Air France 447 and the Montreal Convention

With another major airline crash recently, there has been renewed interest in aviation law and the rights of airline passengers involved a in crash. The families of passengers on Air France Flight 447, which apparently broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean last week, will soon become familiar with an international treaty known as the Montreal Convention.

The Montreal Convention, formally the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage, is a treaty adopted by a Diplomatic meeting of ICAO member states in 1999. It amended important provisions of the Warsaw Convention's regime concerning compensation for the victims of air disasters. The Convention re-establishes urgently needed uniformity and predictability of rules relating to the international carriage of passengers, baggage and cargo. It protects passengers by introducing a two-tier liability system and by facilitating the swift recovery of proven damages without the need for lengthy litigation.

Under the Montreal Convention, air carriers are strictly liable for proven damages up to 100,000 Special Drawing Rights (SDR), a mix of currency values established by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), approximately $138,000 per passenger at the time of its ratification. Where damages of more than 100,000 SDR are sought, the airline may avoid liability by proving that the accident which caused the injury or death was not due to their negligence or was attributable to the negligence of a third party. This defence is not available where damages of less than 100,000 SDR are sought. The Convention also requires all air carriers to carry liability insurance.

As of December 2008, there were 87 signatories to the Montreal Convention, including the United States, European Union (EU), Canada, China, Japan, Korea and Mexico. Since the Air France flight was international, the Montreal Convention governs all of the claims that may be filed by family members of the passengers. Under the Convention, as long as a crash was caused by an accident, the airline is automatically liable, up to a point.

As Air France 447 passengers are positively identified and probable cause of the crash determined over the upcoming days and weeks, whether or not Air France is deemed at fault - aviation civil suits are bound to ensue.

The Montreal Convention will be an important factor in determining the ultimate liabilty of the airline.

UPDATE: MONDAY JUNE 15TH, 2009

Air France is to receive an insurance cheque of $93.4m for the loss of its Airbus A330 over the Atlantic, one of its insurers said on Monday.

The crashed aircraft was covered by several insurers including Axa Corporate Solutions, which is to pay out 12.5% of the total bill, a spokesperson for the insurance firm said.

Under the terms of the Montreal Convention, the carrier Air France is also responsible for compensating the families of the 228 people lost in the June 1 Rio to Paris crash, and has separate insurance for the cost of doing so.

Asked about compensation for relatives, the Axa spokesperson said it was "too soon to give a realistic figure".

She said: "All entitled persons have yet to come forward, and as a result it has not yet been possible to evaluate the totality of individual situations."

Brazilian and French navy crews have so far recovered the bodies of 44 crash victims off Brazil's coast.

SOURCE: The Guardian | 'Montreal Convention' Wikipedia Page

Air France 447 and the Montreal Convention

Slip and Fall Law | Explained

"Slip and fall" is a term commonly used for a personal injury case in which a person slips or trips and falls, and is injured on someone else's property. These cases usually fall under the broader category of cases known as "premises liability" claims, because slip and fall accidents usually occur on property (or "premises") owned or maintained by someone else, and the owner or possessor of the property may be held legally responsible.

Dangerous conditions such as torn carpeting, changes in flooring, poor lighting, narrow stairs, or a wet floor can cause someone to slip and hurt him or herself inside a building. Other instances of slip and fall incidents can occur when people trip on broken or cracked public sidewalks, or trip and fall on stairs or escalators. In addition, a slip and fall case might arise when someone slips or trips and falls because of rain, ice, snow or a hidden hazard, such as a pothole in the ground.

Proving Fault in Slip and Fall Cases

There is no precise way to determine when someone else is legally responsible for your injuries if you slip or trip. Each case turns on whether the property owner acted carefully so that slipping or tripping was not likely to happen, and whether you were careless in not seeing or avoiding the condition that caused your fall. Here are some general rules to help you decide whether someone else was at fault for your slip or trip and fall injury.

In most cases, a person injured in a slip and fall on someone else's property must prove that the cause of the accident was a "dangerous condition", and that the owner or possessor of the property knew of the dangerous condition. A dangerous condition must present an unreasonable risk to a person on the property, and it must have been a condition that the injured party should not have anticipated under the circumstances. This latter requirement implies that people must be aware of, and avoid, obvious dangers.

In order to establish that a property owner or possessor knew of a dangerous condition, it must be shown that:

* The owner/possessor created the condition;

* The owner/possessor knew the condition existed and negligently failed to correct it; or

* The condition existed for such a length of time that the owner/possessor should have discovered and corrected it prior to the slip and fall incident in question.


For a property owner or possessor to be held liable, it must have been foreseeable that his negligence would create the danger at issue. For instance, if a can of paint falls to the ground and spills into an aisle in a hardware store and, one day later, the store has not noticed or cleaned up the spill, and someone slips in the paint and is injured, one might argue it was foreseeable that the store's negligence in failing to inspect its aisles and clean up spills would result in someone slipping and injuring himself on a spilled item.

Have you been involved in a slip and fall accident? For more information on Slip and Fall injury claims in the UK contact the helpful solicitors of InjuryLawyers4u.co.uk

Source: FindLaw.com

Slip and Fall Law | Explained