Ephraimson-Abt v. Korean Air Lines Inc.: A New York jury on Thursday awarded $2.1 million to the family of a New Jersey woman killed in 1983 when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet planes over the Sea of Japan.

After a five-day trial before U.S. District Judge Thomas Platt in Unionville, the jury found that the airline should pay $2 million to the estate of Alice Ephraimson-Abt of Saddle River for pain and suffering. Ephraimson-Abt was 23 at the time of her death.

The jury also awarded Ephraimson-Abt's father, Hans, 75, $135,000 for future loss of his daughter's services. The jury deliberated for four hours.

The airline will receive credit for the $75,000 it paid to the family in 1994 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed a jury verdict that the proximate cause of the plane's destruction was the willful misconduct of Korean Air Lines. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.

Gerald Baker, who represents Ephraimson-Abt, sued the airline in September 1983. The case was consolidated with about 100 others for purposes of the liability trial in 1989. After the liability verdict was affirmed, the Circuit Court remanded the individual cases to the district courts to hold damage trials. The downing of the plane also claimed the lives of 267 other passengers and crew members.

The award is not "excessive considering both the physical trauma and the extreme fear that the passengers would have gone through," says Baker, a partner at Baker, Pedersen & Robbins in Hoboken. He adds that he has made an application for $3 million in prejudgment interest.

KAL attorneys Andrew Harakas and Deborah Elsasser, partners at Tompkins, Harakas, Elsasser & Tompkins in White Plains, N.Y., were out of the office and could not be reached for comment.
But George Tompkins Jr., also a partner at the firm, says Korean Air Lines will appeal the $2 million award and is considering appealing the $135,000 economic award.

Tompkins says the appeal will be based on the Death on the High Seas Act of 1920, which he says permits for recovery of economic damages only -- not pain and suffering.

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