Full access allows:
- Solve all tests online without limits;
- Remove all advertisements on website;
- Adding questions to favorite list;
- Save learning progress;
- Save results of practice exams;
- Watching all wrong answered questions.
- Homepage »
- Torts »
- Negligence
25. If the plaintiff asserts a claim for damages against the airline based on negligence, the plaintiff will
During the flight, a flight attendant served the man nine drinks. As the man became more and more obviously intoxicated and attempted to engage the plaintiff in a conversation, the plaintiff chose to ignore the man instead of changing seats. This angered the man, who suddenly struck the plaintiff in the face, giving him a black eye. The flight attendant had witnessed the man becoming violent but chose to not get involved.
A plaintiff and a man were passengers sitting in adjoining seats on a flight on an airline. There were many empty seats on the aircraft.
Comments (0)
There are no comments at the moment. If you found an error or think question is incorrect, tell everyone about it
Only signed in users can write comments
Signin
For common carriers, including airlines, a special relationship exists such that the plaintiff is owed a special duty of care by the defendant. Specifically, the common carrier has a duty to furnish affirmative assistance to its passengers and not simply stand by while they are subject to a foreseeable danger that is caused by the conditions created by the common carrier. See, e.g., Lopez v. S. Cal. Rapid Transit Dist., 710 P.2d 907 (Cal. 1985).
D is correct. The airline, and by extension the flight attendant, as an employee, was obligated to take affirmative action to protect the plaintiff from the foreseeable danger posed by the man's conduct. As a common carrier, the airline has a duty to take reasonable steps to make the conditions on its flights reasonably safe, to conduct operations with reasonable care for the presence of its customers, and, in appropriate circumstances, to use reasonable care to protect customers from foreseeable harmful/criminal acts of third persons.
Here, if the flight attendant served the man nine drinks, which caused him to become visibly intoxicated and then violent, the issue becomes whether the flight attendant should have done something. Given the man's level of intoxication and his overall agitated behavior, and the fact that it is foreseeable for intoxicated passengers to become dangerous or unruly, the airline should be liable for failing to abide by its affirmative duty to protect the plaintiff from those conditions, which the airline itself created.
A is incorrect. This is a true statement of the law as applied to the duty of care for reasonable people in normal circumstances. However, common carriers owe a heightened duty of care to its passengers. An airline creates the conditions in which passengers enter and remain on a plane and serving a large amount of alcohol to one passenger causes a foreseeable risk of harm to others. This triggers an affirmative duty to step in and rescue if such danger arises, as explained above.
B is incorrect. The duty is on the airline to intervene when a foreseeable risk of harm arises based on conditions that it created and was aware of. The plaintiff contracted for a ticket, he was in his assigned seat, and there was no duty on him to move to avoid harm from another passenger. The airline is liable for failing to take reasonable steps to protect the plaintiff from foreseeable harm stemming from the airline's own actions.
C is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. The plaintiff should recover, but not because the airline, as a common carrier, is subject to strict liability. This is a misstatement of the law. A common carrier does have a special relationship to protect its passengers, but subject to negligence rules. The duty of care may be higher than the average person's duty toward others, but it does not rise to the level of strict liability.