United Airlines Sued After 4-Year-Old Is Burned By 200-Degree Tea — But Airline Liability Is Capped

A United Airlines passenger is suing after her young child was burned by 200 degree temperature tea that was spilled.

A family of seven, including five children, boarded United Airlines flight 84 from Newark to Tel Aviv on April 28 last year. Their four year old was severely burned by the hot water.

• The case alleges that a United crew member, “in violation of all safety and common sense standards,” handed a cup of “uncovered scalding water” to the child, causing serious burns and scarring.

• It’s a Montreal Convetion case which makes proving liability easier, but capping damages.

Article 17 of the Montreal Convention makes the carrier liable for bodily injury if the accident causing the injury took place on board the aircraft. It requires an “unexpected or unusual event or happening” external to the passenger. And it’s the liability of the airline even if it’s a routine onboard procedure – but it’s carried out in an unreasonable manner. Hot beverage spills have been litigated under the Montreal Convention many times. The damages cap, since December 28, 2024, is 151,880 Special Drawing Rrights which is about $216,470.

There was an accident. It’s clearly covered by the Montreal Convention. But the flight attendant didn’t spill the cup. And the flight attendant apparently didn’t give it to the four year old, either. Instead, they apparently handed it to the family eleven year old.

• If the spill was caused by the handling of the cup by another passenger, rather than a negligent act of crew, that limits damages. United can argue that the flight attendant did a standard handoff, mentioned it was hot, and then the cup was mishandled by the 11-year old.

• There are no punitive, exemplary, or other non-compensatory damages in a Montreal Convention case, so United’s exposure isn’t huge.

The question isn’t likely whether there’s liability for United, it’s how much. An accident occurred on the aircraft after a flight attendant handed uncovered scalding water to a child, and a four year old was hurt. But they may not be solely to blame, and the amount of liability isn’t going to be large.

The place to naturally go with this is McDonald’s coffee. Stella Liebeck won $2.7 million after spilling a cup of coffee in her own lap. She wound up with $480,000. But the original verdict was for (very real) medical expenses and two days of coffee sales for McDonalds as a way of saying the fast food chain needed to change its behavior.

They stopped serving coffee at 180 – 190 degrees (which immediately caused third degree burns). By dialing it back to 158 °F there’s 60 seconds, or enough time to react to a spill, to avoid burns.

Leibeck wasn’t driving. The vehicle was stopped. She removed the coffee lid to add cream and sugar. The coffee spill caused extensive burns to her legs and groin. She needed skin grafts.

McDonald’s had received hundreds of documented complaints about the dangerous temperature at which they were serving coffee, and they conceded it was at a temperature where it couldn’t be consumed immediately. The jury found McDonald’s negligent.

Both cases are about scald injuries from hot liquid. The McDonald’s case was a domestic tort liability issue with punitive damages.

Here’s a case a decade ago where United spilled scalding hot coffee on a child, declared a medical emergency and diverted. In a different case, a flight attendant spilled burning coffee on a woman and rushed her topless to the lavatory. And then there’s this sotry from Frontier Airlines that you cannot unread involving scalding tea, tight seats and burned genitalia.

I do have to wonder, though, since this is the sort of thing that keeps happening and small dollar liability isn’t enough to get airlines to adopt better practices, whether we should eliminate the Montreal Convention limits on airline liability?