Johnson v. Allied Eastern States Maintenance, 83-1495.

• Citation: 488 A.2d 1341
• Decision Date: 05 March 1985
• Docket Number: No. 83-1495.,83-1495.
• Parties: Gwendolyn P. JOHNSON, et al., Appellants, v. ALLIED EASTERN STATES MAINTENANCE CORPORATION, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

488 A.2d 1341

Gwendolyn P. JOHNSON, et al., Appellants, v. ALLIED EASTERN STATES MAINTENANCE CORPORATION, Appellee.

No. 83-1495.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued October 17, 1984.

Decided March 5, 1985.

Melissa Rhea, Washington, D.C., with whom Robert Cadeaux, Washington, D.C., was on brief, for appellants.

Thomas P. Ryan, Rockville, Md., with whom James T. Wharton, Rockville, Md., was on brief, for appellee.

Before MACK and TERRY, Associate Judges, and YEAGLEY, Associate Judge, Retired.

TERRY, Associate Judge:

The sole issue presented on this appeal is whether appellants' personal injury action against Allied Eastern States Maintenance Corporation ("Allied") was barred by the two-year statute of limitations contained in the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air, 49 Stat. 3000, T.S. No. 876 (1934), commonly known as the Warsaw Convention. We hold that it was and affirm the trial court's order granting summary judgment to Allied.

I

On July 12, 1978, Gwendolyn and Zaccheus Johnson had reservations to fly from Baltimore, Maryland, to Nassau, in the Bahamas, aboard Eastern Airlines Flight 941. They were driven to Baltimore-Washington International Airport by their son. When they arrived, a skycap employed by Allied¹ greeted them and offered a wheelchair to Mrs. Johnson, a victim of arthritis, just as she stepped out of the car.² She accepted and got into the wheelchair, and the skycap pushed her through the terminal, past the check-in gate, and onto a boarding ramp which led to the airplane. Halfway down the ramp, however, the wheelchair hit a metal strip and tipped over,³ throwing Mrs. Johnson against the wall and then onto the floor. Although the Johnsons continued on their journey to Nassau, Mrs. Johnson was in considerable pain for several days. She later learned that she had broken a bone in her foot and suffered various other injuries.

On July 10, 1981, almost three years later, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson filed this action against Allied for damages resulting from Mrs. Johnson's fall.⁴ Allied moved for summary judgment on the ground that appellants' action was governed by the Warsaw Convention, and hence was barred by the Convention's two-year statute of limitations. The Johnsons opposed the motion, arguing that the Convention applied only to actions against carriers and their employees, not to actions against third parties or independent contractors such as Allied. The court granted Allied's motion, and the Johnsons noted this appeal.

II

The Warsaw Convention is a multilateral international agreement which was opened for signature in 1929 and adopted by the United States in 1934. Its primary objectives were to establish a uniform body of world-wide liability rules to govern international aviation and to limit the potential liability of air carriers.⁵ See, e.g., Reed v. Wiser, 555 F.2d 1079, 1089-1090 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 922, 98 S.Ct. 399, 54 L.Ed.2d 279 (1977); Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 HARV.L.REV. 497, 498-499 (1967). To achieve these objectives, several restrictions on liability were included in chapter III of the Convention, which is captioned "Liability of the Carrier." The first article in chapter III, article 17, provides:

The carrier shall be liable for damages sustained in the event of the death or wounding of a passenger or any other bodily injury suffered by a passenger, if the accident which caused the damage so sustained took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.

Article 24 provides, however, that in cases covered by article 17 "any action for damages, however founded, can only be brought subject to the conditions and limits set out in this convention." Among these "conditions and limits" is the statute of limitations contained in article 29, which provides in pertinent part:

The right to damages shall be extinguished if an action is not brought within two years, reckoned from 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 transportation stopped.

