First of all, I'm glad that your son is okay. Head wounds tend to be bleeders so I know that even a minor wound can look really scary.
I second the suggestion to use two hands and to open the hatch carefully. However, the hatch was already open with the woman attempting to remove her bag, so that suggestion wouldn't have really helped in the OP's situation.
I'm going to join in the minority and say that really the only thing that the woman did wrong was to display a disgusting lack of courtesy after the accident happened. Without more information, it would be difficult to say whether the woman was negligent in her actions or not. Do we even have a good description of what happened from the other passengers? If they just said that the woman caused the other bag to fall, that's still not altogether helpful. They probably also judged her actions more harshly due to her apparent lack of decency after the accident than for the accident itself. And I just have to say, if they did say that they saw enough of it to determine her negligence and they were closeby, why didn't anyone of them try to prevent it from happening? Whenever I'm standing in the aisle and I see someone struggling with the overhead and pulling out too much, I reach over to help. Anyway, since it was a laptop that fell (which I'm assuming is small and flat though heavy) I can easily see how someone might not see it shifting if it was on the other side of her bag or even possibly partway below her bag. If that is what happened, then I would say that this was only an accident like getting hit with a ball or getting run into on the ski slopes (but not like a car accident since most car accidents involve at least one of the drivers breaking a traffic law). It's an accident. Accidents can and do happen without anyone necessarily being negligent. Our litigious society often wants to assign blame as negligence when bad things happen, but often it is just an accident. Sorry, I just don't really see the lawsuit here.
Anyway, I would think that Delta would pay for your bills out of courtesy, but I don't really think that they are really liable either. Clear doors (to see what's shifted during flight) and cargo nets (to prevent stuff from falling out when the door is first opened) and outlawing oversize luggage is all well and good, but none of that would have prevented a small, but heavy laptop case from falling on someone when someone else was getting their stuff down. The only thing the airlines could do is outlaw the overhead bin pretty much completely or to have the flight attendants remove everthing from the overheads, neither of which is all that appealing of an option. Although, I guess they could divide the bins into small compartments and assign a compartment to each seat so that the bags don't touch. You wouldn't be able to fit as much stuff in there and anyone with an oddshaped carryon would be SOL, but that probably would work. Barring that, I think the best things to do are to get out of the line of fire or at least be alert when the bin is open, help out if you see someone is having trouble, and not allow children to sit in the aisle seat. Which reminds me why wouldn't it be possible to not have your child in the aisle seat on a 767?
Originally Posted by JS
I agree that she did not commit a criminal act. Accidents are not crimes. However, I do believe she was negligent. Whether she would lose in a civil court is useful only for debate here because I don't know who she is, and I wouldn't bother going to the expense of suing her even if I did know.
I should add that I didn't actually see the bag fall. I didn't see anything until I saw blood.
It was other passengers and two flight attendants who made these observations, and I have no reason to believe that they want to make some stranger a scapegoat.
My lesson learned is to never put my child in an aisle seat, or if I have no choice (e.g., a 767), make him sit on my lap when the plane reaches the gate.