Supreme Court stay issued in $1.4 million judgment against airline WASHINGTON (AP) =97 Greece-based Olympic Airways won a stay at the Supreme= =20 Court that will protect it, for now, from paying $1.4 million to heirs of=20 an asthmatic man who died after being exposed to second hand smoke on an=20 international flight. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor blocked an appeals court decision that upheld=20 the judgment. She gave the family of Dr. Abid Hanson time to file arguments= =20 in the case. The stay was announced Wednesday. Hanson, 52, suffered an=20 asthma attack on a flight from Athens, Greece to New York in January 1998.= =20 He was seated in the nonsmoking section but complained about the nearby=20 smoking section, which was not separated by a partition. A lower court=20 judge in California ruled that because a flight attendant repeatedly=20 rejected his family's requests to move him to a different seat, the carrier= =20 was liable under international treaties demanding compensation for those=20 injured or killed during an "accident." Olympic Airways attorney Andrew=20 Harakas of New York said in filings that courts have adopted various=20 interpretations of standards for such lawsuits. He urged the Supreme Court= =20 to clarify whether the air carrier can be held responsible for "the=20 passenger's internal reaction to the normal conditions on an aircraft." *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.tha.gov.tt/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************