United Should Face Suit Over Baby Flyer’s Heat Collapse: Judge

Federal law doesn’t block a woman’s suit against United Airlines Inc. and a partner airline over allegedly hot conditions in a delayed airplane that resulted in her infant’s emergency hospitalization, a federal court in Colorado said.

The recommendation by Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado addressed a circuit split, and different Tenth Circuit holdings, on the Federal Aviation Act’s effect on personal injury suits.

The statute and related regulations don’t preempt plaintiff Emily France’s negligence per se claim, Neureiter said Nov. 19.

France alleges she and her 4-month-old son were on a delayed United Express flight from Denver to El Paso, Texas, operated by Trans States Airlines LLC, according to the court. The interior of the plane allegedly became very hot while on the tarmac.

Eventually, after her son became listless and splotchy, the airplane returned to the gate, she says. France’s son was taken to a hospital by ambulance and diagnosed with heat exhaustion, she says.

France sued on her own behalf and her son’s, alleging both sustained physical harm and she experienced extreme emotional distress. She brought a claim, negligence per se, based on the airlines’ alleged violation of federal regulations governing airplane temperatures, medical attention, and tarmac delays.

United and Trans States sought dismissal, saying the Federal Aviation Act preempts the claims because it occupies the field of aviation safety.

But Neureiter found persuasive a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit concluding that “state and territorial tort remedies can coexist with federal standards of care for air safety; thus, plaintiffs, who are injured during a flight as a result of the violation of federal air safety standards, may have a remedy in state or territorial law.”

Calwell Luce diTrapano PLLC and Bolson Law LLC represent France.

Adler Murphy & McQuillen LLP represents the airlines.

The case is France v. Trans States Airlines, LLC, 2019 BL 444966, D. Colo., No. 19-cv-01795-REB-NRN, 11/19/19.