Paris Air Crash, In re

• Decision Date: 03 March 1974
• Citation: 622 F.2d 1315
• Parties: In re PARIS AIR CRASH of
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1315

622 F.2d 1315

In re PARIS AIR CRASH of March 3, 1974 McDonnell Douglas Corporation Defendant-Appellant. In re PARIS AIR CRASH of March 3, 1974 General Dynamics Corporation, Defendant- Appellant, v. PLAINTIFFS IN MDL 172, Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Nos. 77-2099, 77-2266.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

June 2, 1980.

Rehearing Denied July 29, 1980.

William A. Norris, Tuttle & Taylor Inc., Los Angeles, Cal., for McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Charles A. Wright, Austin, Tex., Gregory A. Long, Overton, Lyman & Prince, Los Angeles, Cal., for General Dynamics.

Leonard Sacks, California Trial Lawyers Assoc., Encino, Cal., Marjorie S. Steinberg, Los Angeles, Cal., Robert G. Beloud, Upland, Cal., Arne Werchick, San Francisco, Cal., William P. Camusi, Los Angeles, Cal., Glen T. Bashore, Santa Ana, Cal., Lee S. Kreindler, Kreindler & Kreindler, New York City, William Marshall Morgan, Morgan, Wenzel & McNicholas, Los Angeles, Cal., John J. O'Neil, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York City, on brief; Steven I. Zetterberg, Claremont, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Before GOODWIN and KENNEDY, Circuit Judges, and EAST, ^* District Judge.

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge:

The single question in this interlocutory appeal is whether the California rule that punitive damages are not permitted in wrongful death actions is consistent with the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment and its counterpart in the state constitution. The question arises in the wrongful death actions that resulted from the Paris air crash of March 3, 1974. A DC-10 passenger plane operated by Turkish Airlines, Inc., was en route from Paris to London when it crashed, and all 346 people aboard were killed.

Wrongful death actions commenced in various districts across the country were consolidated by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and transferred to the Central District of California. The trial court held that California law would apply in determination of the suits and no objection to that ruling is made on this appeal. ¹

Many of the individual suits included claims for punitive damages based on allegations of intentional, fraudulent, or malicious conduct in the design, production, and certification of the plane. The defendants made, and renewed, motions to dismiss these claims and for summary judgment on them, arguing that California law did not provide for punitive damages in wrongful death actions. The district court denied the motions. In re Paris Air Crash of March 3, 1974, 427 F.Supp. 701 (C.D.Cal.1977). The trial court acknowledged that California appellate courts have held punitive damages are not recoverable in wrongful death actions, ² but held that this restriction denied wrongful death plaintiffs, as compared to other tort plaintiffs, equal protection of the laws under the Federal and California Constitutions, U.S.Const. Amend. XIV, § 1; Cal.Const. art. I, § 7; id. art. IV, § 16(a). ³ The trial court's decision was certified for immediate appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) (1976). See 427 F.Supp. at 702 n.1, 710.

The trial court having based it ruling upon both the equal protection clause of the Federal Constitution and its counterpart under the Constitution of the State of California, we discuss the case in light of each of those provisions. As indicated below, the standard of review under the Federal Constitution may be less exacting than the one we must apply under California law. We find it appropriate to consider the federal claim first, noting that the analysis in each part of the opinion bears upon the other.

Appellees press our application of a principle that federal appellate courts will defer to a federal district court judge's interpretation of the law of the state in which he sits, absent clear error. See, e. g., Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 344-46, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2077-2078, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976); American Timber & Trading Co. v. First Nat'l Bank, 511 F.2d 980, 983 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 921, 95 S.Ct. 1588, 43 L.Ed.2d 789 (1975). We need not decide whether the decision below was clear error because it was rendered without the benefit of the California Supreme Court's subsequent decision in Justus v. Atchison, 19 Cal.3d 564, 139 Cal.Rptr. 97, 565 P.2d 122 (1977). That decision clarified the analysis to be applied under the California Constitution to the State's wrongful death statute.

