Eastern Airlines v. Floyd case brief

Eastern Airlines v. Floyd (S CT 1991, p. 60)

• Case where an airplane lost oil pressure but landed safely. Passengers claiming mental distress sue the airline. Issue is what kind of injury is protected under the Warsaw Convention.
• Interpreting the Warsaw Convention (1929)
• Intertemporal doctrine—if you interpret a law in 1929, but must take into account today’s view.
• Treaty interpretation:
  • Text itself
  • Dictionary
  • Context (Vienna Convention talks about this):
    • What did indiv countries consider the term’s meaning.
    • Something adopted (understanding different from today)
    • Do you take the intertemporal problem into account?
  • Subsequent behavior
    
• Broader sources here than in Filartiga:
  • Court looked a broad number of countries (but confined to European ones)
  • State practice hasn’t included mental suffering.
  • Where Israel said such was covered, Israel ct played role of interpreter:
    • Policy reasons justifying this in 1929 that do not exist today.
    • So no policy reason for limiting now.
    • Very different case—a hijacking
• Mutharika: Court was right (b/c don’t want to break new ground—except Israel.)
• Section 3 of the Vienna Convention deals w/ treaty interpretation
• It is hard to create uniformity w/ treaty interpretation b/c of decentralized international world.
• Textual approach: See n. 4, p. 68—no matter how clear you are, there is always a context w/ any K, however.
• Municipal Courts: see n. 2, p. 68. Why differences in interps?
  • Diff cts use different interp methods.
  • A ct might find a that a treaty provision implicitly refers to its own municipal law.
  • A municipal court might not view the treaty as controlling, in light of competing rules of domestic law.