KLM Royal Dutch Airlines v Morris [2001] EWCA Civ 790 (17 May 2001)
Court of Appeal of England and Wales
Facts
On 6 September 1998 Kelly Morris, the respondent, who was born on 24 September 1982 and was almost 16 years of age, boarded the appellant’s aeroplane at Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Amsterdam. She had visited her uncle in Kuala Lumpur and was travelling as an unaccompanied minor. She was seated next to two men who were speaking French to each other. After a meal, she fell asleep and woke to discover the hand of the man next to her touching her left thigh from the hip to the knee. He was caressing her between her hip and knee and his fingers dug into her thigh. She got up, walked away, and told an air hostess what had occurred. She became very distressed and on her return to her home in Bolton she went to see a doctor, Dr Cooling. He found that she was suffering from a clinical depression amounting to a single episode of a major depressive illness. Fortunately she has made a full recovery.
In this action the respondent claims damages in respect of her illness. She does not allege that she suffered any physical injury.
Issue(s)
No issues drafted yet for this case.Discussion
These considerations lead us to the firm conclusion that when those who drafted the Warsaw Convention used the phrase ‘lésion corporelle/bodily injury’ they intended that phrase to have its natural meaning – physical injury. They did not intend that it would extend to a different type of harm, mental injury. The phrase had for the drafters a uniform meaning. Changes that have since occurred in the attitude of different jurisdictions to liability for causing mental injury cannot effect a change in the meaning to be accorded to the phrase in the Convention.
If and when the 1999 Montreal Convention comes into force there may be scope for argument, on the basis of the travaux préparatoires evidencing the consideration that was given to mental injury, that those who drafted the Convention intended the meaning of the phrase ‘bodily injury’ to turn on the jurisprudence of the individual state applying that Convention. We do not consider that this course is open to those who have to interpret that phrase in the Warsaw Convention. In that Convention the phrase means ‘physical injury’.
Useful for
Damages not available for purely mental injuries under Article 17
