Paradis v. Ghana Airways

Michel Paradis (plaintiff) purchased round-trip tickets from Ghana Airways Ltd. (defendant) for himself and several other law students to fly from New York to Freetown, Sierra Leone and back. When the group attempted to fly back on a Friday afternoon, their flight out of Freetown was cancelled. The next scheduled Ghana Airways flight out of Freetown was the following Friday. Because the local Ghana Airways office was closed, Paradis called the New York office. The New York representative told Paradis that he needed to talk to the Freetown office when it reopened to determine whether there were any available seats on the following week’s flight. Paradis asked about being compensated for buying tickets on a different carrier. The agent offered to refund half of the original Ghana Airways ticket costs, $559, and told Paradis that finding a way back to New York was his problem. Anxious to return to New York to meet other commitments and concerned about the cost of staying in Freetown for an additional week for a flight they might not even be allowed to take, the group decided to buy tickets to New York on a different carrier at an approximate cost of $1,500 per ticket. Once back in New York, Paradis attempted to negotiate a settlement with Ghana Airways and eventually sued. Paradis initially brought a state-law breach-of-contract claim and a claim that Ghana Airways had violated the Warsaw Convention, but he later voluntarily dropped the Warsaw Convention claim. Ghana Airways moved to dismiss the remaining state-law breach-of-contract claim, arguing that it was preempted by the newly effective Montreal Convention. Paradis argued that the older Warsaw Convention applied to the flight because the tickets had stated that the Warsaw Convention would apply.