Federal Constitutional Principles

The less difficult question before us arises under the Federal Constitution. If we find a rational relation between the statute and a legislative object, then the statute limiting tort liability is valid and no further or more exacting review is required. We think this rule follows from two recent decisions of the Supreme Court sustaining tort liability limitations. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, 438 U.S. 59, 82-84, 93-94, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2635-2636, 2641-2642, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978); Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U.S. 618, 98 S.Ct. 2010, 56 L.Ed.2d 581 (1978). The damage limitations imposed on tort plaintiffs by the statutory classifications in those cases were more severe than the one at issue here. The laws in both cited cases limited the types or amount of compensatory relief payable, whereas California's wrongful death statute allows the full measure of such damages.

In Mobil Oil a certain class of plaintiffs was deprived of one type of compensatory damages altogether. There the dissent observed that

(w)hen death arises from injuries occurring within a State's territorial waters, dependents will be able to recover for loss of society . . . . But once a vessel crosses the imaginary three-mile line, the seamen's dependents no longer have a remedy for an identical loss, occasioned by an identical breach of duty.

436 U.S. at 627, 98 S.Ct. at 2016 (Marshall, J., dissenting.). By contrast, no such issue is presented here. Wrongful death plaintiffs in California are compensated for loss of society, as well as all other losses they personally suffer.

In Duke Power the Court sustained a ceiling on aggregate liability for nuclear accidents. The amount was arguably arbitrary, but the Court held that the relation of the ceiling to the purpose of avoiding excessive liability for nuclear accidents was sufficiently close to sustain the statute. Avoidance of excessive liability is also the goal advanced in support of the limitation precluding punitive damages in wrongful death suits. See Justus v. Atchison, 19 Cal.3d 564, 582, 139 Cal.Rptr. 97, 109, 565 P.2d 122, 134 (1977), and discussion infra, pp. 1322-1323. We find this purpose is sufficient to sustain the validity of the statute under federal law, and that no more exacting review is required under the Federal Constitution. ⁴ A court should be quite certain of its ground before making a categorical finding that there is no permissible objective served by a state statute or that there is utterly no sensible of discernible relation between the legislature's classification and a legitimate end. ⁵ Such caution is proper because a finding of no state purpose reasonably advanced may indicate merely that a court finds the purpose less momentous than did the legislature. ⁶

The court below decided the state statute violated the federal guarantee of equal protection only after subjecting the classification in question to the strictest kind of scrutiny. It placed the burden of justification on the state. This was based on a determination that the "right to be free from oppressive, fraudulent or malicious conduct . . . is personal and substantially within the protections accorded fundamental rights found expressly and impliedly in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution." 427 F.Supp. at 708 (footnote omitted). We reject this reasoning. Its logic would apply to all areas of civil law in every state, and all civil remedies would be subject to the strictest standard of review. There is no authority for that proposition generally, and it is quite inappropriate in this case. The plaintiffs, appellees here, are not without a remedy for personal losses sustained in fact. California's wrongful death statute allows full compensation for loss of companionship and financial support. Plaintiffs seek in addition, and as a matter of constitutional right, the opportunity to act as private attorneys general to effect the deterrence and retribution functions of section 3294 of the California Civil Code. So far is this opportunity from being a fundamental personal right that it is an interest not truly personal in nature at all. It is rather a public interest, and in defining who may give it effect the legislature should be given a broad discretion, similar to the discretion of a prosecutor. The clearly noncompensatory purpose and the serious and often unpredictable effects of allowing actions for punitive damages were elaborately discussed by the Supreme Court of the United States in IBEW v. Foust, 442 U.S. 42, 48-52, 99 S.Ct. 2121, 2125-2128, 60 L.Ed.2d 698 (1979). This distinction between compensatory and punitive damages explains why a court will in general be less likely to hold unconstitutional a limit on the latter. See, e. g., Robert v. Ford Motor Co., 424 N.Y.S.2d 747 (App.Div.1980). The case is therefore quite different from one in which the plaintiff has suffered a serious loss, be it a personal injury or the loss of companionship and financial support through the death of a relative and is left with no effective remedy and thus no compensation for a grievous deprivation. In such cases, the courts have adopted remedial innovations through common-law power, see, e. g., Moragne v. States Marine Lines, 398 U.S. 375, 90 S.Ct. 1772, 26 L.Ed.2d 339 (1970), or through application of equal protection principles, see, e. g., Brown v. Merlo, 8 Cal.3d 855, 106 Cal.Rptr....