The Collapse of Warsaw Liability Limitation

항공운송인의 책임제한의 철폐

Air transportation industry was established on a basis of liability limitation from the outset. Many treaties, however, had to be drafted since 1960' s to meet the need of the Unites States, who argued full compensation without limitation like other torts cases, but most of them were in vain. The Japanese Initiative in 1992, though being aimed to lower a level of compensation in air crash cases to that of other transportation accidents, showed a way to the U.S. how to solve the issue. Instead of obtaining an multilateral agreement through ICAO, the U.S. persuaded IATA to organize intercarrier consensus for voluntary waive the limitation. IATA succeeded in adopting Intercarrier Liability Agreement in 1995, in which carriers agreed not to use Warsaw limitation and accepted strict liability up to 100,000SDRs. Through a series of negotiation to implement the Intercarrier agreement, US DOT tried to insert a domicile standard provision to the agreement which enable US victims to be compensated according to the law of the U.S. regardless of the situation. IATA opposed the intent aggressively. The U.S. set back to the starting point remaining issues for further discussion. The liability limitation under the Warsaw system is being collapsed. It is the result of a simple logic; liability limitation cannot be maintained without appropriate compensation.