High Court to Hear ’83 KAL Crash Appeal

The Supreme Court said Friday it will use the case of a shot-down South Korean airliner to decide whether relatives of people who die over international waters can seek damages for the victims’ pain and suffering.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal by relatives of five of the 269 people killed when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines 747 on Sept. 1, 1983. The jet had strayed into Soviet airspace.

Those who sued over the crash said the high court’s decision also could affect lawsuits filed over the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island, N.Y., in which 230 people died.

The Korean Air Lines case is a follow-up to a 1996 high court ruling in a different lawsuit over the same disaster.

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In that case, the justices said people cannot win financial damages for loss of companionship when people die in plane crashes over international waters.

The court said the 1929 Warsaw Convention treaty covering international air disasters leaves it to each country to decide what kinds of lawsuits will be allowed.

U.S. lawsuits are governed by the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows damages only for financial loss, the justices said in 1996.

But the families who sued KAL contend that U.S. maritime law allows them to collect damages from the airline for their relatives’ pain and suffering.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled against them, and a federal appeals court agreed with that ruling last July. It said only the Death on the High Seas Act controls such lawsuits and bars damages for pain and suffering.