Thermal Burns Sustained by Airline Passenger On Flight From Denver to Chicago Barred Under Two Year Statute of Limitations of Warsaw Convention, Because Flight Was Part of Itinerary Including International Travel

In Robertson v. American Airlines, the plaintiff was flying from Denver to Chicago, and was using a gel cooling pad on her back. She asked the flight attendant for something to keep the gel pack from warming up, and he put the gel pack in an air sickness bag along with some dry ice. Plaintiff suffered thermal burns, and sued American Airlines within D.C.'s three year statute of limitations.

However, summary judgment was granted to the airline, on the grounds that the applicable statute of limitations was two years under the Warsaw Convention, not three years. The Warsaw Convention applied because the flight was one leg of a larger itinerary that included international travel.

Judge Urbina relied on the following rule:

For the Convention to apply, the flight on which the personal injury allegedly occurred must qualify as "international transportation." 49 U.S.C. § 40105 note. Under Article 1(3) of the Convention, transportation involving successive carriers shall be deemed . . . to be one undivided transportation, if it has been regarded by the parties as a single operation, whether it has been agreed upon under the form of a single contract or of a series of contracts, and it shall not lose its international character merely because one contract or a series of contracts is to be performed entirely within a territory subject to the sovereignty . . . of the same High Contracting Party.