Passengers suing airlines because they developed blood clots on long flights got a boost from a recent U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruling that broadens the definition of in-flight accidents, legal experts said on Friday. The Feb. 24 decision in Olympia Airways v. Husain marks the first time a high court of a Warsaw Convention nation has defined an accident to include "failure to act." The ruling may revive hundreds of lawsuits across the United States and Europe in which passengers sought compensation from airlines they accuse of failing to warn them of the dangers of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clots. The potentially fatal condition is sometimes called "economy class syndrome." Attorney Clay Robbins, who has six DVT cases pending against airlines in U.S. courts, said the Supreme Court decision could force judges to take a new look at DVT cases that were thrown out by European appellate courts and U.S. trial courts. Mike in Brazil "It is our contention that air carriers have known for more than 30 years about ... this condition and have done nothing to advise people that there is something they can do to avoid it," Robbins said. Attorney Jerry Sterns, who represented Rubina Husain, said the case "certainly stretches the previous general understanding about what constituted an accident for purposes of the Warsaw Convention." 8th street latinas The Warsaw Convention, enacted in 1929, standardized international air travel and, among other things, defined when and how airlines could be held liable for accidents. In the Husain case, an asthmatic passenger died on a 1997 Athens-San Francisco flight after an Olympic Airways flight attendant repeatedly refused to reseat him away from the smoking section, the U.S. Supreme Court opinion said.