Lawsuits Against Airlines: The Latest Effort To Stem International Child Abductions

Jeremy Morley at International Family Law reports:

The abduction of children from the United States is facilitated by the lack of exit controls at U.S. borders. A lawsuit just filed in Massachusetts against Continental Airlines may help shift at least some of the responsibility onto the airlines.

The plaintiff claims that Continental should not have allowed his ex-wife to fly to Mexico with their 3-year-old daughter without his permission. He contends that Continental's policies and Mexican law both require a single parent traveling with a minor child to present a notarized letter from the absent parent authorizing travel into Mexico.

In 2005, a Connecticut jury returned a $27 million verdict against a charter airline company in favor of a mother for negligently failing to maintain adequate safeguards against abductions when it accepted $160,000 to fly a father and his three children to Egypt and then to Cuba.

This opens the door to what [may] prove to be a useful way to encourage the airlines to act more diligently to prevent international child abduction.

More on this story at South Coast Today.

Earlier this week Custody battle exposes difficulties with international law was published at Yakima Herald (WA) covering the nightmare of children taken to foreign countries even in violation of a court order. Some courts now require a parent to post a bond for the safe return of a child before permitting international travel where the risk of abduction is high.

Comments

[Mark Smith]

This is a great article and the issue is something that all parents in the US afraid of having their child internationally abducted should be aware of. The Japan Children's Rights Network website is starting a page to document cases like this and to help parents know about the policies on various airlines.

http://www.crnjapan.com/prevention/en/airlines.html

If anyone reading this has a Japan prevention case in progress, other information on our site may also be helpful.

[JV Ortega]

Very Interesting. Are Airlines liable for their employees tipping off the abductor, when the left-behind parent tries to recover the child.? This particular case involves a Hague convention application and the airline employee tipped off the abductor on our travel plans, so that he could disrupt and delay our efforts.