Did United Airlines have any other choice than to eject that passenger?

[coloradoatheist]

Corporations write the laws.

Politicians as their servants merely make what the corporations write into laws.

This is a moral issue.

Are non-human entities with human servants to have the right to assault people?

We'll have something to talk about for that. American Airlines was jealous of United so it sounds like one of the attendants hit the passenger with a stroller. Would Loren or I say it's okay for the flight attendant to hit the lady with a stroller?

 

[Artemus]

Come on coloradoatheist, show us one of those counter examples you keep claiming are out there. You owe it to your fans!

It's interesting that the article said they didn't have anything describing them as police but one of the criticisms against the group that came was that one guy had a vest that said police.

Here is an article addressing the legal and appropriate legal rules. Of all the the arguments against United, none of them has quoted law and which laws actually apply or why they don't apply here.

https://professional-troublemaker.com/2017/04/13/united-airlines-fiasco-was-it-legal/

OK, one post by a law student who claims that the contract of carriage doesn't apply against three law professors who says it does. Not too persuasive but I'll give you credit for finding at least something that seems to support your case. Now, can you actually find something by an actually attorney who has passed the bar exam?

 

[coloradoatheist]

It's interesting that the article said they didn't have anything describing them as police but one of the criticisms against the group that came was that one guy had a vest that said police.

Here is an article addressing the legal and appropriate legal rules. Of all the the arguments against United, none of them has quoted law and which laws actually apply or why they don't apply here.

https://professional-troublemaker.com/2017/04/13/united-airlines-fiasco-was-it-legal/

OK, one post by a law student who claims that the contract of carriage doesn't apply against three law professors who says it does. Not too persuasive but I'll give you credit for finding at least something that seems to support your case. Now, can you actually find something by an actually attorney who has passed the bar exam?

The Daily Kos Article says he's specifically not a lawyer in his first post. The link I had actually talk about the relevant laws, not just whether United breached a contract. Different rules.

 

[RavenSky]

At this point I have to believe that you're being deliberately intellectually dishonest.

There's no "the crew doesn't get there" at all. Chicago is a big city with two major airports and several flights to Louisville on a daily basis. There was no chance that the crew simply wouldn't be able to make it to Louisville. If all the planes were suddenly grounded they could still rent a car and get to Louisville the same night.

1) Airlines use their own flights to move crew about, they don't stick them on other people's flights.

You are factually wrong yet again.

While the preference may be to use their own airline (and their own people will typically have priority), they do have reciprocal agreements with other airlines.

 

[laughing dog]

to answer your question. United breaches their contract with the Dr so they owe him actual damages of flight cost, hotel, lost work. But because of the Drs actions it caused United to have to pay its customers for the delays so the DR owes United for the costs of refunding all the flights costs.

The doctor's actions did not cause UA to pay its customers anything.

LP also added clean up costs.

That is fucking ridiculous.

 

[RavenSky]

They have no special rights.

They are less than humans. They are artificial entities.

They have less rights.

It's not a special right. If I invite someone over to my house and say he I would like you to leave now, they have to.

Not after they have paid you the dollar amount you charged for the use of your house or portion thereof

 

[DBT]

Loren was wrong about the hotel. Here is a link from with a response from a lawyer for it. A hotel can kick you out of their room for anything and they will need to refund your money for any services not rendered. so you would get your money back for the night.

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-hotel-manager-kick-me-out---my-husband-after-1589263.html

Rules that are weighed in favour the business rather than its customers. A business that made a practice of kicking customers out of their rooms when they have done nothing wrong, simply for the reason that the hotel now wants the room vacant, for a visiting executive perhaps , would quickly build a bad reputation.

 

[coloradoatheist]

It's not a special right. If I invite someone over to my house and say he I would like you to leave now, they have to.

Not after they have paid you the dollar amount you charged for the use of your house or portion thereof

Depends on what you are paying for. What Loren was trying to say was that if the house or apartment is used for a landlord tenant arrangement there are special laws for that. But it's for normal business they can ask you to leave and then you fight in court if it's breach of contract. So if I am paying someone to paint my house and I don't like how they look I can ask them to leave my property. I may have to pay them for the work they were promised to do, but I can ask them to leave.

 

[RavenSky]

Just for the fun of it:

SDF ARRIVALS
Date: Sun 23-Apr-2017
Time Period:
Departures Arrivals
Airport: (SDF) Louisville International Airport
Louisville, KY, US
Try Our New Flight Tracker

Flight Carrier Origin Arrival Status
DL 5716 Delta Air Lines (DTW) Detroit 9:28 PM Landed
AF 2296 ^ Air France (DTW) Detroit 9:28 PM Landed
KL 6652 ^ KLM (DTW) Detroit 9:28 PM Landed
VS 5661 ^ Virgin Atlantic (DTW) Detroit 9:28 PM Landed
AA 5775 American Airlines (DFW) Dallas 9:32 PM En Route
BA 6813 ^ British Airways (DFW) Dallas 9:32 PM En Route
IB 4116 ^ Iberia (DFW) Dallas 9:32 PM En Route
AA 4527 American Airlines (DCA) Washington 9:39 PM En Route
5X 2061 UPS (BDL) Hartford 9:49 PM En Route
WN 4447 Southwest Airlines (BWI) Baltimore 9:55 PM En Route
Delayed
AA 5477 American Airlines (CLT) Charlotte 9:58 PM Scheduled
Delayed
DL 2605 Delta Air Lines (ATL) Atlanta 10:15 PM En Route
VS 3075 ^ Virgin Atlantic (ATL) Atlanta 10:15 PM En Route
UA 4600 United Airlines (DEN) Denver 10:21 PM En Route
5X 9801 UPS (BDL) Hartford 10:25 PM Scheduled
UA 3515 United Airlines (IAH) Houston 10:39 PM En Route
Delayed
CM 1680 ^ Copa Airlines (IAH) Houston 10:39 PM En Route
Delayed
WN 5872 Southwest Airlines (MCO) Orlando 10:40 PM En Route
DL 5743 Delta Air Lines (MSP) Minneapolis 10:43 PM En Route
KL 7382 ^ KLM (MSP) Minneapolis 10:43 PM En Route
VS 3514 ^ Virgin Atlantic (MSP) Minneapolis 10:43 PM En Route
UA 3541 United Airlines (EWR) Newark 11:12 PM En Route
AC 2826 ^ Air Canada (EWR) Newark 11:12 PM En Route
LH 7782 ^ Lufthansa (EWR) Newark 11:12 PM En Route
DL 5718 Delta Air Lines (DTW) Detroit 11:15 PM Scheduled
VS 5667 ^ Virgin Atlantic (DTW) Detroit 11:15 PM Scheduled
WN 4466 Southwest Airlines (DEN) Denver 11:20 PM Scheduled
UA 4771 United Airlines (ORD) Chicago 11:22 PM Scheduled
Delayed
AC 2711 ^ Air Canada (ORD) Chicago 11:22 PM Scheduled
Delayed
EI 6311 ^ Aer Lingus (ORD) Chicago 11:22 PM Scheduled
Delayed
LH 9168 ^ Lufthansa (ORD) Chicago 11:22 PM Scheduled
Delayed
AA 5843 American Airlines (DFW) Dallas 11:22 PM Scheduled
DL 5909 Delta Air Lines (LGA) New York 11:35 PM En Route
WS 6794 ^ WestJet (LGA) New York 11:35 PM En Route
WN 6532 Southwest Airlines (LAS) Las Vegas 11:35 PM En Route
AA 5334 American Airlines (CLT) Charlotte 11:54 PM Scheduled
AA 4596 American Airlines (MIA) Miami 11:55 PM Scheduled
Delayed
DL 2491 Delta Air Lines (ATL) Atlanta 11:55 PM Scheduled
AF 8646 ^ Air France (ATL) Atlanta 11:55 PM Scheduled
KL 5254 ^ KLM (ATL) Atlanta 11:55 PM Scheduled
VS 5283 ^ Virgin Atlantic (ATL) Atlanta 11:55 PM Scheduled
ZQ 9006 World Atlantic Airlines (DTW) Detroit Scheduled
JUS 727 USA Jet Airlines (YIP) Detroit En Route

Clearly, hardly any airlines ever fly into Louisville... not

 

[coloradoatheist]

Loren was wrong about the hotel. Here is a link from with a response from a lawyer for it. A hotel can kick you out of their room for anything and they will need to refund your money for any services not rendered. so you would get your money back for the night.

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-hotel-manager-kick-me-out---my-husband-after-1589263.html

Rules that are weighed in favour the business rather than its customers. A business that made a practice of kicking customers out of their rooms when they have done nothing wrong, simply for the reason that the hotel now wants the room vacant, for a visiting executive perhaps , would quickly build a bad reputation.

I agree. Though they have a right to do it, they can. However airline's operating needs are vastly different than a hotel's. Deying a room to one person at one hotel isn't going to affect hundreds of others of people.

 

[RavenSky]

Loren was wrong about the hotel. Here is a link from with a response from a lawyer for it. A hotel can kick you out of their room for anything and they will need to refund your money for any services not rendered. so you would get your money back for the night.

