v. Delta Airlines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 02 June 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1056,19-1056
• Citation: 961 F.3d 22
• Parties: T. Forcht DAGI, M.D., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. DELTA AIRLINES, INC., Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

961 F.3d 22

T. Forcht DAGI, M.D., Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.DELTA AIRLINES, INC., Defendant, Appellee.

No. 19-1056

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

June 2, 2020

Henry Herrmann, Falmouth, MA, for appellant.

Christopher A. Duggan, Boston, MA, with whom H. Reed Witherby, Boston, MA, Pauline A. Jauquet, Lincoln, MA, and Smith Duggan Buell & Rufo LLP, were on brief, for appellee.

Before Howard, Chief Judge, Thompson and Barron, Circuit Judges.

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

When an airline passenger suffers "bodily injury ... on board [an] aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking," his or her only legal recourse is to sue the airline for recovery under the Montreal Convention (a multilateral treaty -- more on that in a minute) that preempts any other local law claims the passenger could bring. See Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, May 28, 1999, S. Treaty Doc. No. 106-45 (2000) (the "Montreal Convention" or the "Convention"), ch. I, art. 1, § 1; art. 17. The Convention also requires that the passenger bring any such suit within two years of "the date of arrival at the destination, or from the date on which the aircraft ought to have arrived, or from the date on which the carriage stopped." Id. at ch. III, art. 35, § 1.

Appellant, Dr. T. Forcht Dagi, M.D. ("Dagi"), is one such passenger who, having missed the Montreal Convention's two-year deadline to sue for injury that occurred in connection with his 2015 Delta Airlines flight to London, wishes now to convince us that his injury actually occurred after his disembarkation and therefore outside the preemptive scope of the Montreal Convention, and is actionable under local law. Our (legal and factual) crosscheck complete, we find that Dagi has failed to show that his injury did not begin inflight and therefore falls within the scope of the Convention and is, as a result, time-barred. Seatbelts fastened with chairs in the upright position, we explain.

BACKGROUND

Dagi, an American citizen and resident of Massachusetts, was a passenger on Delta Flight No. 63 that departed Boston's Logan Airport on March 30, 2015 and arrived at London's Heathrow Airport the next morning. As the plane was descending, Dagi was accused of stealing a crew member's bag. With Dagi's consent, the airlines searched Dagi's carry-on luggage, but came up dry. Later inflight the bag was found elsewhere on the plane, but Dagi was accused of having thrown the bag to the spot of discovery (presumably to avoid being caught). Upon landing, the airline prevented Dagi from deplaning until all other passengers had done so.

Quoting the relevant portions of Dagi's complaint:

• Once the Aircraft landed, the Attendant prevented the Plaintiff from leaving the Aircraft before the other passengers had done so.

• The Attendant on the Jetway directed the Delta Ground Employee to detain the Plaintiff and to turn him over to the "authorities."

• Thereafter, accordingly, prior to the Plaintiff having disembarked from the Jetway, the Attendant ordered the Plaintiff to "follow that woman" and to "not go anywhere else."

• The Attendant had transferred custody of the Plaintiff to Delta Ground Employee, who ordered the Plaintiff to follow her away off the Jetway to another location in the terminal to wait "until the police arrived."

• Thereupon, the Plaintiff was marched, under duress, to another location in the terminal (the "Second Location"). This involved a walk of ten to fifteen minutes duration to a distance of approximately four hundred yards from the Aircraft and Jetway.

• The Plaintiff, who is older, had at that time not fully recovered from leg surgery. He was forced to carry and move his two pieces of carry on luggage with no help. Accordingly, he was callously and unnecessarily subjected by Delta to significant pain and discomfort, exhaustion, and dangerous stress.

• The Plaintiff, at the Second Location, was kept standing and was not afforded an opportunity to sit down.

• After being detained at the Second Location for approximately fifteen minutes, the Plaintiff, without receiving any explanation, was marched, under duress, for ten to fifteen minutes, limping all the way back to the terminal in the vicinity of the Aircraft.

• Again, it was readily apparent that the Plaintiff, in being marched back to the Aircraft, was limping in pain, and was labored in carrying and moving luggage.

• Upon arriving back at the vicinity of the Aircraft, Delta Ground Employee turned over custody of the Plaintiff to a Delta employee identified as a "Delta supervisor."

• At this time, the Plaintiff again denied the accusations against him, and demanded to either be released or to speak to the police. In response, he was told that he was not allowed to leave.

