The sexual assault of a passenger by a fellow passenger while the victim slept on an international flight is not the kind of “accident” for which an air carrier can be found liable under the 1929 international treaty governing air travel liability, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday.
Because the air carrier, Korean Air Lines Co. Ltd., played no role in facilitating the assault and the injury was not a “characteristic risk of air travel,” the victim, Brandi Wallace, has no claim under the Warsaw Convention, declared Southern District Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr.
