Allan Campbell v. Air Jamaica LTD , 760 F.3d 1165 ( 2014 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 12-14860
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 1:11-cv-23233-JLK
ALLAN CAMPBELL,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
AIR JAMAICA LTD.,
CARIBBEAN AIRLINES,
Defendants - Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
________________________
(July 8, 2014)
Before MARCUS, Circuit Judge, and COOGLER * and BOWEN, ** District Judges.
MARCUS, Circuit Judge:
*
Honorable L. Scott Coogler, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama,
sitting by designation.
**
Honorable Dudley H. Bowen, Jr., United States District Judge for the Southern District of
Georgia, sitting by designation.
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First, Allan Campbell’s Air Jamaica flight from Kingston to Fort Lauderdale
was delayed. Hours passed. Once given the go-ahead to board, he says, he was
recalled to the boarding gate and forced to reschedule to another departure the next
day -- when his permanent resident alien card would expire. Air Jamaica charged
him a $150 fee to change flights and refused to put him up in a hotel. Terminal
repairs left him to spend the night outside, exposed to the elements. As Campbell
put it in his complaint, the ordeal took its toll: he was hospitalized with a heart
attack after falling ill during the delay, seeking medical help upon arrival, and
collapsing at his home.
Campbell’s claims for damages are governed by the Montreal Convention, a
multilateral treaty setting rules for international air travel. He seeks recovery
against Air Jamaica and Caribbean Airlines under Article 19, which concerns
damages due to delay, and Article 17, which addresses accidents that injure
passengers on board a plane or during the course of embarkation or
disembarkation. The district court dismissed Campbell’s amended complaint for
lack of subject matter jurisdiction. We disagree because Article 33 of the Montreal
Convention grants the district court the power to hear his claims. Nevertheless, we
affirm the dismissal on alternative grounds to the extent that Campbell failed to
state claims against the defendants. Campbell did state an Article 19 claim against
Air Jamaica, but only for economic damages from the $150 change fee. He stated
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no Article 17 claim, however, because he did not allege injuries caused by an
“accident” that occurred “on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the
operations of embarking or disembarking.” And Campbell stated no claim against
Caribbean Airlines, which he did not name in the substance of the amended
complaint. We therefore vacate the dismissal of the Article 19 claim against Air
Jamaica for damages from the $150 fee, and remand only as to that issue. We
affirm the dismissal of all other claims.
I.
On December 12, 2011, pro se plaintiff Allan Campbell filed an amended
complaint against Air Jamaica Ltd. and Caribbean Airlines (collectively,
“Defendants”) that alleged the following essential facts. 1 Campbell had a ticket for
a September 8, 2009, Air Jamaica flight from Kingston, Jamaica, to Fort
Lauderdale, Florida. He arrived three hours early for the flight, which was then
delayed four hours. Campbell was cleared to board at the check-in counter and
given a boarding pass with a seat number. After passing through security and
getting “the go-ahead to board,” he proceeded to embark on the flight, but was
recalled back to the boarding gate, where he was told that he would not be
accommodated on the flight and should arrange to depart on the next flight, the
1
Campbell filed his initial complaint on September 7, 2011, which the district court sua
sponte dismissed before service was effectuated for failure to state a claim and failure to state
adequate grounds for subject matter jurisdiction. The court denied Campbell’s
motion to vacate its judgment but allowed Campbell fifteen days to file an amended complaint.
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following day. When Campbell returned to the check-in counter, an agent told him
to pay a $150 change fee to travel on a flight the next day. He eventually paid the
fee. Meanwhile, the agent refused to accommodate Campbell at a hotel that night,
which left him stranded at the airport. Because of airport construction, Campbell
claimed, he spent the night outside the terminal building in adverse weather.
The complaint alleged that the airline agent acted negligently by “bumping
[Campbell] from the flight and abandoning” him, as well as by charging him for
rebooking. Campbell stated that the delay and abandonment were the sole cause of
his heart attack. He claimed that he started feeling ill from the effects of the initial
four-hour flight delay at the Kingston airport, that he sought medical attention at
the Fort Lauderdale airport, and that he collapsed at home in Miami, where he was
ultimately taken to a hospital. Campbell stated that his injuries were aggravated by
additional delay when his daughter was unable to leave work to pick him up from
the airport. The amended complaint alleged that Defendants had breached Article
19 of the Montreal Convention, which caused Campbell to suffer $5,000,000 in
general, unspecified damages.
