Cite as: 516 U. S. 217 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
ed.)), a plaintiff may recover damages for loss of society resulting from the death of a relative in a plane crash on the high seas.
I
On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight KE007, en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea, strayed into air space of the Soviet Union and was shot down over the Sea of Japan. All 269 persons on board were killed, including Muriel Kole. Petitioners Marjorie Zicherman and Muriel Mahalek, Kole's sister and mother, respectively, sued respondent Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd. (KAL), in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Petitioners' final amended complaint contained three counts, entitled, respectively, "Warsaw Convention," "Death on the High Seas Act," and "Conscious Pain and Suffering." At issue here is only the Warsaw Convention count, in which petitioners sought "judgment against KAL for their pecuniary damages, for their grief and mental anguish, for the loss of the decedent's society and companionship, and for the decedent's conscious pain and suffering." App. 29.
Along with other federal-court actions arising out of the KAL crash, petitioners' case was transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for consolidated proceedings on common issues of liability. There, a jury found that the destruction of Flight KE007 was proximately caused by "willful misconduct" of the flight crew, thus lifting the Warsaw Convention's $75,000 cap on damages. See Warsaw Convention, Art. 25, 49 Stat. 3020; Order of Civil Aeronautics Board Approving Increases in Liability Limitations of Warsaw Convention and Hague Protocol, reprinted in note following 49 U. S. C. App. § 1502 (1988 ed.). The jury awarded $50 million in punitive damages against KAL. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the finding of "willful misconduct," but vacated the punitive damages award, holding that the Warsaw Convention does not permit the recovery of punitive dam-
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