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Airline passenger loses claim under Montreal Convention F
ord v Malaysian Airline Systems Berhad [2013] EWCA Civ 1163 concerned the scope of the term “accident” under the Montreal Convention 1999, which applies to all international carriage of persons, baggage and cargo by air for reward.
Case details Anne Ford, the claimant, was flying from London to Melbourne via Kuala Lumpur on 9 July 2009. She had a medical history of cystitis (inflammation of the bladder lining). Although the claimant urinated normally before boarding the aircraft, she was unable to pass urine during the flight and her over the counter medication for cystitis was in her hold luggage. The claimant asked for assistance from the cabin crew, who
explained that one of her fellow passengers was a doctor. With the claimant’s consent, the doctor injected a diuretic into her buttock and advised her to drink fluids because she was dehydrated. Unfortunately, the claimant still could not urinate and experienced increasing lower abdominal discomfort. She was catheterised at the airport in Kuala Lumpur and eventually treated with antibiotics upon arrival in Melbourne. According to the expert medical report, it had been
inappropriate for the doctor to administer a diuretic. This injection, together with the drinks which the doctor recommended, caused the claimant’s kidneys to produce more urine. However, as she had an underlying condition of urethral stenosis (narrowing of the tube through which urine is excreted from the bladder), she suffered increased fluid retention and physical discomfort. A claim was brought against the defendant airline under Article
22 /Claims Magazine/Issue 11
17.1 of the Montreal Convention 1999. At the trial of a preliminary issue, the judge ruled that the act of injecting an airline passenger with a diuretic could not be classified as an accident which caused bodily injury and the claimant appealed.
Te verdict The Court of Appeal noted that in Article 17, “accident” refers to
the cause of the passenger’s injury rather than the injury itself. This cause must be an “event” or a “happening”, which has the
characteristic of being “unexpected” or “unusual” from the victim’s perspective. It is also necessary to prove that the unexpected or unusual event was a “link in the chain” leading to bodily injury and resulted from something “external to the passenger” (rather than being caused by the passenger’s “peculiar internal condition”). In the present case, the claimant’s reaction to the diuretic
was caused by her “peculiar internal condition” (that is, urethral stenosis) and therefore had to be excluded from consideration. The relevant event was the actual act of administering the injection, which had not been done in an abnormal way. It could not be defined as an “unusual” event under Article
17.1, even though a passenger doctor had given the injection to another passenger during an international flight. These characteristics did not have any causal link with the claimant’s “bodily injury” and the same chain of events would have taken place wherever the injection had been administered. As the definition of an “accident” in Article 17.1 had not been satisfied, the claimant’s appeal was dismissed. ●
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