Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U.S. 217, 12 (1996)

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228

ZICHERMAN v. KOREAN AIR LINES CO.

Opinion of the Court

govern the types of damages recoverable in a Convention case. See Haanappel, The right to sue in death cases under the Warsaw Convention, 6 Air Law 66, 72, 74 (1981); E. Giemulla, R. Schmid, & P. Ehlers, Warsaw Convention 39, n. 5 (1992); German Law Concerning Air Navigation (Luft VG) of Jan. 10, 1959, Arts. 35-36, 38, reprinted in 1 Senate Committee on Commerce, Air Laws and Treaties of the World, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 766-768 (Comm. Print 1965); R. Mankiewicz, The Liability Regime of the International Air Carrier ¶ 187, pp. 160-161 (1981). Canada has adopted legislation setting forth who may bring suit under Article 24(2), but has left the question of what types of damages are recoverable to provincial law. Haanappel, supra, at 70-71. The Court of Appeals of Quebec has rejected the argument that Article 17 permits damages unrecoverable under domestic Quebec law. Dame Surprenant v. Air Canada, [1973] C. A. 107, 117-118, 126-127 (opinion of Deschênes, J.). But see Preston v. Hunting Air Transport Ltd., [1956] 1 Q. B. 454, 461-462 (granting damages under Convention, but without considering Article 24). Finally, the expert commentators are virtually unanimous that the type of harm compensable is to be determined by domestic law. See, e. g., H. Drion, Limitation of Liabilities in International Air Law

¶ 111, pp. 125-126 (1954); Giemulla, Schmid, & Ehlers, supra, at 33; D. Goedhuis, National Airlegislations and the Warsaw Convention 269 (1937); Mankiewicz, supra, ¶ 187, at 160-161; G. Miller, Liability in International Air Transport: The Warsaw System in Municipal Courts 125 (1977); see also Cha, The Air Carrier's Liability to Passengers in International Law, 7 Air L. Rev. 25, 56-57 (1936).

III

Having concluded that compensable harm is to be determined by domestic law, the next question to which we would logically turn is that of which sovereign's domestic law. That is the "private international law" issue alluded to in the last-quoted excerpt from the CITEJA Report. Choice of

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