Mata v. Avianca, Inc.
- P. Castel
- 1:22-cv-01461
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 7
In Mata v. Avianca, Judge Castel granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss Mata’s late Montreal Convention injury claim.
Roberto Mata’s injury claim against Avianca, Inc.; the court granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss because the Montreal Convention’s two-year filing period had expired.
What happened
In Mata v. Avianca, Inc., Roberto Mata claimed that an Avianca employee injured his knee with a metal serving cart during an international flight. Avianca argued that the Montreal Convention’s two-year deadline barred the claim.
The court ruled that the Montreal Convention governed Mata’s injury claim and that the deadline had expired on August 28, 2021. The court rejected Mata’s argument that Avianca’s bankruptcy stay paused the deadline.
Judge Castel granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss because Mata filed this action on February 2, 2022, after the treaty’s strict two-year period had ended.
The detailed version
- Mata v. Avianca, Inc. · No. 1:22-cv-01461
- P. Castel
- June 22, 2023
Background
Roberto Mata alleged that he was injured when a metal serving cart struck his left knee during an Avianca flight from El Salvador to John F. Kennedy Airport on August 27 or 28, 2019. He attributed the injury to Avianca’s carelessness, recklessness, and negligence.
Mata had filed an earlier complaint against Avianca in 2020. After learning that Avianca was in bankruptcy proceedings and subject to an automatic bankruptcy stay, he voluntarily dismissed that action in January 2022. He filed the current action on February 2, 2022, in New York state court, and Avianca removed it to federal court.
Court’s Analysis
Avianca moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. Avianca argued that the Montreal Convention barred Mata’s claim as untimely.
The court held that the Montreal Convention governed the claim because the alleged injury resulted from an unexpected event external to Mata during international air travel. The Convention provides that a passenger’s right to damages is extinguished if an action is not brought within two years, measured from the aircraft’s arrival at its destination or another specified stopping point.
Assuming the flight arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport on August 28, 2019, the court concluded that Mata’s claim became time-barred on August 28, 2021. The court rejected Mata’s reliance on New York’s three-year negligence period because the Montreal Convention preempts state-law damage claims within its scope.
The court also rejected Mata’s argument that the bankruptcy stay tolled, or paused, the treaty deadline. Relying on Second Circuit precedent concerning the materially similar Warsaw Convention and decisions applying that reasoning to the Montreal Convention, the court treated the two-year period as a strict condition that extinguishes the right to sue and is not subject to tolling for the bankruptcy stay.
Disposition
The court granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss. The Clerk was directed to terminate the motion.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.