Air Jamaica moved to dismiss the amended complaint, arguing that the
district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because Campbell did not state a
cognizable Montreal Convention claim, that any such claims were time-barred, and
that Campbell failed to state a claim for negligence or breach of contract under
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state law. Caribbean Airlines moved to dismiss on the ground that Campbell’s
action was time-barred, though it conceded that the district court had subject matter
jurisdiction pursuant to the Montreal Convention. Campbell responded to Air
Jamaica’s motion by arguing that both Articles 17 and 19 of the Montreal
Convention covered this case, since the “accident” occurred when Campbell was in
the process of boarding the flight. He also argued that his action was not time-
barred because the amended complaint did not constitute the filing of a new case
and his original complaint was filed within the statute of limitations. Air Jamaica
and Caribbean Airlines replied, reiterating their earlier arguments.
The district court dismissed the case with prejudice for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction, concluding that Campbell did not state claims under the Montreal
Convention. The court found that he sought only “damages for the suffering of
pure emotional distress and anxiety, which are not recoverable under Article 19.”
In addition, the district court explained that Article 17 provided Campbell no relief
because neither flight delay nor bumping constitute a requisite “accident.” The
court did not reach the question of whether the claims were time-barred. Campbell
filed a timely appeal.2
II.
2
After initial briefing from the parties, we set the case for oral argument and appointed Stephen
F. Rosenthal, of the law firm Podhurst Orseck, P.A., to represent the previously pro se Appellant.
We commend the exceptional pro bono service Rosenthal provided his client and this Court.
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A.
We review de novo the district court’s dismissal for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction. Foy v. Schantz, Schatzman & Aaronson, P.A., 108 F.3d 1347, 1348
(11th Cir. 1997). We also review de novo whether the district court properly
construed the terms of the Montreal Convention. Piamba Cortes v. Am. Airlines,
Inc., 177 F.3d 1272, 1280 (11th Cir. 1999).
We hold the allegations of a pro se complaint to less stringent standards than
formal pleadings drafted by lawyers. Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972).
Accordingly, we construe Campbell’s pleadings liberally. Alba v. Montford, 517
F.3d 1249, 1252 (11th Cir. 2008). “Yet even in the case of pro se litigants this
leniency does not give a court license to serve as de facto counsel for a party, or to
rewrite an otherwise deficient pleading in order to sustain an action.” GJR Invs.,
Inc. v. Cnty. of Escambia, Fla., 132 F.3d 1359, 1369 (11th Cir. 1998) (citations
omitted).
B.
The district court stated that it dismissed Campbell’s claims “with prejudice
. . . for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.” But the Montreal Convention grants
the district court the power to hear the case. Article 33 provides that a plaintiff
may bring an action for damages under the Convention “before the court at the
place of destination.” The amended complaint alleges, and the Defendants do not
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dispute, that Campbell’s flight landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, making the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida a court of
competent jurisdiction.
Despite describing its order as jurisdictional, the district court justified
dismissal on the ground that Campbell failed to state a claim under the
Convention. 3 In other words, at issue was not whether the district court had the
power to adjudicate Montreal Convention claims brought by Campbell, but instead
whether Campbell had alleged sufficient facts to support a claim under Articles 17
or 19. Such a failure to state a cause of action does not defeat jurisdiction. Bell v.
Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 682 (1946). After all, “[w]hether the complaint states a cause
of action on which relief could be granted is a question of law and just as issues of
fact it must be decided after and not before the court has assumed jurisdiction over
the controversy.” Id.; accord Barnett v. Bailey, 956 F.2d 1036, 1040-41 (11th Cir.
1992); Delta Coal Program v. Libman, 743 F.2d 852, 855 (11th Cir. 1984). While
“a suit may sometimes be dismissed for want of jurisdiction where the alleged
claim under the Constitution or federal statutes clearly appears to be immaterial
and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or where such a claim is
3
For example, the district court noted that “Defendant Air Jamaica argues that this Court lacks
subject matter jurisdiction, because the Amended Complaint fails to allege a claim under the
Montreal Convention.”
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wholly insubstantial and frivolous,” those exceptions do not apply here. Bell, 327
U.S. at 682-83.
