Aircraft

Carriage by air - limitation of liability - mental injury not 'bodily injury'Morris v KLM Royal Dutch Airlines: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, Lords Justice Peter Gibson and Latham): 17 May 2001The claimant, a minor, was indecently assaulted by a male passenger while travelling unaccompanied on a long haul flight aboard the defendants' aircraft.

She suffered mental but no physical injury and brought an action against the defendants claiming damages for alleged 'bodily injury' under article 17 of the of the Warsaw Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air 1929, as scheduled to the Carriage by Air Act 1961.

The county court judge gave judgment for the claimant on liability with damages to be assessed.

The defendants appealed.Charles Haddon-Cave QC and Robert Lawson (instructed by Beaumont and Son) for the defendants; Nicholas Braslavsky QC and Andrew Singer (instructed by Kippax Beaumont Lewis, Bolton) for the claimant.Held, allowing the appeal, that the accident that befell the claimant exemplified a special risk inherent in air travel and constituted an 'accident' within the meaning of article 17 of the convention; that, having regard to the intention of the drafters of the convention in 1929, the phrase 'lsion corporelle/bodily injury' bore its natural meaning of physical injury and did not extend to mental injury; and that, accordingly, the claim advanced by the claimant was not one that was open to her under the convention (WLR).