Virgin Hot Coffee With A Spot of Impeccable Treaty Interpretation

Last week, the Southern District of New York offered up a nice, succinct, high quality opinion on treaty interpretation that does a wonderful job of looking at plain meaning, object and purpose to interpret an ambiguous phrase in the Montreal Convention.

There is nothing exciting about Baah v. Virgin Atlantic Airways (2007 WL 424993)–it related to injuries suffered from hot beverages while in flight from London to New York–but the way the court interpreted the ambiguous phrase “place of destination” in the Montreal Convention was spot on. It relied on the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, it analyzed the relationship between the Warsaw Convention and the superseding Montreal Convention, it correctly articulated the doctrine of self-execution, it examined the purpose of the Montreal Convention as compared to the previous convention, and it even relied on drafting history only after it concluded that the ordinary meaning of the provision was not apparent from the text.

In short, it came quite close to the treaty interpretation approach that comports with the traditional tools applied by international law. That is something that, as we have said before, is unfortunately rare among federal judges.