Defendants’ arguments for dismissal thus sound in Rule 12(b)(6) (“failure to
state a claim upon which relief can be granted”), not 12(b)(1) (“lack of subject-
matter jurisdiction”). The district court recognized this, regardless of the label it
applied, because the court dismissed with prejudice, which is fitting for failure to
state a claim, instead of without prejudice, which is appropriate for jurisdictional
decisions. See Hitt v. City of Pasadena, 561 F.2d 606, 608 (5th Cir. 1977)4 (per
curiam) (“Dismissal with prejudice for failure to state a claim is a decision on the
merits and essentially ends the plaintiff’s lawsuit, whereas a dismissal on
jurisdictional grounds alone is not on the merits and permits the plaintiff to pursue
his claim in the same or in another forum.”); see also Betty K Agencies, Ltd. v.
M/V MONADA, 432 F.3d 1333, 1341 (11th Cir. 2005) (“[I]f the district court
actually lacked jurisdiction . . . , the court would have lacked the power to dismiss
. . . with prejudice.”).
Though the district court suggested that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction,
we can affirm the dismissal with prejudice on the alternate ground that Campbell
failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. See, e.g., Morrison v.
Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 254-55 (2010) (“The District Court here had
4
In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), we adopted as
binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed down before October 1, 1981.
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jurisdiction . . . . Since nothing in the analysis of the courts below turned on the
mistake, a remand would only require a new Rule 12(b)(6) label for the same Rule
12(b)(1) conclusion. . . . [W]e proceed to address whether petitioners’ allegations
state a claim.”); Bell v. Health-Mor, Inc., 549 F.2d 342, 345 (5th Cir. 1977) (“The
district court . . . should not have dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction. However, if the district court is correct . . . , then the plaintiffs’ claims
are subject to dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be
granted. Therefore, in the interests of judicial economy we will discuss the
substantive issues raised in the district court’s opinion.”); see also, e.g., Powers v.
United States, 996 F.2d 1121, 1123 (11th Cir. 1993) (“We affirm the judgment of
the district court dismissing this action, but for reasons other than those used by the
district court.”).
Therefore, we turn to whether Campbell’s amended complaint stated a claim
under Articles 17 or 19 of the Montreal Convention.
C.
We can quickly dispense with Campbell’s action against one defendant
because he has not stated a claim against Caribbean Airlines. While the amended
complaint names “Carribean Airlines” as a defendant in the case heading, it at no
other point mentions Caribbean Airlines. Instead, the amended complaint states
that Campbell purchased a ticket from “Air Jamaica” for a flight on “Air Jamaica
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airline.” Campbell makes no allegations that Caribbean Airlines took any actions
toward him, much less caused him any injuries cognizable under the Montreal
Convention. Nor does the amended complaint allege that the two companies were
associated or connected in any way that would make Caribbean Airlines liable for
Campbell’s harm. We affirm the dismissal with prejudice of all claims against
Caribbean Airlines.
III.
A.
We next take up Campbell’s argument that he stated an Article 19 claim for
damages against Air Jamaica. Articles 17 and 19 of the Montreal Convention are
found in Chapter III, which addresses the “Liability of the Carrier and Extent of
Compensation for Damage.” Article 19, titled “Delay,” provides:
The carrier is liable for damage occasioned by delay in the carriage by
air of passengers, baggage or cargo. Nevertheless, the carrier shall not
be liable for damage occasioned by delay if it proves that it and its
servants and agents took all measures that could reasonably be
required to avoid the damage or that it was impossible for it or them to
take such measures.
Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air
(Montreal Convention) art. 19, May 28, 1999, S. Treaty Doc. No. 106-45, 2242
U.N.T.S. 350.
The parties agree that Article 19 permits the payment of economic damages
but does not contemplate compensation for emotional loss or physical injury. See,
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e.g., Vumbaca v. Terminal One Grp. Ass’n L.P., 859 F. Supp. 2d 343, 367
(E.D.N.Y. 2012) (“Article 19 only applies to economic loss occasioned by delay in
transportation.” (quotation omitted)). The district court found that Campbell did
not plead any economic injuries and therefore could not recover any Article 19
damages.
Campbell first argues that the amended complaint pled economic loss in the
form of the $150 change fee charged for the replacement flight. Air Jamaica
concedes that “perhaps a $150 change fee” is compensable, though it argues that
such a de minimus claim should not be allowed to proceed on its own.
