During a February 2012 Eva Airways flight from San Francisco to Taipei, sleeping passenger Cathy Hanh Nguyen of Anaheim was injured when another passenger opened an overhead compartment and a heavy piece of luggage landed on her head and right shoulder.
Upon arrival in the Republic of China, Nguyen went to Lanseed Hospital to treat pains in her head, neck, upper back, lower back, shoulder as well as numbness in her right hand.
In June, Nguyen filed a lawsuit inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse and accused Eva Airways of negligence.
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“Defendant owed a duty to plaintiff to assure that all luggage stored aboard the airplance in overhead compartments was stowed in a safe manner and to observe and supervise other passengers in such a manner that they would not cause hazard to plaintiff by opening overhead compartments while the plane was landing,” the six-page complaint states.
Nguyen demanded a jury trial and, according to the lawsuit, damages of less than $170,000.
In July, Eva Air's San Francisco-based lawyers denied the negligence allegation, laid blame on Nguyen for helping to cause her injures (but didn't detail this assertion) and demanded she pay their legal bills, according to court records.
This month, U.S. District Court David O. Carter formally dismissed the case, declaring on October 18 that a settlement had been reached out of court two weeks after he scheduled a three-day trial.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Eva is one of Asia's leading passenger carriers and is popular with Little Saigon residents traveling to Vietnam for family reunions and vacations.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.