United passenger suffers concussion, broken nose – lawyer | Hacker News Reader

United passenger suffers concussion, broken nose – lawyer

reuters.com

39 pointsjameslk30 comments

Why is this on HN?

Flag and move on.

I hope he doesn't settle.

I hope he settles, quickly and with a massive payout from United. I hope he laughs all the way to the bank.

That might make it more probable, as compared to a protracted legal battle that just drops out of sight, that a random person will challenge United when put under the same circumstances.

The real culprit here are the LEOs. They had no business getting involved. And, even less business using force. It's another case of LEOs unlawfully escalating to violence. Here I would agree with you: he shouldn't quietly settle his case with CPD.

The officers involved in this case are not Chicago Police. They are from the Chicago Department of Aviation. They cannot make arrests (they hold offenders until CPD is summoned). They are also unarmed.

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/April-2017/3-Things-to-K...

> ... suffered a significant concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth in the incident, and he will need to undergo reconstructive surgery, Demetrio said.

I can't contemplate the amount of money I'd have to get to make me willing to violently lose my teeth. He's a doctor too, so he's probably already making enough money.

> He's a doctor too, so he's probably already making enough money.

Why do you assume that?

I get the reason for the stereotype that doctors are well-remunerated, but, real talk, the compensation varies immensely, especially for nonspecialist solo/family practitioners. They bill what strikes the rest of us as a lot, but also face very high expenses, particularly as they relate to liaising with insurance and beating claims out of them, but also malpractice insurance and staffing. And in low-income areas where they're stuck with Medicaid claims, well, that's not a good living.

This generalisation makes as much sense as saying that software developers make good money. Yeah, Full Stack JavaScript Ninja RockStars at VC-funded Silicon Valley companies do. Elsewhere in the country, there are a lot of financial services sweatshops and ordinary small businesses. I know lots of rather talented software and systems people with salaries in the $30k-$50k range as they work for some middle-of-nowhere county government, ordinary third-tier midsize municipality, urban school district, or soft drink distributor or whatever, and those are just the pay scales. About the only thing you can say is that they tend to be better paid than the general population as a whole.

Doctors work the same way, within their own sliding scale. There are lots of small-town solo practices that hardly make any money and at best yield a very ordinary salary for the doctor. Not enough for business class.

Lawyers are another good example. The lawyers we see do corporate litigation and make more money than god. But in the real world, there are lots of burnt out, woefully overworked public defenders who are paid beans. There are lots of associates at small to midsize firms who must endure a hazing ritual of 80 hour weeks and slightly-better-than-paralegal pay for ten years before they can move up. There are lots of mind-numbing in-house counsel type jobs for surplus law school graduates; reviewing vendor contracts in the dimly lit warehouse office annex of a fast food chain doesn't pay much. I personally know a lawyer who tried for ten years to get by as a solo family and bankruptcy attorney, and in the end found it too hard to survive. He wasn't a bad lawyer, it was just a time/place/demographic/market situation. He became a bus driver; he loves the superior steady pay and benefits.

So, it all depends.

>Why do you assume that?

I assume the OP means he's probably doing well enough to not want his teeth kicked in for a payday. Like most of us here.

I don't know. I'd take it, and I probably do no worse than the average HN poster. :-) It'll get you out of having to deal with NPM left-pad for a while!

Without defending the actions of the LEO, I'd note that in all probability, they were called in with just "We have a passenger who's been told to leave and is refusing to leave," and the implicit context of an unruly passenger instead of just one who refused to volunteer.

I wonder if that exposes United to the same vague class of liability as if they had SWATted him - they called the police in a way where they should have expected the police to use force, and they should have known that no force was required. It looks like the statute on disorderly conduct covers "reporting information when, at the time the call or transmission is made, the person knows there is no reasonable ground for making the call or transmission and further knows that the call or transmission could result in the emergency response of any public safety agency"; could a sufficiently clever lawyer argue that this happened?

"Refused to volunteer" is such a wonderfully euphemistic turn of phrase.

  > LEO

Low Earth Orbit?

Law Enforcement Officer

Why would United be liable? They did nothing wrong.

