You were hurt on an EVA Air flight between California and Taipei, you went looking for your rights, and you found a great deal written about a treaty called the Montreal Convention. Almost none of it was written with your flight in mind, because Taiwan is not a party to that treaty.

Does the Montreal Convention Cover an EVA Air Flight?

Not automatically, and this is the rare case where the honest answer is that it depends on your ticket rather than on the law.

The treaty applies to carriage between countries that are parties to it. The United States is a party. Taiwan is not, and cannot readily become one, because it is not a member state of the international civil aviation body that administers the treaty. So a California to Taipei itinerary is not carriage between two treaty parties, and the treaty does not govern it by its own force the way it governs a flight to Tokyo or Seoul.

What fills the gap is the contract. EVA Air's own conditions of carriage refer to the Warsaw Convention and to the Montreal Convention, which is how most carriers in this position handle it: they adopt treaty-style liability terms by agreement rather than having them imposed by treaty. The practical effect is that the rules governing your claim probably come from the document attached to your booking rather than from an international agreement, and the precise terms matter in a way they do not for any other major carrier serving California.

Why That Cuts Both Ways

Most passengers assume that falling outside the treaty is bad news. It is genuinely mixed, and the mix is worth understanding before anyone talks to the airline.

What you may lose. The treaty's best feature is that below a threshold the airline is not permitted to argue it was not at fault. That is a creature of the treaty. If the treaty does not apply of its own force, you get that protection only to the extent the contract gives it to you. The treaty also hands an injured passenger a forum at their own place of residence, and that too is a treaty grant rather than a general rule.

What you may gain. Where the treaty applies, it is the exclusive remedy: no parallel state law claim, and no punitive damages no matter how the airline behaved. If the treaty does not apply of its own force, that exclusivity may not either. California holds common carriers to the utmost care and diligence, a standard higher than ordinary negligence, and the remedies available under state law are broader than the treaty allows. For a passenger with a serious injury and a carrier that behaved badly, that can be a materially better position than the treaty would have given them.

We are not going to pretend this is settled. It is the most genuinely open question on any of these carrier pages, and the answer in a particular case turns on the ticket, the routing, and which court hears it. What we can tell you is that nobody should guess at it, in either direction.

Can You Sue EVA Air in California?

Probably, though by a different route than for a treaty carrier.

For airlines covered by the treaty, a California resident often relies on the provision that gives an injured passenger a forum where they live. Without that provision in play, the question becomes the ordinary one US courts ask about any foreign company: whether it has enough connection to this state to be sued here. That turns on several factors, including the service the carrier operates to and from California, how it sells to people who live here, and what it does in the state. An airline flying its own aircraft in and out of California airports and selling to California residents is in a materially different posture than a company with no presence here, which is why this is worth examining rather than conceding.

The analysis is not the treaty analysis, and it is worth having someone walk through it rather than assuming either answer. Send us the ticket and routing and we can go through it with you. For comparison, the treaty version that applies to most other carriers is set out in suing a foreign airline in California.

Who You Actually Contracted With

EVA Air is a Star Alliance member and sells through US partners, and here that question carries more weight than it does elsewhere.

If a US airline sold you the ticket, you are dealing with a US company as your contracting carrier, which simplifies both the forum question and the service of process question considerably. If EVA sold you the ticket directly, the analysis above applies. On a codeshare itinerary the answer can differ between the airline on your boarding pass and the airline whose aircraft you were on, and your booking confirmation with its operated-by line is the only document that resolves it.

Ownership, and Why It Gets Checked Early

EVA Air sits inside a family-founded shipping and transport group rather than under a government, which is worth confirming because the answer is not the same for every large international carrier.

Under US law, an airline a foreign government owns or controls can be treated as an arm of that state, which means the claim may be tried to a judge rather than a jury and the airline has to be served through a particular route. Several of the world's large international carriers are in that category and several are not, ownership shifts, and a government stake sometimes sits in a parent rather than in the airline. It is quick to confirm against a current source and it belongs in the first week of a case, because it governs how the airline gets served.

What injures passengers

Common Injuries on the Taipei Run, and Which Ones Are Reached

The injuries are the same as on any long Pacific route. What differs on this carrier is which body of rules decides what the airline owes.

Overhead Bin and Falling Baggage

A bin that opens in flight, or a bag coming down during deplaning. External, and the clearest case the treaty handles.

Hot Liquid and the Service Cart

Scalding tea or coffee, or a cart striking a shoulder in the aisle. The cabin is under service for most of the day.

Turbulence

An unbelted passenger thrown from a seat. External, and a real risk on the Pacific tracks. Whether the belt sign was on matters.

Jetway and Airstairs Falls

Inside the treaty, because embarking and disembarking are part of the carriage. The jetway and the airstairs both count.

A Fall Inside the Terminal

Outside the treaty. A fall inside Taoyuan is a premises claim in Taiwan, often on a much shorter deadline. Do not let it sit.

Clots, Cardiac Events, and Back Injuries

The hard category. The airline's answer is that your own condition surfaced on an ordinary flight, and it has been difficult to overcome.

Where We Are Not the Right Call

If you do not live in California and your flight had no California connection, you want counsel where you live or where you flew. If you were hurt in the Taipei terminal between flights rather than on the aircraft or the jetway, that is a premises claim in Taiwan. If what you lost is a suitcase, use the airline's own baggage process inside its notice window, which is counted in days.

On timing, be careful here in a way that does not apply to the other carriers. For treaty flights the deadline is two years from the landing date and it is a hard condition. For a flight that may fall outside the treaty, California's own two year personal injury deadline is the one to watch, and it behaves differently in some respects. The overlap is not an accident: both roads lead to roughly two years, and the safe course is to treat two years from the landing date as the wall regardless of which body of law ends up governing.

What to Do This Week

One. Save the booking confirmation and, unusually for these claims, the conditions of carriage that were linked from it. On this airline that document may supply the governing terms, and airlines revise it.

Two. Identify which airline sold the ticket and which operated the flight.

Three. Write down the sequence now, focused on the external event and on which crew member you told.

Four. See a physician before it worsens rather than after.

Five. Count two years from the landing date and treat it as fixed.

This is the one carrier serving California where the governing law is a real question rather than a formality, and it is worth an actual conversation rather than a web page. We evaluate these claims at no cost, and if the honest answer is that what happened to you does not support a claim under either framework, you will hear that in the first conversation.