The problem is that people now believe that. In fact, lawsuits against big companies often are settled on very favorable terms for the customer. As the article points out, United violated their own contract of carriage and FAA regulations. This is going to cost them.
It'd be a cake walk alright ... for the airline.
Pilots have similar powers to the captain of a civilian naval vessel, and can legally refuse to carry passengers or order them off the aircraft: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-extra-ordinary-powers-tha...
Moreover, refusing to leave the premises when requested or to comply with the police when they arrived, is unquestionably against the law.
Even a jury has to operates within the constraints of the law or be overturned on appeal. Remember, the airline would be the defendant and has the right to appeal.
Sure, being bumped is lousy behavior by the airline but the doctor doesn't have a legal leg to stand on for his tantrum. If anything, the airline could probably sue him for delaying the flight and win.
One might think that, but TFA points out that there are regulations covering when a passenger can be bumped. The demand that the passenger leave may have violated these rules. The police order in that case was mistaken, a point also raised in TFA.
Those regulations do not trump the pilot's authority to directly order a passenger removed for disrupting a flight, even for trivial reasons. See this article that discusses various airlines' history of expelling passengers (warning: autoplaying video with sound), http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/airlines-kicked-off-passengers..., or the FAA regulation directly, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title14-vol2/pdf/CFR-...
Moreover, the police order may have been mistaken but that in no way absolves the individual from complying with said order. He should have resolved the issue with litigation afterwards.
(Again, to make my position clear, the airline behaved quite badly but so did the passenger.)
Passenger was not disrupting the flight in any way. Passenger was behaving properly and then was forced to leave for the convenience of the airlines at great inconvenience to himself, despite the fact that he was as entitled to remain on the flight as any other passenger -- as in this was unfair to him and him alone. It was also made clear to him that he was not responsible for being forced to leave as well as the fact that all the other passengers felt the exact same way as the passenger who was being forced to leave.
By making him an agent of his company's customer service to remove a passenger who is in compliance with the law, regulations, and the company's own contract of carriage, and then use FAR 91.3(a) as an excuse to say the pilot must be obeyed is poor logic. And I am a pilot (and a former CFII). I think it makes flights less safe to inject the company's demands into the cockpit. They do not matter, what matters is safety. That's what his FAR is about, not to enable the pilot to be an ass to passengers on behalf of his moronic company.
And claiming otherwise damages the necessary trust that we're supposed to have, and should have, with pilots and crew. Their primary purpose is to save your life. It is not to pour sodas, or appease the company CEOs profit needs by being jerks to passengers, and throwing them off for business reasons.
As for the police, I think that was an illegal assault on the part of the officer, and given the available information the passenger wasn't breaking any laws, so the police being there was inappropriate in the first place, they shouldn't have intervened and should know that.
Edited a few times to remove foul language :-D
Too many places I frequent have had crews, and especially airline pilots, basically pulling the "my word is law, there is no appeal and no review and nobody above me but God and even He only has an advisory role" crap.
More recently, examples of pilots refusing to fly with Muslims on board. It's more of this "what I say goes" logic, and the gate agents were not able to tell the pilot to take the corn cob out, and take these passengers to their destination.
Except that's not who dragged him off. Representatives of a customer safety federal aviation department physically dragged him. I don't think everyone fully understands the sequence or "players" involved (I had to look it up too). - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-united-pa...
Otherwise, you're absolutely correct about voluntary vs compulsory.
A police officer would still be liable for not properly restraining and ensuring the safety of the "victim".
Some additional information from the Wikipedia article on airport police that seems to be relevant: "The City of Chicago Department of Aviation Police perform safety, security and law enforcement functions at O'Hare International Airport & Midway Airport. The department was formerly called the Department of Aviation Special Police. The Chicago Police Department Airport Unit also performs many of the law enforcement duties in and around Chicago area airports." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_police) However, that information may or may not be current.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Please throw away your throwaway account.
Civilly I can give you, but substantively?
> The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything?
I don't understand how you can claim I'm not commenting "substantively" when I'm correcting blatantly wrong info with citations.
Technically the blacks in the South had the right to vote after the Civil War. It took another hundred years of struggle to also secure the practical right. Theoretical rights don't matter much for those who can't exert them.
Well, no -- they just don't have much bargaining power. Which is different.
I don't want to make it partisan but with all due respect TOS is not the law (oh btw, please keep pushing to repeal the CFAA in the US). We don't live in a libertarian "paradise".
I've heard of anecdotes where a judge throws a pre-nuptial agreement because it was too one-sided? I think the same should apply to terms of service and arbitration clauses. They cannot supersede the law or become the law.
Something people are not talking about is why isn't there a lawsuit against the police department? They're the ones who did the actual assaulting?
See, for just one example, AT&T v Concepcion.
Your rights are replaced with a contract you didn't quite realize you agreed to. As such, you have no rights against a corporation. The arbitration kangaroo court is not required to observe the law. A meeting of the minds is not required where a contract with a corporation is concerned, as a human doesn't have to realize their rights were stripped by the contract.
When everything is privatized, you will have no rights remaining.
This goes double for Y Combinator-enabled companies because they operate under the guise of being better for their people, their customers, and their industry than others.
I don't think it's fair of you to criticize either the length or the obscurity of terms of service. After all, you could replace nearly all of them with:
" 1. We have every right of every kind and can do anything, without being liable for anything.
2. you have no rights of any kind and may do nothing, except those afforded by law, which you hereby waive as far as legally possible. "
More forward-thinking startups might add something to the effect of "Of course this does not mean we are Satan! We will naturally make an effort to provide roughly the service you have paid for. However, nothing in this section should be construed as a statement that we shall not act like Satan in any particular instance. We reserve the right to be Satan at any time and our sole discretion without providing any prior written warning. You've been warned."
Did I miss anything?
(1) When the meaning of a term (e.g. "boarding") is ambiguous or undefined, courts are required to interpret it in the way less favorable to the drafter of the contract.
(2) If the conditions under which one party may do something are enumerated, they may not do it for reasons other than those on the list.
Both principles of legal interpretation go against United in this case. Remember, this is civil law - not criminal. The burden of proof is very different. While many such contracts are too one-sided, rules such as these exist to ensure that they can't be entirely so. A completely one-sided contract might even violate the requirement that it involve mutual consideration, making it a legal non-entity.
"Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. Here is how United illegally kicked him off the plane:
1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco."
I found the argument interesting that United should have lied and just invented a plane swap with a smaller body. Would have left the affected passengers is a weak position.
There is so much wrong on all levels including the reaction of the CEO. This will be a case study for long time.
From what I've read, they weren't in a grey area, they were doing something that was specifically illegal. A grey area is when it may or may not be illegal. This wasn't grey.
(I'm not implying it would, I'm curious to read an analysis that covers it)
United still screwed up in a lot of ways. So did Republic. So most of all did the aviation "police" - an organization that seems to consist largely of people thrown out of CPD for exactly the kind of misconduct visible on the video. But somewhere in there I think there's a fourth group that screwed up - the people whose sudden appearance triggered the whole mess.