Passengers are accustomed to the fact that airlines charge different amounts to their seat-mates on a flight, but few can comprehend why our legal system applies vastly different recovery standards to persons killed in the same plane crash. On damages issues, modern choice of law rules largely ended the methodical application of the law of the place of the accident in aviation cases, and placed greater emphasis on the law of the residence of the decedent and his or her beneficiaries.
While these rules have often avoided arbitrary results, they have highlighted the inequities of the laws in a small minority of jurisdictions, including New York, that still retain provisions dating back to the 1800s, which limit death damages to pecuniary losses. By contrast, at present the majority of states and several federal laws recognize the recovery of non-economic death damages, most notably the survivors’ loss of the decedent’s society, in addition to economic losses.
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