When the courts have to figure compensation for people aboard Asiana Airlines Flight 214, the potential payouts will probably be vastly different for Americans and passengers from other countries, even if they were seated side by side as the jetliner crash-landed.
An international treaty governs compensation to passengers harmed by international air travel — from damaged luggage to crippling injuries and death. The pact is likely to close U.S. courts to many foreigners and force them to pursue their claims in Asia and elsewhere, where lawsuits are rarer, harder to win and offer smaller payouts.
Some passengers have already contacted lawyers.
"If you are a U.S. citizen, there will be no problem getting into U.S. courts. The other people are going to have a fight on their hands," said Northern California attorney Frank Pitre, who represents two Americans who were aboard the plane.
Federal law bars lawyers from soliciting victims of air disasters for the first 45 days after the crash. Pitre said his clients called him.
Congress enacted that law in 1996 amid public anger over lawyers who solicited clients in the days immediately following the ValuJet Flight 592 crash in the Florida Everglades and the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the New York coast.
The flight that broke apart recently at the San Francisco airport was carrying 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 Americans, three Canadians, three Indians, one Japanese, one Vietnamese and one person from France when it approached the runway too low and too slow. The Boeing 777 hit a seawall before skittering across the tarmac and catching fire.
Three girls from China were killed and 182 people injured, most not seriously.
The dozens who were seriously injured — especially the few who were paralyzed — can expect to win multimillion-dollar legal settlements, as long as their claims are filed in U.S. courts, legal experts said.
Northern California attorney Mike Danko, who is consulting with several lawyers from Asia about the disaster, said any passenger who was left a quadriplegic can expect settlements close to $10 million if the case is filed in the United States. Deaths of children, meanwhile, may fetch in the neighbourhood of $5 million to $10 million depending on the circumstances in U.S. courts.
In other countries, he explained, the same claims could be worth far less.
In 2001, a South Korean court ordered Korean Air Lines to pay a total of $510,000 to a woman whose daughter, son-in-law and three grandsons were killed in a 1997 crash in the U.S. territory of Guam that killed 228 people.
Broken bones in plane accidents usually mean $1 million settlements in the Unites States and in the low five-figure range overseas, Danko said.
In 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration put the value of a human life at $6 million when it was contemplating the cost-benefit of a new "cockpit resource management" regulation. But again, Danko said, that estimate applies only in U.S. courts. Foreign courts can be expected to pay far smaller settlements.
In all, the South Korean government agency that regulates that country's insurance industry expects Asiana's insurers to pay out about $175.5 million total — $131 million to replace the plane and another $44.5 million to passengers and the city of San Francisco for damage to the airport. Suh Chang-suk, an official at Financial Supervisory Service, declined to discuss how the watchdog agency calculated its estimate.
The international treaty is commonly referred to as the Montreal Convention because of the Canadian city where it was drafted. It offers international passengers five options for where to seek compensation: where they live, their final destination, where the ticket was issued, where the air carrier is based and the air carrier's principal place of business.
Foreign passengers who had roundtrip tickets to final destinations beyond the U.S. face stiff legal challenges to pursue their claims against the airline in the United States, where courts are more receptive to lawsuits and the payouts larger than in the courts of most other nations.
Asiana can also invoke the America legal doctrine of "forum non conveniens" to argue that it's much more convenient for it to litigate the Asian victims' cases in Asia because all parties are based there.
South Korean attorney Suh Dong Hee represented some of the victims of the 1997 Korean Air Lines crash. He said family members of the victims who pursued their case in the United States settled for as much as 100 times more than those who sued in South Korea.
Brian Havel, director of DePaul University's International Aviation Law Institute, said the convention does require the airlines to make immediate "down payments" to victims to help with medical expenses, travel costs and other inconveniences caused by the crash.
"Everyone will get something," Havel said. "But who receives what does largely depend on where they qualify under the convention."
However, Pitre and others say, the foreign passengers are still able to sue others who may have contributed to the accident, such as the plane's manufacturer, airport personnel and even, perhaps, the first responders.
Pitre said he and his clients are investigating whether Boeing Co. shoulders any responsibility for the crash, including potential design flaws in the plane's automated instruments or differences between first-class passengers' seatbelts, which come with a shoulder strap, and the seatbelts in the economy section, which are lap restraints only.
Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said the company buys seats from other companies and "simply installs them." He also said the seat belt designs and configurations are mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Birtel declined to discuss the other issues Pitre raised.
Authorities said Friday that 15-year-old Liu Yipeng was struck by a fire truck, although it's not clear whether that killed her. Some passengers who called 911 immediately after the crash also complained that the emergency response took too long. Those third parties and others are open to lawsuits in the United States.
San Francisco officials said ambulances could not immediately come too close to the plane out of concern the aircraft would explode.
据美国媒体7月14日报道，在韩亚航空214航班乘客赔偿问题上，美国人获得的赔偿金可能远超其他国家乘客的赔偿金，即使当时他们肩并肩坐在一起。
“如果你是美国公民，在美国法院索赔不会有问题。其他人就有问题了。”加州律师弗兰克·皮特说。
7月6日，韩亚航空公司214航班在旧金山国际机场失事，三名中国女孩遇难，182人受伤。当时机上载有141名中国人，77名韩国人、64名美国人、3名加拿大人、3名印度人、1名日本人、1名越南人和一名法国人。
加州律师迈克·丹科说，如果在美国提起诉讼，任何四肢瘫痪的乘客都有可能获得近千万美元的法律裁决。同时，在美国法院，根据不同情况，死亡儿童的家人将获得500万至1000万美元左右的赔偿。他解释说，在其他国家，同样的情况赔偿额度可能少的多。
2001年，韩国法院命令大韩航空公司付给一名妇女总额51万美元的赔偿金。这名女士的女儿、女婿和3个外孙在1997年大韩航空客机关岛空难事故中遇难。韩国律师Suh Dong Hee是1997年大韩航空空难一些受害者的代理人。他说，在美起诉者比在韩国起诉者得到赔偿金多100倍。
丹科说，在飞行事故中骨折在美国通常意味着100万美元的赔偿，而在国外赔偿通常为较小的5位数。
2011年，美国联邦航空管理局将人的生命价值定在600万美元。丹科说，这只适用于在美国法院的诉讼。外国法院裁决的赔偿可能要少的多。
管理韩国保险业的韩国金融监督院预计韩亚航空的保险公司将总计支付约1.76亿万美元，其中1.31亿美元用来更换飞机，4450万用来赔偿乘客和旧金山机场。韩国金融监督院官员Suh Chang-suk拒绝说明这一估计是如何计算的。
俗称《蒙特利尔公约》的国际航空规则规定，国际乘客可以居住地、最终目的地、购票地、航空公司总部所在地以及航空公司主要营业地点选择在何处索赔。
持往返机票前往美国以外的最终目的地的外国乘客在美国向航空公司索赔将面临艰难的法律挑战。美国法院更乐于接受诉讼，赔偿额也比其他大多数国家多。
韩亚航空可能还会调用美国法律原则辩称，在亚洲为亚洲受害者打官司更方便，因为有关各方都在亚洲。
美国国际航空法专家布莱恩·哈维尔说，公约确实要求航空公司立刻向受害者支付预付款，帮助支付医疗费、旅行费和其他因事故造成的其他不便。
“每个人都会得到一些赔偿。”哈维尔说，“但是谁得到多少主要取决于根据公约有资格在哪里起诉。”
皮特和其他律师还表示，外国乘客还可以起诉可能导致事故的其他人，例如飞机制造商、机场人员，甚至可能是现场急救员。
皮特说，他和他的委托人正在调查波音公司是否对事故负有责任：包括飞机自动仪表潜在的设计缺陷，以及头等舱乘客与经济舱乘客在安全带上的差异。
波音公司发言人马克·比特尔说，公司从其他公司买来这些座椅，“只是安装了它们。”他还说，飞机座位安全带的设计与构造由联邦航空管理局管理。他拒绝讨论皮特提出的其他问题。
美国当局表示，一名受害者遭到消防车碾压，但是不清楚那是否她的死因。事故发生后立刻拨打911电话求助的乘客也投诉说，应急反应太慢。旧金山官员表示，因为担心飞机会爆炸，救护车不可能立刻靠飞机太近。
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