• During the entirety of Plaintiff's detention by Delta, its personnel adamantly refused to respond to any of Plaintiff's reasonable questions, such as, without limitation: "Where are you taking me?"; "Have the police really been called?"; ["]What happens next?"; ["]How long will I be held here?"; and "Why am I being marched back to the plane?"

• The Plaintiff, once again, was kept standing and was not afforded an opportunity to sit down while waiting at the second location.

• Thereafter, in the terminal near the Aircraft, the Delta Supervisor detained the Plaintiff for a considerable amount of time, and held several telephone conversations.

• The caller was a British police officer, who, after interviewing the Plaintiff, told the Plaintiff he was free to go and ordered his immediate release.

• The Plaintiff thereafter departed by passing through British immigration and customs, which are not a function of Delta Airlines.

The British police officer who ordered Dagi's release suggested to him that he file a complaint against Delta. The entire incident, from landing to Dagi's procession towards immigration and customs, lasted at least one hour.

Dagi had no further interaction with Delta until March 28, 2018 -- almost three years after his ill-fated flight -- when he packaged his ordeal into a suit filed against Delta in Massachusetts Superior Curt in Middlesex County, alleging Delta had falsely arrested and wrongfully imprisoned him. On July 10, 2018, Delta removed the action to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts; Dagi filed his Amended Complaint there on July 13, 2018.¹

Delta moved to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that 1) the Montreal Convention exclusively governed Dagi's alleged injury because it "[b]egan on the [p]lane and [c]ontinued [w]hile [d]isembarking," as defined by the First Circuit in McCarthy v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 56 F.3d 313 (1st Cir. 1995),² through an "unbroken string of events," thereby preempting Dagi's local³ law claims; and 2) because the statute of limitations under the Convention had already expired, Dagi was out of luck, warranting the suit's dismissal.

In response, Dagi pivoted from the broad strokes in his complaint to narrowly focus on what he described as his injury at the Second Location, arguing that an application of the tripartite test from McCarthy there would render that injury to have occurred after he had "fully disembarked," and therefore outside the scope of the Convention and its statute of limitations. To that end, he additionally argued that the facts giving rise to this "fresh cause of action" at the Second Location substantiated, separately, a cause of action under British law for the "unlawful delay in surrendering him to the British police." Finally, he raised a public policy red flag, claiming that the district court should refrain from giving Delta's "control" over him -- one of the test's factors -- determinative effect, since the "control" Delta had at the Second Location was "unlawful," and not the type contemplated by the Convention. Preempting this type of action under the Montreal Convention, he stressed, would lead to the "pernicious" result of giving airlines the unchecked ability to indefinitely detain passengers.

After considering all arguments, the district court agreed with Delta and dismissed Dagi's case, concluding that the Montreal Convention preempted and time-barred Dagi's claims. See Dagi v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 352 F. Supp. 3d 116, 125 (D. Mass. 2018). In doing so, it applied this circuit's McCarthy test and explained that 1) Dagi's location, 2) his activity, and 3) Delta's control over Dagi, all begged the conclusion that Dagi was disembarking at all times during his false imprisonment. Id. at 124-25. "[T]he relevant events began on and continued seamlessly at Delta's direction directly from the aircraft and then back to its vicinity during the process of disembarkation," "in an unbroken chain until the [British Police] terminated the airline's direction and control." Id. at 121. According to the district court, "Dagi's effort to transmute his claims into more than one cause of action [pre- and post-Second Location] ... distorts beyond recognition the gravamen of the single tort by a single defendant alleged" in the complaint. Id. at 121 n.4. Continuing, it declined to adopt Dagi's definition of "control" as different from its ordinary meaning, and found that Dagi overstated any "pernicious" result that might arise from doing so. It added, in all likelihood, that Dagi's damages, had he timely filed suit, would have been more lucrative under the Montreal Convention than under the laws of Massachusetts or England.

Dagi now appeals the district court's decision. Because we, like the district court, find Dagi's claims time-barred, we affirm.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

This court reviews an appeal of a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal de novo -- that is, with fresh eyes and no deference to the decision-making below. Newman v. Krintzman, 723 F.3d 308, 309 (1st Cir. 2013) ; Schatz v. Republican State Leadership Comm., 669 F.3d 50, 55 (1st Cir. 2012). In doing so, we look to the...