The district court erred in failing to acknowledge that Campbell adequately
alleged economic damages in the form of the $150 change fee. The court did not
mention the change fee in its order, but the fee meets each of the Article 19
requirements. As pled, it constituted economic loss. The complaint can be
construed as claiming that the fee was “occasioned by” the delay: he was forced to
pay $150, which would not have occurred had he not been forced by the airline to
take the next day’s flight. And Campbell alleged that the Defendants’ agents did
not take reasonable measures in avoiding the delay, as he claimed that they were
“negligent in recalling the plaintiff to the boarding gate while the plaintiff was
embarking and bumping the plaintiff from the flight and abandoning the plaintiff.”
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Moreover, there is no de minimis bar to Article 19 jurisdiction. In the lone
case cited by Air Jamaica in support of its de minimis argument, a district court
denied leave to amend a complaint when a party sought to add low-value claims
not originally included. See Vumbaca, 859 F. Supp. 2d at 361 (“[W]hile plaintiff
now seeks to add claims for economic harm, these claims will not be considered
because they are de minimis and were not sought in the complaint.”). The
Convention does not mention, and we know of no court that has imposed, a de
minimis requirement for an otherwise validly pled Article 19 claim. Here,
Campbell’s amended complaint identified the fee. Construing this pleading
liberally, we conclude that Campbell adequately stated an Article 19 claim against
Air Jamaica for economic damages in the form of the $150 fee.
B.
However, Campbell did not state a claim under Article 19 for any other
damages caused by delay. Campbell expressly concedes that medical expenses are
“carve[d] out . . . from the range of damages compensable under Article 19 flowing
from flight delays.”
Campbell instead contends that inconvenience from a delayed flight can
support a cognizable claim for Article 19 damages. Courts have disagreed about
whether and to what degree inconvenience damages may be recovered under
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Article 19.5 But we need not address today whether and to what degree
inconvenience damages are recoverable under Article 19 because Campbell has not
pled that he suffered any harm due to inconvenience. While he mentioned delays
that, in theory, could have caused inconvenience, he at no point claimed that he
actually suffered an inconvenience injury. Instead, liberally construed, Campbell’s
pro se amended complaint alleged that the delay caused him damages in the forms
of physical illness, mental anxiety, and the $150 fee. Campbell does not state an
Article 19 claim for inconvenience damages.
IV.
Campbell did not state a claim under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention.
That article, titled “Death and Injury of Passengers -- Damage to Baggage,”
provides in relevant part that “[t]he carrier is liable for damage sustained in case of
death or bodily injury of a passenger upon condition only that the accident which
caused the death or injury took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of
the operations of embarking or disembarking.” Montreal Convention art. 17, S.
Treaty Doc. No. 106-45. An Article 17 claim thus has three elements: (1) an
5
For example, in Vumbaca, a district court concluded after surveying cases that “[m]ere
inconvenience does not support a claim under Article 19.” 859 F. Supp. 2d at 367-68. Another
district court reached the opposite result in Daniel v. Virgin Atlantic Airways, Ltd., 59 F. Supp.
2d 986 (N.D. Cal. 1998): “Time is money, after all, and . . . the inconvenience of being trapped
for hours in an unfamiliar airport is a compensable element of damages for delay in air travel
. . . even in the absence of economic loss or physical injury.” Id. at 993.
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accident; (2) that caused death or bodily injury; (3) that took place on the plane or
in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.
Campbell’s allegation that he was rescheduled to a later flight does not
amount to an Article 17 “accident,” which the Supreme Court defines as “an
unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger.” El Al
Isr. Airlines, Ltd. v. Tsui Yuan Tseng, 525 U.S. 155, 165 n.9 (1999) (quoting Air
France v. Saks, 470 U.S. 392, 405 (1985)). “This definition should be flexibly
applied after assessment of all the circumstances surrounding a passenger’s
injuries.” Air France, 470 U.S. at 405. To determine whether an event is
“unexpected or unusual,” we “look at a purely factual description of the events that
allegedly caused the aggravation injury suffered by the plaintiff.” Krys v.
Lufthansa German Airlines, 119 F.3d 1515, 1521 (11th Cir. 1997). The fact that a
series of events is alleged to have been caused by “crew negligence” does not
affect whether or not the event itself, as experienced by the passenger, was
unexpected.
