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Opinion of the Court
Robert H. Silk argued the cause and filed briefs for respondent.*
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. Plaintiff-respondent Tsui Yuan Tseng was subjected to an intrusive security search at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York before she boarded an El Al Israel Airlines May 22, 1993 flight to Tel Aviv. Tseng seeks tort damages from El Al for this occurrence. The episode-in-suit, both parties now submit, does not qualify as an "acci-dent" within the meaning of the treaty popularly known as the Warsaw Convention, which governs air carrier liability for "all international transportation." 1 Tseng alleges psychic or psychosomatic injuries, but no "bodily injury," as that term is used in the Convention. Her case presents a question of the Convention's exclusivity: When the Convention allows no recovery for the episode-in-suit, does it correspondingly preclude the passenger from maintaining an action for damages under another source of law, in this case, New York tort law?
The exclusivity question before us has been settled prospectively in a Warsaw Convention protocol (Montreal Protocol No. 4) recently ratified by the Senate.2 In accord with the protocol, Tseng concedes, a passenger whose injury is not compensable under the Convention (because it entails no "bodily injury" or was not the result of an "accident") will
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the Air Transport Association of America by Warren L. Dean, Jr., and Joseph O. Click; and for the International Air Transport Association by Bert W. Rein.
1 Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air, Oct. 12, 1929, 49 Stat. 3000, 3014, T. S. No. 876 (1934), note following 49 U. S. C. § 40105.
2 Montreal Protocol No. 4 to Amend the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage By Air, signed at Warsaw on October 12, 1929, as amended by the Protocol Done at the Hague on September 8, 1955 (hereinafter Montreal Protocol No. 4), reprinted in S. Exec. Rep. No. 105-20, pp. 21-32 (1998).
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