WASHINGTON — Carol Sachs of California bought a Eurail pass from a company in Massachusetts and then was horribly injured in Innsbruck while trying to board a moving train operated by the Austrian national railway.

The question before the Supreme Court on its first day of the new term Monday was whether she could sue for her injuries in American courts.

In their questions to lawyers for Sachs, the railroad and the federal government, the justices indicated the answer would be no.

"A pass is bought from a travel agent in Massachusetts, a pass covering 30-odd railroads," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. "That's all that happened in the United States. All of the relevant conduct, the tortious conduct, occurred abroad."

Sachs' lawyer, Stanford law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher, soldiered on in the face of similar comments from other justices.

"I think there are plenty of cases that support the proposition that when a company markets and sells a product in a jurisdiction," that implies a right to bring a lawsuit there as well, Fisher said.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who recently published a book on the Supreme Court and international law, said there are 190 or so countries in the world and many have some sort of commercial enterprise. He said their view is probably that if an incident giving rise to a lawsuit occurs in the United States, American courts will deal with it. But those governments must also believe that when the incident happens at home, "I expect it will be my courts that will deal with it."

Fisher said the truth is that there's not much law to rely on in deciding the issue. "We have none, and they have none," he said.

Generally, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects foreign governments from being sued in U.S. courts. But there is an exception for commercial activities, and Sachs was injured on the ÖBB Personenverkehr AG, Austria's national railway.

She was trying to board a train in 2007 when she fell onto the tracks through a gap in the station platform. Her injuries required the amputation of both legs above the knees.

She sued in California, but a district judge granted ÖBB's motion to dismiss. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, but then the full court decided to reconsider. A majority found that the sale of the Eurail pass in the United States was enough to establish the kind of connection necessary for a lawsuit to go forward in this country.

Juan C. Basombrio, a lawyer for the railway, told the Supreme Court that decision should be overturned.

"The particular conduct at issue is not the sale of the ticket. It's the acts and omissions that resulted in the accident in Austria," Basombrio said.

The justices seemed generally to agree with him, although they had plenty of hypotheticals about what might be closer questions.

What about someone who bought a pass in the United States but found that it was not honored when she went to Europe, asked Justice Elena Kagan.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. offered a scenario in which a maintenance failure on a plane departing from New York causes a landing problem when it arrives overseas.

Fisher said Sachs' purchase of the ticket implied that she would receive "safe passage" abroad. But he said the scope of the issue is much wider.

"The more typical case" would involve international finance and loans, for instance, Fisher said.

"There are many employment cases where United States citizens sign an employment contract or are lured abroad, study abroad programs in the educational sphere, all kinds of situations where a duty is created in this country," Fisher said. "But then all of the events that the lawsuit turns out to be about happen abroad."

The case is ÖBB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs.