Bodily Injury And The Montreal Convention

Introduction

What constitutes bodily injury for the purposes of recovering compensation under the Montreal Convention is an area of law that has challenged judges and lawyers down through the years and is a topic on which there is a substantial amount of information. This article sets out some of the salient points which govern this area of law with particular emphasis on the law in Ireland.

An Exclusive Cause of Action

A starting point for this article is to understand the principle that the Montreal Convention ("the Convention") provides an exclusive cause of action. This principle was very clearly established by the House of Lords in the landmark English case of Sidhu and others .v. British Airways plc, 1997. Lord Hope in that case held that "The Convention does not purport to deal with all matters relating to contracts of international carriage by air. But in those areas with which it deals - and the liability of the carrier is one of them - the code is