Rare is the passenger unacquainted with the ubiquity of air travel delay. See
In re Deep Vein Thrombosis Litig., MDL 04-1606 VRW, 2007 WL 3027351 (N.D.
Cal. Oct. 12, 2007) aff’d sub nom. Twardowski v. Am. Airlines, 535 F.3d 952 (9th
Cir. 2008) (“[D]elays in air travel are a ‘reality.’”). The Supreme Court has
recognized that “routine travel procedures” do not amount to Article 17 accidents.
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Air France, 470 U.S. at 404-05. The practice of “bumping” -- when an airline
intentionally causes a passenger to reschedule to a later flight shortly before
departure -- falls into this category because it is systematic, widely practiced, and
widely known. There is nothing accidental about it. See Weiss v. El Al Isr.
Airlines, Ltd., 433 F. Supp. 2d 361, 363 (S.D.N.Y. 2006) aff’d sub nom. Weiss v.
El Al Isr. Airlines, 309 F. App’x 483 (2d Cir. 2009) (“Bumping is an airline
industry practice whereby passengers are denied seats due to intentional
overselling, which is intended to minimize the number of empty seats due to
cancellations.”). Like routine delays for weather or maintenance, bumping may be
unpleasant, but it is not unexpected or unusual. As a general matter, then, an
Article 17 accident does not occur merely because a passenger is bumped from a
flight.
Indeed, no case has found bumping to be an Article 17 accident under the
Montreal Convention or the previous and corresponding Warsaw Convention.
Instead, the decisions that discuss bumping either treat it as delay under Article 19
or label it contractual non-performance that is not preempted by the Montreal
Convention. See, e.g., Wolgel v. Mexicana Airlines, 821 F.2d 442, 445 (7th Cir.
1987) (“We conclude that the Warsaw Convention does not provide a cause of
action for bumping.”); Igwe v. Nw. Airlines, Inc., CIV.A. H-05-1423, 2007 WL
43811 (S.D. Tex. Jan. 4, 2007) (“[U]nder the facts of this case, Article 19 does
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encompass ‘bumping,’ and the [plaintiffs’] claims fall directly within the scope of
the Convention.”); Weiss, 433 F. Supp. 2d at 366 (holding that bumping claims are
“not preempted by the Montreal Convention”); Sassouni v. Olympic Airways, 769
F. Supp. 537, 540 (S.D.N.Y. 1991) (“Very few courts have confronted the issue of
the application of Article 19 to being ‘bumped’ from an airline flight. However,
those that have, hold uniformly that damages arising from a delay in transportation
caused by being bumped, are governed by Article 19.”).
Campbell, then, cannot recover under Article 17 based on bumping. He
argues, however, that his was no run-of the-mill bumping, even though his
amended complaint states that the airline’s agent was negligent in “bumping the
plaintiff.” Campbell insists that the airline did not follow standard procedures for
bumping: Campbell had been given a boarding pass with a seat number; he was
required to pay a change fee; and two years later airline records indicated he had
flown on September 8, not the next day when he actually traveled. These alleged
irregularities are irrelevant to Article 17 analysis, however, which measures only
whether the event was unusual from the viewpoint of the passenger, not the carrier.
See Krys,119 F.3d at 1522 (describing a passenger’s allegation that flight crew
negligently failed to make an emergency landing for his heart attack as “the
continuation of the flight to its scheduled point of arrival”). Therefore, whether
internal airline records documented a bumping in no way informs whether an
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accident occurred. In addition, in framing the facts, we look only to “what precise
event or events allegedly caused the damage sustained by the plaintiff.” Id. at
1521 n.10. For example, it does not matter whether Campbell had been issued a
boarding pass with a seat assignment because he does not allege that this fact
aggravated his injuries. At bottom, then, Campbell states that he “proceeded to
embark on [the] flight but was recalled back to the boarding gate” and “was told
that he would not be accommodated on the flight.” These allegations do not state a
claim for an Article 17 accident because it is not unusual or unexpected for an
airline to prevent passengers from boarding and to force them to reschedule on a
later flight.
Campbell’s amended complaint also states that “[t]he defendant refused to
accommodate the plaintiff at a hotel,” which left Campbell stranded at the airport.