They may have done nothing illegal (for a court to decide). But they definitely did things wrong.

They called police in to solve a civil dispute (the contract DOES allow them to make him to leave, and it's an enforceable contract-of-adhesion) which is afaik illegal.

They could have called the FBI (or perhaps some other federal police force) because the passenger violated the federal requirement to obey aircrew. But they didn't

So I don't know how much you know the law, but I worked at a public swimming pool (run by the city) and we had a patron that was screaming at everyone and refused to leave (she was in the water). We called the police and they told the lady if she didn't get out they'd jump in and remove her by force. She got out and left. Are the circumstances that different in this case if the lady refused to get out and was forced out by the police? (I'm not defending the police or United here but wondering the legality)

I do not know Chicago Law, but he likely didn't violate it. He might have violated federal law, but that enforcement has to be done differently afaik. Chicago Police was almost surely in the wrong, and United was in the wrong for calling them.

While one (especially United) might expect this to make no difference, the letter of the law is what should have been followed in this case.

Police often tend to make up nonexistent laws as they go. Those imiganiry laws might even sometimes make sense. But "with great power comes great responsibility" and that responsibility is to only uphold the laws on the books.

She was creating a public disturbance, which is most likely a violation of the law.

In the case of the United passenger, he was disturbing nobody until after they tried to force him to leave.

If its captain's orders however, then the captain of the airplane should have every right to remove a passenger.

He has every right to remove a passenger who is causing a disturbance or presenting a threat.

He doesn't have the right to because the airline wanted them off in breach of the contract of sale and the guy said "yeah no".

Refusing peacefully to go along with the fiction the airline has created isn't causing a disturbance. You can't force someone in to a "disturbance" state if they're just sitting there。

Look, involuntary bumping happens on every airline every day. The fact is that you don't have a right to fly if the airline or captain doesn't like you for any reason (aside from protected discrimination classes, like race or gender)

Why should the captain have every right to remove a passenger? Should that include the right to remove a passenger because the passenger is Jewish? How about because the captain wants that seat for a set of golf clubs? That's what you said, and I disagree. The captain isn't God and aircrew are constrained by laws just like everyone else, no matter what the airlines would like us to think.

The captain has every right to remove a passenger because, he is not supposed to fly unless he is feeling safe to fly, he mustn't, and it is assumed that letting 200 passengers fly safely is more important than letting one passenger remain "innocent until proven guilty".

That said, the captain's decision does not make him immune to lawsuits, disciplinary action, etc. but on his plane, especially while flying, temporarily he IS god.

Safety first yo. The captain is in charge of flying and keeping the plane safe.

If you want to sue afterwards you are allowed in America to do so. But the captain should be allowed to call police in to remove anybody. Period.

Ahh. I'm guessing he has complete rights to not fly, but I don't know if they have rights to physically remove a non-aggressive/dangerous passenger. I of course don't know the law.

>We called the police and they told the lady if she didn't get out they'd jump in and remove her by force.

I bet if they knocked her unconscious and dragged her from the pool, they'd be in trouble too. At least I hope so.

Isn't the whole point of police training to learn to deal with these situations safely and as peacefully as possible? If you can just shoot or punch everyone who's causing a disturbance, what do you need any training for?

A bunch of lawyers seem to disagree.

Imagine if the surgeon had informed flight crew that he was needed for important surgery, and then the captain informed the surgeon that the plane would not be flying with him aboard so the only way that he could get to the hospital on time would be to leave now, and find alternate transportation.

And further imagine that the surgeon sat tight anyway, and that a United lawyer then informed him that he, the surgeon, could be sued by every other passenger who was unable to travel to important appointments.

In other words, the guy could have been rationally talked off the plane.

In fact, United could have contacted the hospital where he works, informed them that he would not be flying today, and given him a phone so that he could discuss the situation with his boss and his employer. They too could have rationally talked the guy off the plane, or alternatively they could have given United information that would lead to letting the guy fly.

Meh, the doctor would likely call United's bluff if they tried those threats. Can you imagine the pilot's escalating warnings coming out of the plane's speaker phone?

United should have continued to offer better incentives to voluntarily deplane, until 4 passengers got off.

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