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MH370 suits in US might be scuttled by reluctance to hear foreign crash cases, reports NBC

Six weeks after flight MH370 vanished from the radar screens, experts said lawyers attracted to potentially lucrative fees might find United States federal courts reluctant to take up foreign crashes, and might even reject legal suits related to the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

US legal experts said the majority of discussions about potential MH370 suits are purely speculative, and that "as long as there's no wreckage and no evidence" about what caused the Boeing 777-200ER jet with 239 people on board to vanish and presumably plummet into the ocean, lawyers won't have much grist for legal action.

"I think if this case were hypothetically filed in Chicago against Boeing, for example, the chances of it staying in the US are probably less than one-in-three," veteran aviation lawyer Gerald Sterns told US television station NBC.

Last month, just weeks after MH370 disappeared, Ribbeck Law Chartered’s suit on behalf of families of passengers on board the Malaysia Airlines flight was tossed out on the grounds that it was “a baseless petition”.

That legal setback did not stop lawyers – especially American lawyers – from contacting families of the 239 people on board MH370 to sue MAS and Boeing, NBC reported this week, highlighting the extent to which lawyers would go in trying to win millions of dollars in damages for lost passengers by filing suits in the US.

Ribbeck Law Chartered’s move had been criticised by veteran aviation lawyers and the judge hearing the case, said NBC, with the Cook County judge scolding its lawyers for what she described as an improper filing on behalf of a relative of one MH370 passenger.

The law firm had been particularly aggressive. It sent representatives to Beijing and Kuala Lumpur to tout for business.

Its lawyers had explained to grieving families how they stood to win millions in compensation if they sued Boeing Co, the maker of the missing Boeing 777-200ER (registration number 9M-MRO).

Yet, NBC reported, the judge's ruling did not stop lawyers from the US and London from rushing to secure compensation for families of the flight’s 227 passengers, about two-thirds of whom were Chinese nationals.

The experts said that even if investigators somehow managed to show that Boeing was responsible for the disaster, lawyers would still have a tough time trying to sue the jet manufacturer in the US.

"I think it is highly misleading to tell the families they might get additional compensation in the United States when all of the recent accidents prove otherwise," said James Healy-Pratt, a lawyer with Stewarts Law, a London-based firm representing some of the families of Air France flight 447 which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

The courts had thrown out suits against American parts makers in connection with the flight 447 crash.

They also dismissed suits against Boeing in the 2008 Spanair flight that crashed on takeoff in Madrid and the 2005 Helios Airways flight that crashed near Athens, Greece, when loss of cabin pressure caused the people on board to lose consciousness.

Another aviation lawyer, Kevin Durkin, told NBC that while he had successfully sued Boeing over the course of his legal career, American courts typically ruled that it would be more convenient for claims to be heard by a court in the country where an air crash happened or where the investigation was taking place.

Malaysia is a signatory of the Montreal Convention, in which an airline must pay initial compensation of between US$150,000 and US$175,000 (RM494,000 and RM578,000) to relatives of each passenger killed in an air crash.

Some families have also begun accepting insurance payouts.

The China Life Insurance Company, the biggest such company in China, said on its website that it had 32 clients on the flight and that it had paid out US$670,400 (about RM2.2 million) to cover seven of them as of March 25.

It said the total payment for all the clients would be nearly US$1.5 million. At least five other Chinese insurance companies have also made payments.

The search for MH370 enters its 43rd day today.

Four undersea trips by the Bluefin-21 have yet to turn up any lead in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. – Reuters pic, April 19, 2014.
Four undersea trips by the Bluefin-21 have yet to turn up any lead in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. – Reuters pic, April 19, 2014.

Hopes that a deep sea drone scouring the Indian Ocean floor might soon turn up the Boeing 777 faded, Reuters reports, as the remote-controlled submarine embarked on a fifth mission with still no sign of wreckage.

Sonar footage by the US Navy owned Bluefin-21 has become the focal point of the search some 2,000km from Perth.

The search has centred on a city-sized area where a series of "pings" led authorities to believe the plane's black box may be located. But after more than a week without a signal, and almost two weeks past the black box battery's life expectancy, authorities have now turned to the Bluefin-21.

The Bluefin-21 made four missions to depths of about 4.5km, two of those aborted early for technical reasons. Australian search authorities said yesterday that the drone had yet to turn up a meaningful lead. – April 19, 2014.