He further alleges that he was forced to spend the night outside because the airport
was under repairs and that he became ill when exposed to adverse weather. But
Campbell cannot recover under Article 17 because, whether or not this amounted
to an “accident,” he does not allege that the airline abandoned him while he was
aboard the aircraft or during the process of embarkation or disembarkation.
The Montreal Convention does not define “embarking” or “disembarking.”
In applying these terms, we consider the totality of the alleged circumstances.
Marotte v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 296 F.3d 1255, 1260 (11th Cir. 2002). Three factors
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are particularly relevant: “(1) the passenger’s activity at the time of the accident;
(2) the passenger’s whereabouts at the time of the accident; and (3) the amount of
control exercised by the carrier at the moment of the injury.” Id. No individual
factor is dispositive. Instead, they form a single analytical base. Id. We have also
noted that we consider the imminence of a passenger’s actual boarding of a flight
because embarking requires “a close connection between the accident and the
physical act of boarding the aircraft.” Id.None of these factors suggest that the alleged abandonment occurred during
embarkation. First, Campbell was not engaged in an activity characteristic of
boarding when he was refused overnight accommodations. Compare Schroeder v.
Lufthansa German Airlines, 875 F.2d 613, 618 (7th Cir. 1989) (“[Police were]
questioning Schroeder about a bomb threat. This activity is not even remotely
related to a passenger’s embarking or disembarking from an airplane.”), and
Martinez Hernandez v. Air France, 545 F.2d 279, 282 (1st Cir. 1976) (“[T]he
passengers had already emerged from the aircraft, descended the stairs from the
plane to the ground, traveled via bus or foot from the plane to the terminal, and
presented their passports to the Israeli authorities. On these facts we do not believe
it can be said that the passengers were still engaged in any activity relating to
effecting their separation from the aircraft.”), with Marotte, 296 F.3d at 1260 (11th
Cir. 2002) (“[T]he party had their boarding passes in hand and were attempting to
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board the plane when the attack took place.”), and Day v. Trans World Airlines,
Inc., 528 F.2d 31, 33 (2d Cir. 1975) (“[T]he plaintiffs had already surrendered their
tickets, passed through passport control, and entered the area reserved exclusively
for those about to depart on international flights. They were assembled at the
departure gate, virtually ready to proceed to the aircraft.”).
Second, the location of the alleged abandonment was considerably removed
from the point of boarding. Campbell claims that the airline left him stranded at
the Kingston airport, where he was forced to spend the night outside the terminal
exposed to the elements. The overnight events “happened at a considerable
distance from the departure gate.” McCarthy v. Nw. Airlines, Inc., 56 F.3d 313,
317-18 (1st Cir. 1995). Campbell does not claim that he was in a restricted or
secure area, or that he spent the night “in a section of the airport that is not open to
the general public.” Marotte, 296 F.3d at 1260; see McCarthy, 56 F.3d at 318(“We believe it is no mere happenstance that the plaintiff has not cited -- and we
have been unable to deterrate -- a single instance in which Article 17 has been
found to cover an accident that occurred within the public area of a terminal
facility.”).
Third, Air Jamaica exercised no control over Campbell when it declined to
pay for his hotel. After being turned away from his original flight, Campbell “was
acting at [his] own direction and was no longer under the ‘control’ of” Air Jamaica.
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Maugnie v. Compagnie Nationale Air France, 549 F.2d 1256, 1262 (9th Cir. 1977).
Campbell was a “free agent[] roaming at will through the terminal” -- and beyond
it. Day, 528 F.2d at 33. Finally, the alleged abandonment occurred long before
Campbell’s boarding was imminent. If anything, Campbell complains that
boarding was not imminent, and that the airline refused to make his wait more
manageable.
After examining location, activity, control, and imminence, we conclude that
the airline’s alleged refusal to provide accommodations, and Campbell’s overnight
stay outside the terminal, did not occur in the course of any of the operations of
embarking or disembarking. All told, Campbell states no Article 17 claim upon
which relief can be granted.
V.
Defendants urge that we affirm the dismissal of Campbell’s claims on the
alternative ground that his amended complaint was untimely because it was not
filed within the Montreal Convention’s two-year limitations period. We decline
their invitation because Rule 15(c) allows Campbell’s amended complaint to relate
back to his timely original complaint.
