116
OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit
No. 97-704. Argued April 27, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998
The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA or Act) allows certain relatives of a decedent to sue for their own pecuniary losses, but does not authorize recovery for the decedent's pre-death pain and suffering. Petitioners, personal representatives of three passengers killed when Korean Air Lines Flight KE007 was shot down over the Sea of Japan, sued respondent airline (KAL) for, inter alia, damages for their decedents' pre-death pain and suffering. While their suit was pending, this Court decided in Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U. S. 217—which arose out of the same disaster—that the Warsaw Convention permits compensation only for legally cognizable harm, but leaves the specification of what constitutes such harm to applicable domestic law, id., at 231; that DOHSA supplies the applicable United States law where an airplane crashes on the high seas, ibid.; and that where DOHSA applies, neither state nor general maritime law can permit recovery of loss-of-society damages, id., at 230. Subsequently, the District Court in this case granted KAL's motion to dismiss petitioners' nonpecuniary damages claims on the ground that DOHSA does not permit recovery for such damages, including damages for a decedent's pre-death pain and suffering. In affirming, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners' argument that general maritime law provides a survival action for pain and suffering damages, holding that Congress has decided who may sue and for what in cases of death on the high seas.
Held: Because Congress has chosen not to authorize a survival action for a decedent's pre-death pain and suffering in a case of death on the high seas, there can be no general maritime survival action for such damages. Before Congress enacted DOHSA, admiralty law did not permit an action to recover damages for a person's death. In DOHSA, Congress authorized such a cause of action for certain surviving relatives in cases of death on the high seas, 46 U. S. C. App. § 761, but limited recovery to the survivors' own pecuniary losses, § 762. DOHSA's limited survival provision also restricts recovery to the survivors' pecuniary losses. § 765. In Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U. S. 618, this Court
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