Air Passenger Rights: Inadequate First Aid Is Part of the Accident

Aug 4, 2023 Benn-Ibler Rechtsanwälte

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that where a passenger is injured on board an aircraft and subsequently receives inadequate initial medical care which results in aggravation, this constitutes a single accident under the Montreal Convention.

The plaintiff was on a flight from Tel Aviv to Vienna with Austrian Airlines. During the flight, a pot of hot coffee fell on him, scalding him. He received first aid on board. The passenger later brought an action for compensation against the operating airline in Austria.

The airline challenged the Montreal Convention’s two-year limitation period for damages in the event of on-board accidents. The plaintiff argued that the Convention did not apply in this case because the initial medical treatment could not have been an accident within the meaning of the Convention. He therefore argued that it was not the Convention’s two-year limitation period that applied, but that of Austrian national law, which was three years. Therefore, the claim was not time-barred.

The Austrian Supreme Court referred the case to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling. The question that needed to be clarified was whether the aggravation of an injury as a result of inadequate medical care can be considered to be part of the accident.

According to the European Court of Justice, this is to be affirmed. Damage cannot always be attributed to an isolated event if that damage was caused by a series of mutually interdependent events. Thus, for the purposes of the Montreal Convention, a series of interrelated events without a break in time or space must be regarded as a single accident.

This is the case where, as in the present case, the overturning of a coffee pot causes a passenger to be scalded, requiring immediate first aid by the crew. Given the spatial and temporal continuity between the overturning of the coffee pot and the first medical treatment of the injured passenger, there is undeniably a causal link between the overturning of the coffee pot and the aggravation of the physical injury caused by the inadequate first medical treatment.

ECJ C-510/21 (6 July 2023)