Campbell filed his initial complaint on September 7, 2011, within the two-
year limitations period. After the district court sua sponte dismissed without
prejudice and with leave to file an amended complaint within fifteen days,
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Campbell filed an amended complaint on December 12, 2011, outside of the two-
year window. Though the district court dismissed on other grounds, it noted that it
was “inclined to reject the limitations’ period argument, because it would be
patently unfair to bar a plaintiff’s suit on the basis of the limitations period where
the initial Complaint was filed within the applicable period and dismissed without
prejudice to refile.”
Article 35 of the Montreal Convention specifies that “[t]he right to damages
shall be extinguished if an action is not brought within a period of two years,
reckoned from the date of arrival at the destination, or from the date on which the
aircraft ought to arrive, or from the date on which the carriage stopped.” Montreal
Convention art. 17, S. Treaty Doc. No. 106-45. But Article 35 also provides that
“[t]he method of calculating that period shall be determined by the law of the court
seised of the case.” Id. Meanwhile, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c) allows
an amended pleading to relate back to the date of a complaint filed within the
limitations period when “the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out
of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out -- or attempted to be set out -- in
the original pleading.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B). This condition for relation
back is satisfied here because Campbell’s original complaint alleged the same
essential facts that formed the basis for the claims pled in his amended complaint.
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However, the parties dispute whether the Montreal Convention permits Rule 15(c)
relation back.
Our Circuit has not previously addressed the application of Rule 15(c) to the
two-year limit in the Montreal Convention or its predecessor, the Warsaw
Convention. Courts that have confronted similar problems generally distinguish
between two doctrines: tolling, deemed impermissible, and relation-back,
considered to be consistent with the Convention. Tolling occurs when a party
invokes equitable principles to stop the running of a statute of limitations so that an
untimely claim may still be asserted. See, e.g., Ellis v. Gen. Motors Acceptance
Corp., 160 F.3d 703, 706 (11th Cir. 1998) (“‘Equitable tolling’ is the doctrine
under which plaintiffs may sue after the statutory time period has expired if they
have been prevented from doing so due to inequitable circumstances.”). With
tolling, no claim need be filed within the limitations period. Courts have refused to
apply local tolling rules to Convention claims. See, e.g., Husmann v. Trans World
Airlines, Inc., 169 F.3d 1151, 1154 (8th Cir. 1999); Fishman v. Delta Air Lines,
Inc., 132 F.3d 138, 143-45 (2d Cir. 1998). By contrast, relation back can occur
only when amendments are made to a timely filed claim that involved the same
facts and circumstances. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c).
Therefore, when an original complaint is timely filed and the only effect of
amendment is to allow the plaintiffs to conform their pleading to the requirements
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of the Convention, “[g]ranting leave to amend has no prohibited tolling effect.”
Pennington v. British Airways, 275 F. Supp. 2d 601, 606-07 (E.D. Pa. 2003); see
In re Air Crash Near Rio Grande P.R. on Dec. 3, 2008, 11-MD-02246-KAM, 2012
WL 3962906, at *3-4 (S.D. Fla. Sept. 11, 2012) (unpublished) (“[Plaintiffs] seek to
bring a claim pursuant to the Montreal Convention, rather than state law, based
upon the same conduct, transaction and occurrence set out in the original
complaint. [Plaintiffs] seek to apply the relation-back doctrine, not tolling.
. . . Rule 15(c) permits application of the relation-back doctrine.”); Raddatz v. Bax
Global, Inc., 07-CV-1020, 2008 WL 2435582 (E.D. Wis. June 16, 2008)
(unpublished) (“[T]he court finds that Rule 15(c) applies to any amendments to
Raddatz’s original complaint and his cause of action would be timely under the
two-year limitation period set forth in the Warsaw Convention.”). In Motorola,
Inc. v. MSAS Cargo Int’l, Inc., 42 F. Supp. 2d 952, 955-56 (N.D. Cal. 1998), a
district court refused to allow a plaintiff to use Rule 15(c) to add a new defendant
after the limitation period expired. But, as a later court observed, “the real evil at
issue in Motorola . . . was the fact that the plaintiff . . . was attempting to use the
complaint amending mechanism of Rule 15(c) in order to commence an entirely
new and separate suit against a party otherwise protected by the” limitations
period. Pennington, 275 F. Supp. 2d at 606. Here, where the alleged facts and the
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named defendants are consistent across the two complaints, there is “no prohibited
tolling effect.” Id. at 607.
