Chan v. Korean Air Lines

The Warsaw Convention (convention), an international treaty drafted in 1925 and 1929, addressed the rights and duties of international air carriers. Section I of the convention capped a carrier’s liability for passenger deaths or injuries at $8,300. Sections II and III of the convention provided separate liability limits for damage to baggage or cargo. All three sections waived these liability caps and subjected carriers to unlimited liability if the carriers failed to issue passenger or shipper documents referring to the convention’s liability rules. However, whereas Sections II and III required carriers to describe the convention’s liability rules in detail, similar detail requirements did not appear in Section I. In 1983, a Russian jet fighter shot down an airliner operated by Korean Air Lines, Ltd. (KAL) (defendant), killing everyone on board. Elisa Chan and other surviving relatives (families) (plaintiffs) of the flight’s passengers invoked the convention and sued KAL for damages in federal district court. The families sought to overcome the convention’s $8,300 liability cap by arguing that the eight-point type of KAL’s passenger tickets failed to describe the convention’s liability rules in any detail. KAL responded that Section I of the convention did not require the same degree of detail prescribed by Sections II and III. The families attributed this difference to a simple drafting error and moved for summary judgment that KAL was subject to unlimited liability. The court denied the motion and was affirmed by the circuit court on appeal. The families took their appeal to the United States Supreme Court.