Aircraft fire claim 26 years late

Patrick Bracher of Norton Rose Fulbright.

A Cameroonian insurer waited 26 years too long to file a subrogated lawsuit claiming $154 million from The Boeing Co and the engine manufacturer after a 1984 fatal fire on a Boeing plane.

In 1984 the aircraft caught fire on a Cameroon runway with three fatalities and 72 people injured. Despite three and four year statutes of limitations in New York, the insurer sued its reinsurer in New York nearly 30 years after the incident.

According to New York law, when a non-resident sues on a cause of action that arose outside the state, the court must apply the shorter of the New York limitation period of three and four years or that of the jurisdiction where the claim arose. The reliance by the insurer on Cameroon’s 30-year statute of limitations did not avail it in the New York court.

First published by Financial Institutions Legal Snapshot.