Our review of the Montreal Convention leads us to agree with this trend
permitting Rule 15(c) relation-back in cases like Campbell’s. Treaty interpretation
starts with the text. Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491, 506 (2008). But the
language alone does not tell us whether Rule 15(c) concerns the method of
calculating the two-year period, which the Convention leaves to the court of the
forum. See Fishman, 132 F.3d at 144 (“[T]he language of Article [35] is
reasonably susceptible to conflicting interpretations.”). Rule 15(c) does not
involve computation in a narrow sense, which could cover only questions like the
time of day by which filings must be entered. But Rule 15(c) does address the
calculation of the limitations period for amended claims when a plaintiff raised
similar issues in an earlier filing.
When the text is ambiguous, we turn to the treaty’s drafting history. Saks,
470 U.S. at 396 (“Treaties are construed more liberally than private agreements,
and to ascertain their meaning we may look beyond the written words to the
history of the treaty, the negotiations, and the practical construction adopted by the
parties.” (quoting Choctaw Nation of Indians v. United States, 318 U.S. 423, 431-
432 (1943)); Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U.S. 217, 226 (1996)
(“Because a treaty ratified by the United States is not only the law of this land . . . ,
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but also an agreement among sovereign powers, we have traditionally considered
as aids to its interpretation the negotiating and drafting history (travaux
préparatoires) and the postratification understanding of the contracting parties.”).
The preliminary draft of the Warsaw Convention presented at a 1925 Paris
conference on private aeronautical law provided that “[t]he method of calculating
the period of limitation, as well as the causes of suspension and interruption of the
period of limitation, shall be determined by the law of the court having taken
jurisdiction.” Second International Conference on Private Aeronautical Law
Minutes 267 (Robert C. Horner & Didier Legrez trans., 1975). In other words, the
original version would have allowed the application of local tolling rules. At the
1929 Warsaw Conference, however, the Italian delegation proposed an amendment
that would replace that provision in the interests of predictability and simplicity
with “a plea in bar; that is to say, that after two years any action dies and is no
longer admissable.” Id. at 110. The French delegation, while “not at all opposed
to the Italian proposal,” noted that there was still a need to indicate that “the law of
the forum court . . . will fix how, within the period of two years, the court will be
seized, because in all the countries of the world suits are not brought in the same
way.” Id. at 111. The delegates ultimately voted to remove the allowance for
forum courts to determine “the causes of suspension and interruption of the period
of limitation.” But the delegates retained the provision instructing that “[t]he
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method of calculating the period shall be determined by the law of the court having
taken jurisdiction.” Id. at 219. This same language was carried over into Article
35 of the Montreal Convention.
This drafting history suggests that the delegates intended to avoid the
application of tolling rules, which would make it “very difficult for the shipper . . .
to know when the interruption or suspension begins.” Id. at 110; see Fishman, 132
F.3d at 144 (“Almost every court that has reviewed the drafting minutes of the
Convention, including the district court in this case, has rejected the contention that
Article [35] incorporates the tolling provisions otherwise applicable in the
forum.”). On the other hand, the delegates showed no opposition to principles of
relation-back. To the contrary, the Italian delegation described its bright-line
proposal as having the following effect: “if two years after the accident no action
has been brought, all actions are extinguished.” Campbell did bring an action
within two years, avoiding the foreseeability problems characteristic of tolling.
Moreover, the adopted language specifically permits a forum court to set methods
of calculating the two-year period. In sum, we agree with the consensus of courts
that the Montreal Convention permits the application of Rule 15(c) relation back,
at least when the amending plaintiff identifies the same defendants named in the
original complaint. Campbell’s amended complaint was timely under Article 35.
VI.
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We vacate the dismissal of Campbell’s Article 19 claim against Air Jamaica
for economic damages in the form of the $150 change fee and remand only for
proceedings concerning this claim. Because Campbell pled no other claims for
damages cognizable under Articles 17 or 19, and he stated no claim against
Caribbean Airlines, we affirm on alternative grounds the dismissal with prejudice
of the remainder of the claims raised in Campbell’s complaint.
AFFIRMED in part, VACATED in part, and REMANDED.
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