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-hotel-manager-kick-me-out---my-husband-after-1589263.html

Actually, you found someone on the internet who gave a wrong answer on that:

An innkeeper exercising his/her right to remove a guest must remove the guest in a reasonable and prudent manner. Moreover, a guest cannot be removed for an improper ground. An innkeeper cannot use force in ejecting a guest or invitee only on guest’s refusal to depart. S/he must first request the guest to depart. An innkeeper cannot use more force than is reasonably necessary to effect the ejection[viii].

State v. Steele, 106 N.C. 766 (N.C. 1890).

[ii] State v. Ahumada, 125 Ariz. 316, 318 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1980).

[iii] State v. Gordon, 437 A.2d 855 (Me. 1981).

[iv] Raider v. Dixie Inn,198 Ky. 152, 153-154 (Ky. 1923).

[v] Bertuca v. Martinez, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 1386 (Tex. App. San Antonio Feb. 22, 2006).

[vi] Hackett v. Bell Operating Co., 181 A.D. 535, 536 (N.Y. App. Div. 1918).

[vii] United States v. Allen, 106 F.3d 695, 699 (6th Cir. Ky. 1997).

[viii] McBride v. Hosey, 197 S.W.2d 372 (Tex. Civ. App. 1946).

So basically the very same rules we expect the airline to follow, too.

 

[untermensche]

Corporations write the laws.

Politicians as their servants merely make what the corporations write into laws.

This is a moral issue.

Are non-human entities with human servants to have the right to assault people?

We'll have something to talk about for that. American Airlines was jealous of United so it sounds like one of the attendants hit the passenger with a stroller. Would Loren or I say it's okay for the flight attendant to hit the lady with a stroller?

You only support the violence when it comes from the top.

You worship authority.

Not liberty.

 

[RavenSky]

Not after they have paid you the dollar amount you charged for the use of your house or portion thereof

Depends on what you are paying for. What Loren was trying to say was that if the house or apartment is used for a landlord tenant arrangement there are special laws for that. But it's for normal business they can ask you to leave and then you fight in court if it's breach of contract. So if I am paying someone to paint my house and I don't like how they look I can ask them to leave my property. I may have to pay them for the work they were promised to do, but I can ask them to leave.

As I said, you two are getting it backwards.

In your example, the property owner is paying someone else to do a paint job on the property, and then the property owner changes their mind. As you note, they may still be required to pay the painter, but the property owner has the right to decline the service.

That is not the scenario with United Airlines, though.

United Airlines would be the "property owner" but Dr. Dao is not "the painter". Dr. Dao was not being paid by United Airlines to perform any sort of service onboard the airplane. Quite the opposite. Dr. Dao is the one who paid for United to perform a service using the airplane to do it.

Your analogy fails.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I asked a simple question, and you could not answer it. Which is truly telling.

to answer your question. United breaches their contract with the Dr so they owe him actual damages of flight cost, hotel, lost work. But because of the Drs actions it caused United to have to pay its customers for the delays so the DR owes United for the costs of refunding all the flights costs. LP also added clean up costs.

- - - Updated - - -

Again, deliberately intellectually dishonest.


1) Airlines routinely put their crews on other airlines' flights.

2) "most likely too late" Too late for what? We can all look up the flights out of Louisville. They start departing early in the morning and continue throughout the day and into the evening.


Without any evidence, you've decided that the crew in question had to be on one of those early flights. You know that there's no evidence for this, yet you continue to act as if that were the case.

Well consider that LP's only other option is to admit to being wrong (Or simply cease responding.) Not something he's likely keen on considering after 80+ pages of arguing. Good way to make himself look stupid.

I know Loren probably won't, but he should say something about 1 because it's normal. Number 2 will be in dispute until either side provides what flight the crew was destined for.

I didn't reply to #1 because there's no point to a tis/tis-not argument.

As for #2, while I agree it can't be resolved for sure there's the reality that airlines want to get a full day's work out of crew and as much work as possible out of planes. The idea of the day starting late enough that the late flight worked is strange in light of this.

 

[Artemus]

OK, one post by a law student who claims that the contract of carriage doesn't apply against three law professors who says it does. Not too persuasive but I'll give you credit for finding at least something that seems to support your case. Now, can you actually find something by an actually attorney who has passed the bar exam?

The Daily Kos Article says he's specifically not a lawyer in his first post. The link I had actually talk about the relevant laws, not just whether United breached a contract. Different rules.

You must have missed this part:

Yesterday I was contacted by D. Michael Risinger, a professor of law at Seton Hall Law School regarding that diary.

...

Below is his email to me with his analysis:

***SIGH***
Did you actually read the post by the law student you cited? It had three links, two to wikipedia pages that describe "license" and "efficient breach theory" but gave no citation to where they are enacted in relevant law or why they invalidated the contract of carriage. The third link goes to a journal article and discusses licenses as they apply to British law.

Three law professors on the other hand have said that United had no right to have the passenger removed. But you believe that a law student who can link to wikipedia articles is more credible. Really?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1) This wasn't a case of a VIP, they needed those seats for operational reasons.

Doesn't matter why they claimed to need them, you have FAILED to show why they needed THAT SPECIFIC SEAT

They needed 4 seats.

Normal practice is to pick the 4 passengers with the lowest fare basis that are not in the categories to bump last. Sure, they could have picked someone different when he resisted but that would be an utterly stupid move.

2) In many hotels you can show up and find that an elite traveler came along and took the room you had booked. (Akin to the usual case of being denied at the gate, rather than after boarding.) You aren't going to get booted from the room itself because the law provides special protections booting people from the place they're going to sleep.

You have completely failed to show this special law that "provides special protections booting people from the place they're going to sleep" but good on you for finally acknowledging that Dr. Dao being IN his seat is materially different from still being off the airline at the gate.

I didn't see any reason to look it up and note that the details vary from place to place anyway.

No, Dr. Dao was NOT "trespassing". He had paid for that seat, and United not only accepted payment for that seat, but put him in the seat. They don't get to retroactively claim "trespass"

If the owner of the property says "Go!" and you don't have special legal protection against that but refuse to go you are trespassing. There's no special legal protection beyond the IDB compensation, the airline was within it's rights to say "Go!"

Wrong.

Nice job of describing your understanding of the situation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You think a plane only makes one flight in a day?

No, but apparently you do

You keep insisting that this one crew member absolutely had to be on THIS flight in THIS seat, yet you still fail to show any facts to support your position. Without that, you have zero basis for defending United's actions.

If they were to get to Louisville on a United flight at an hour that would allow them to fly in the morning they had to be on that flight. There does not appear to be any other United flight into Louisville in the requisite time, although I was only examining a daily schedule, not a weekly one.

- - - Updated - - -

Loren was wrong about the hotel. Here is a link from with a response from a lawyer for it. A hotel can kick you out of their room for anything and they will need to refund your money for any services not rendered. so you would get your money back for the night.

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-hotel-manager-kick-me-out---my-husband-after-1589263.html

The law varies from place to place.

 

[RavenSky]

Doesn't matter why they claimed to need them, you have FAILED to show why they needed THAT SPECIFIC SEAT

They needed 4 seats.

They already had three of the seats needed.

Normal practice is to pick the 4 passengers with the lowest fare basis that are not in the categories to bump last. Sure, they could have picked someone different when he resisted but that would be an utterly stupid move.

So yet again you have failed to show why they needed this specific seat. Substituting your ill-informed opinion is not the same as providing sourced facts.

- - - Updated - - -

No, but apparently you do

You keep insisting that this one crew member absolutely had to be on THIS flight in THIS seat, yet you still fail to show any facts to support your position. Without that, you have zero basis for defending United's actions.

If they were to get to Louisville on a United flight at an hour that would allow them to fly in the morning they had to be on that flight. There does not appear to be any other United flight into Louisville in the requisite time, although I was only examining a daily schedule, not a weekly one.

AGAIN you are posting your opinion instead of actual sourced facts. Do you even understand the difference?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is good explanation by yet a third law professor that I've found commenting on the case at Daily Kos. If the United Airlines gate agent told the port cops that Dao was a threat to safety and must be removed, then probable cause for arrest "technically" existed. However,


This is immediately followed by


That makes it three for three in law professors saying that United had no right to tell the port cops that Dao must be removed and that the port cops were seriously negligent in the performance of that removal.

Come on coloradoatheist, show us one of those counter examples you keep claiming are out there. You owe it to your fans!

It's interesting that the article said they didn't have anything describing them as police but one of the criticisms against the group that came was that one guy had a vest that said police.

Here is an article addressing the legal and appropriate legal rules. Of all the the arguments against United, none of them has quoted law and which laws actually apply or why they don't apply here.

https://professional-troublemaker.com/2017/04/13/united-airlines-fiasco-was-it-legal/

FYI: The guy writing this has won multiple cases pro se and is now in law school--while not a lawyer yet he's far more informed than the average person. He started out simply pissed at the TSA but his willingness to fight back when wronged has expanded beyond those goons by now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The crew doesn't get there, the plane doesn't fly. The plane isn't in the right location so even if crew gets there later it still can't make it's flights until it manages to reposition to the right airport.

Repeating your unsubstantiated claim and still not providing any factual support whatsoever is "not a rebuttal at all".

What are you contesting here?

You think the plane can fly without crew?

You think the plane can make the flight when the crew shows up but it's at the wrong airport to make the flight?