Although the statute of limitations and the other "conditions and limits" set forth in the Convention clearly apply to actions brought against a "carrier," the Convention does not define that term. It is unclear, specifically, whether the term is intended to embrace only the corporate entity which owns and operates the aircraft — in this case Eastern Airlines — or everyone associated with the enterprise of transporting passengers, including agents, like Allied, who are engaged by the carrier to perform services in furtherance of the contract of carriage.

In Reed v. Wiser, supra, the Second Circuit held, after a thorough analysis of the Convention and its legislative history, that the liability limitations set forth in article 22 of the Convention applied not only to actions against the carrier itself but to actions against employees of the carrier as well.⁶ In Reed, after a TWA flight from Tel Aviv to New York crashed in the Ionian Sea, about fifty miles west of Greece, the personal representatives, heirs, and next of kin of nine passengers killed in the crash brought suit against two of TWA's corporate officers. In their answer the officers pleaded the liability limitations set forth in article 22. The District Court struck the defense, ruling that the liability limitations applied only to actions against the carrier, not its employees.

On an interlocutory appeal this ruling was reversed. The Second Circuit noted that although a strict reading of the Convention — given the principles of agent liability under the common law ⁷ — would lead to the conclusion that the liability limitations applied only to actions against a carrier, "the Convention was intended to act as an international uniform law . . . and therefore must be read in the context of the national legal systems of all of its members." 555 F.2d at 1083 (citation and footnote omitted). The court did not examine the legal systems of all the signatory nations, which numbered more than 100, but it did observe "that in at least some jurisdictions the language of [article 22] would have the effect of limiting the liability of the carrier's employees as well as that of the carrier." Id. It also referred to a statement by Professor Ambrosini of Italy, the author of the original draft convention submitted to the Warsaw conference, as reported in the minutes of a later confer. ence:

He had always thought that the Warsaw Convention regulated not only the liability of the carrier, but, at the same time, that of his servants or agents, and especially for the simple reason that, in his opinion, the carrier and his servants or agents were, from the legal point of view, the same person.

Id. (citation omitted; emphasis added by the court).

The court, moreover, took issue with the English translation of the official French text of the Convention, specifically the word "cas" in article 24.⁸ While "cas" was translated in article 17 as "event,"⁹ it was translated in article 24 as "cases,"¹⁰ so that article 24 read in part:

(1) In the cases covered by articles 18 and 19 any action for damages, however founded, can only be brought subject to the conditions and limits set out in this convention.

(2) In the cases covered by article 17 the provisions of the preceding paragraph shall also apply, without prejudice to the questions as to who are the persons who have the right to bring suit and what are their respective rights.

49 Stat. 3020. The court declared that this translation was "probably inaccurate for the reason that the word `cas' is not ordinarily used to refer to a lawsuit." 555 F.2d at 1084. The court went on to provide its own "less ambiguous rendition" of article 24:

(1) In the events anticipated in articles 18 and 19 any action for damages, however founded, can only be brought subject to the conditions and limits set out in this convention.

(2) In the events covered by article 17 the provisions of the preceding paragraph shall also apply. . . .

Id. Under this translation, the court concluded, the liability limitations applied to the plaintiffs' suit against TWA's corporate officers because "(1) the suit against the carrier's employees [was] an `action for damages, however founded' (Art. 24(1)) and (2) it [sought] damages sustained `in the event of the death . . . of a passenger . . . on board the aircraft . . .' (Art. 17)." Id. (citation omitted).

Finally, and most significantly for this case, the court sought to give effect to "the overall purposes of the Convention. . . ." Id. at 1088. The court focused its attention on two of those purposes: "to fix at a definite level the cost to airlines of damages sustained by their passengers and of insurance to cover such damages," id. at 1089 (emphasis in original), and "to establish a uniform body of world-wide liability rules to govern international aviation, which would supersede with respect to international flights the scores of differing domestic laws. . . ." Id. at 1090 (footnote omitted). After considering the potential consequences of upholding the District Court's narrow...