The case involved a wrongful death suit by the estate of Betty Kween against McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics, the manufacturers of the DC-10 aircraft that crashed near Paris in 1974, killing her son and daughter-in-law among 346 others. Kween had received a $50,000 distribution from a prior compensatory damages verdict in related litigation and later committed suicide in 1976; the complaint alleged that the defendants' willful and malicious product defects, combined with their low settlement offers and rigorous deposition tactics in the prior "test case," foreseeably caused her shock, depression, and suicide, entitling the estate to $11.5 million including punitive damages under California law. The defendants moved to dismiss for lack of a legal duty to prevent the suicide. The court held that it had diversity jurisdiction and took judicial notice of the prior proceedings, then examined whether the well-pleaded allegations established a duty or proximate causation, finding none existed because the alleged conduct did not place Kween in the zone of physical or immediate emotional impact required for liability and because product liability claims do not extend to such remote consequences.
This case arose from a 1970 military aircraft crash allegedly caused by a defective aluminum window frame manufactured in 1953-54 by Osbrink, a company whose assets were later sold. General Dynamics, after settling wrongful death claims and facing a personal injury suit from the surviving pilot, filed a third-party complaint seeking indemnity or contribution from International Controls and Datron as successors to Osbrink through a chain of corporate transactions. The court granted the third-party defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the complaint. Under California corporate successor liability rules, a buyer of assets is not responsible for the seller's undisclosed liabilities absent an express or implied assumption, a de facto merger or consolidation, the buyer being a mere continuation of the seller, or fraud; the 1964 asset purchase agreement here explicitly excluded any unlisted liabilities, Osbrink shareholders received only about 2% of the buyer's stock with no ongoing control, and none of the exceptions applied.
The case involved a lawsuit by the estates of passengers killed in an Air Canada plane crash on a flight from Montreal to Los Angeles; the passengers held round-trip tickets purchased in Canada with an open return option from Los Angeles. The court had previously granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on the issue of jurisdiction under the Warsaw Convention and now denied the defendant's post-judgment motions, including for new trial and relief from judgment. The core reasoning was that the ticket contract specified Los Angeles as the destination for the outbound flight, with the return left optional and uncertain, satisfying the Convention's requirement that suit be brought in a court at a "place of destination"; regulatory materials from both Canada and the U.S. supported treating the named endpoint of each segment as a place of destination. Jurisdiction in the U.S. district court was therefore proper.
This diversity action was brought by the publisher of The Sunday Times of London seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to allow its reporters to attend depositions and publish accounts of them in multidistrict litigation arising from a 1974 Paris plane crash allegedly caused by a faulty McDonnell Douglas product. The court first rejected the defendants' arguments that a foreign plaintiff lacks access to U.S. courts or that the First Amendment does not protect foreign press, citing Article III, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, and precedent extending constitutional protections to aliens. On the merits, the court held that the First Amendment's press guarantee does not override Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 30(f) and 26(c), which require depositions to be securely sealed and permit protective orders limiting attendance to persons designated by the court; it therefore denied the requested access and injunction while allowing the parties' agreed procedures for counsel and experts under Rule 29. The ruling emphasized that sealed depositions must remain protected from public or press presence except as the rules expressly permit.
The case concerned a third-party complaint filed by General Dynamics Corporation against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, seeking recovery related to claims by servicemen or their survivors for injuries sustained incident to military service. The district court initially denied the government's motion to dismiss but, on reconsideration, granted it and dismissed the third-party complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The court held that sovereign immunity had not been waived for such claims, following Feres v. United States and Ninth Circuit precedent that servicemen cannot recover directly from the government; therefore, they also could not recover indirectly through a third-party action against the United States, distinguishing contrary authority from other circuits as inapposite.
This case involved wrongful death claims arising from the crash of an Air Canada flight near Toronto, in which two Canadian minors were killed. The plaintiffs, as special administratrices appointed in California, obtained jury verdicts of $40,000 each and sought summary judgment, while the defendant moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction under the Warsaw Convention and absence of diversity of citizenship. The court denied the motion to dismiss and granted summary judgment, holding that diversity jurisdiction existed based on the citizenship of the personal representatives rather than the Canadian beneficiaries, that the Montreal Interim Agreement of 1966 raised the liability limit to $75,000, and that the stipulated facts and verdicts entitled the plaintiffs to judgment as a matter of law.
