A JetBlue passenger has filed suit after asking flight attendants for ice to reduce swelling in her left leg on a flight from Paris to New York last year. They gave her an “ice pack” – that she says was actually dry ice. It caused burns and tissue damage to her left leg, which she frames as an “accident” in order to claim damages under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention.
Let’s first start with this: never use dry ice directly on the skin. Flight attendants should also never hand it to a passenger as a therapeutic cold pack. Always use gloves designed for very cold temperatures when handling it! Avoid direct contact and never handle it with bare hands. Dry ice is about -109°F.
A normal cold compress or ordinary ice with a barrier between the cold and skin is appropriate here. Dry ice is not, and should itself be treated like a frostbite injury.
Assuming the story is close to true, it’s a very strong Montreal Convention Article 17 claim.
- The airline is liable for damage sustained in case of bodily injury of a passenger if the accident causing the injury took place on board the aircraft or during boarding or deplaning.
- The question is whether there was an “accident.” Under Air France v. Saks that’s an “unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger.” And Olympic Airways v. Husain clarifies that this includes airline personnel conduct. If a JetBlue flight attendant handed over dry ice, without warning, for direct skin contact, that’s an Article 17 accident.
- Under Article 21, the airline can’t limit liability up to 151,880 SDR (US$215,802).
JetBlue’s best defense is that the passenger’s own negligence contributed to the damage. If the flight attendant warned her not to apply it directly, told her to wrap it, or if the passenger kept the dry ice applied after pain began, there may be some mitigation. They can also argue the underlying condition – which caused the passenger to ask for the ice in the first place – is contributory. (They can also question whether the damages are medically overstated.)
There either might be no negligence on the part of the crew, or that excess damages above $215,802 are not recoverable because the injury resulted from plaintiff’s own handling of the ice rather than crew negiglence.
The lawsuit itself is very bare bones. It was filed just under one year from the incident, but the Montreal Convention deadline is two years so it’s not a statute of limitations issue. So the logic of a placeholder complaint seems likely to initiate discovery. The suit may be needed to obtain the airline’s incident report, any ground medical consultation, catering records showing dry ice boarded, airline training materials, crew statements, etc.
We’ve seen JetBlue sued over medical damages from its catering supplies in the past, like the passenger who broke a tooth over rock hard ice cream. And I just wrote about a lawsuit against United Airlines because a 4-year old was burned by 200 degree tea – the perfect example of why I’ve questioned Montreal Convention liability limits.
(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
You should not be able to sue because you lack common sense. You’re always supposed to put a barrier between your skin and any kind of Ice application and only keep it on 10-15 minutes at a time and check your skin frequently. Not the flight attendant’s job to give out medical advice. Why didn’t the patient remove the ice if she felt burning?
Give her 10 bucks JetBlue credit and move on. This is so frivolous.
How did the FAs not get burnt handling the dry ice?
@Retired orthopedic nurse — Sick burn!
Hey retired ortho nurse: stay in your unambiguous low IQ lane. (Or you would’ve become a surgeon, not a nurse.) and leave the law to lawyers.
Nurses are horrible people whether they are treating me in a clinical setting or whether I happen to be dating one on the social scene. I avoid all nurses on dating apps. They are unfailingly over entitled divas with unwarranted high opinions of their own intellect.
I meant “unambitious,” not unambiguous.
Manhattan West: tell me you’re unambiguously an incel without saying you’re an unambitious incel. lol
Shouldn’t a swollen leg on an airplane be considered a danger sign of DVT? I don’t know if ice would be an appropriate treatment in that case.
First never heard of dry ice in an ice pack, possible never seen fir sale. Second ice pack would expand as ice becomes c02 and likely explode. Third dry ice is kept at REALLLY cold temperatures much lower than ice. And fourth, I once brought frozen seafood in to the cabin, they asked if it had dry ice. Dry ice isn’t allowed in the cabin.
@sam
Dry ice is typically packaged in plastic bags which are larger than the dry ice contents (particularly after part of the dry ice sublimates). It is quite easy to pick such a package up by the corner without meaningful contact with the dry ice. Pressing the package against flesh as if it were an innocuous ice pack involves much more substantial contact.
@Vaughan Buck, I also thought that dry ice wouldn’t be allowed in a cabin, and we are wrong. The TSA allows passengers to bring up to 5.5 pounds: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/dry-ice
Some airlines ban it, but the US govt is fine with it. Looks Jetblue allows it: https://www.jetblue.com/help/prohibited-items
But since dry ice is at -109.3 F (-78.5 C), that is definitely cold enough to cause injury.
But she still has a leg to stand on
If you’re warned not to apply dry ice to your skin but do so anyway, particularly after being told to remove it if pain occurs but don’t, then it’s on you. You can’t fix stupid.