Mullaney v. Delta Air Lines, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. June 3, 2009). According to the plaintiff, Delta canceled his return flight from Paris to New York due to a strike by employees of Air France (Delta’s codeshare partner) and breached its written promise to reimburse customers who booked substitute flights on other airlines. In his class action complaint, the plaintiff sought the refund of his unused Paris-New York ticket, the expenses he incurred during the extra days he spent in Paris waiting for a flight to New York, attorneys’ fees and punitive damages. The complaint set forth causes of action for violation of New York’s consumer protection statute, promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment.
Delta moved to dismiss on the grounds that the Montreal Convention preempts the complaint’s state law causes of action. The airline characterized the plaintiff’s claims as delay claims, and argued that, as such, they are preempted because Article 19 of the Convention provides that an airline is liable for “damage occasioned by delay in the carriage by air of passengers, baggage or cargo.”
The court sided with the plaintiff, holding that his claims are not preempted because they are not for delay but for non-performance of the airline’s carriage obligation. The court reasoned that the claims are for non-performance because the plaintiff had tried, without success, to obtain alternative transportation on another Delta flight and that, despite his efforts, the airline was unable to transport him.
In the typical case in which a court holds that a plaintiff’s claims are for delay rather than non-performance, the plaintiff impatiently obtained alternative transportation on a different airline’s flight without waiting to find out whether the defendant airline would be able to transport him. Here, according to the court, the plaintiff waited three days beyond his scheduled departure date, during which time Delta was unable to transport him, before he departed on a different airline’s flight. The court noted that, even on the day the plaintiff departed, Delta could not have transported him due to the ongoing strike.
Update: On July 29, 2009, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. The court held that, because individualized proof would be required to establish the airline’s liability for fraud, the plaintiff, who the court described as “a lawyer who obviously does not have enough client work to keep him busy,” had failed to meet the requirement that the proposed class members’ common questions be susceptible to generalized rather than individualized proof. In support of its ruling, the court also noted that the plaintiff’s claims might differ from those of the other members of the proposed class because the plaintiff is subject to the “particular defense” that he failed to comply with Delta’s procedure for obtaining a refund. That procedure, which is set forth in Delta’s Conditions of Carriage, required that the plaintiff turn in the unused portion of his ticket before its expiration, i.e., within one year from the date of travel from the point of origin.