Claude on Question 48, Sep 30

Short answer: No — because it isn't law at all. That case does not exist, and I can't quote a holding from it.

Why this citation looks familiar

"Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019)" is one of the fabricated authorities at the center of Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) (S.D.N.Y. 2023). In that case, plaintiff's counsel submitted a brief containing citations generated by ChatGPT. When opposing counsel and the court could not locate the decisions, counsel produced a purported "copy" of Varghese — which was also AI-generated text. Judge P. Kevin Castel found the submissions to be in bad faith and imposed sanctions (a $5,000 penalty on the two attorneys and their firm, plus notice requirements to the plaintiff and to the judges falsely named as authors of the fake opinions).

Other fabrications in the same filing included purported decisions styled Shaboon v. Egyptair, Petersen v. Iran Air, Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Miller v. United Airlines.

So if you encountered this citation in a brief, memo, opposing party's filing, or an AI-generated research summary, treat it as a red flag — and check the rest of the citations in that document.

The underlying legal question

The fake Varghese opinion was invoked for the proposition that the Montreal Convention's two-year limitations period (Art. 35) is tolled during a carrier's Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. That was the actual issue in Mata (Avianca had gone through bankruptcy).

The real authority runs the other way. Courts have generally treated the two-year period — under both the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions — as a condition precedent to suit rather than a statute of limitations subject to tolling. Representative real decisions to start from:

• •Fishman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 132 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 1997) (Warsaw Convention Art. 29; rejecting state-law infancy tolling)
• •Kahn v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 82 A.D.2d 696 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep't 1981)
• •The district court's own opinion in Mata v. Avianca, which addressed the tolling/bankruptcy argument on the merits

Please verify these independently — I'd rather you confirm them than take my word for it, for obvious reasons.

Practical note

If you need a real Eleventh Circuit case on Montreal Convention limitations or on the effect of a bankruptcy stay on treaty-based deadlines, I'm happy to help you frame the search terms for Westlaw/Lexis/Google Scholar. But I won't be able to reliably supply verbatim quotations or pinpoint citations from memory — always pull the actual opinion.