In this story, it's Jean Barnard, an American tourist who sued Qantas when a toddler leaned across the aisle and screamed in her ear as she was finding her seat on a flight from Alice Springs to Darwin in January of 2009.

Barnard, 67, who claims the toddler's scream made her ear bleed and caused permanent hearing loss, was helped off the plane and taken to Alice Springs hospital. Back in the U.S., she sued Qantas, claiming its flight crew was negligent in failing to take precautions to protect passengers and that she had suffered permanent hearing loss. "The pain was so excruciating that I didn't even know I was deaf," she said in her deposition.