Muoneke v. Air France (5th Cir. Tex. Sept. 17, 2007). The day after her flight from Texas arrived in Nigeria, the passenger went to the airline’s lost baggage office at the airport and claimed that several items were missing from her checked baggage. The passenger alleged that she submitted a written claim regarding the missing items during her visit to the baggage office, but the airline alleged that it had no record of having received such claim.
The passenger filed a state court lawsuit against the airline, which removed the case to federal court. The passenger moved that the case be remanded because the amount in controversy did not exceed $75,000. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s denial of the remand motion, holding that because the passenger’s complaint involved the interpretation and application of a treaty – the Warsaw Convention – the trial court had federal question jurisdiction, which has no dollar-amount requirement.
After the trial court denied the passenger’s remand motion, the airline moved for summary judgment on the grounds that the passenger had failed to submit a timely written claim under Article 26 of the Warsaw Convention and the airline’s contract of carriage, both of which required submission of a written claim within seven days of the passenger’s receipt of her baggage. The Fifth Circuit vacated the trial court’s summary judgment for the airline, holding that the passenger’s submissions in opposition to the airline’s motion were sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether she had submitted a written claim.
Note: The Warsaw Convention and its successor, the Montreal Convention, impose time limits for submitting written claims for baggage and cargo damage and delay but not for loss. However, neither Convention prohibits airlines from imposing their own time limits for submitting written loss claims (see, e.g., Khan v. Singapore Airlines, Ltd. (9th Cir. 1997)), and airlines typically impose such limits through their conditions of carriage. Courts usually regard the delivery of baggage with some items missing, as occurred in the above case, as baggage damage rather than loss for purposes of Article 26. See Maro Leather Co. v. Aerolineas Argentinas (N.Y.A.D. 1988).