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Forums - General Discussion - Man violently removed from United Airlines plane. ~Update~ United may have broken the law.

Porcupine_I on 13 April 2017
SpokenTruth said:
Porcupine_I said:
I don't know about the laws in the United States, but i can't believe the police is there to enforce arbitrary rules of a private company.

If the police are called to such a case, their questions should be: "Is there a security concern? Has the man broken any law? Is this a dangerous situation?" If not, you are on your own dealing with this situation.

Those were not the police but rather airport security.  That said, the actual police can still become involved and remove the passenger if they deem him as disturbing the peace and being hostile.

However, that was a horrible display of policy and force.  Unwarranted and United will be feeling the repurcussions of this one right in the financials.

Are they? I'm pretty sure it said "Police" on their outfits. It should not be legal for a security company to pose as Police.



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

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Hedra42 on 13 April 2017

You can pick away at semantics for the next month about who was 'right' or 'wrong' - I'd rather leave that to the lawyers, as they're going to be involved at some point, if not already.

But whoever wins that argument, legally or otherwise, it will make no difference to the fact that nobody came out on top in this. United got bad publicity. The security guys got bad publicity. Three of them are now suspended. Dao got injured, and also got some unconnected bad publicity. His patients (remember them?) never got to see their doctor the following day.

Apparently, United have now offered to refund the value of the flight tickets to all of the passengers on that flight in whatever form they prefer. They have also said they will no longer ask police to remove passengers from full flights.

I hope lessons are learned from this, by all airlines, security and passengers. It could have been handled so much better.



UnderstatedCornHole on 13 April 2017

The guy was resistant to the law.
You resist the law and the law will deal with you until you resisting.
He deserves everything he was subjected to and quite frankly he deserves to lose his job permanently as a medical professional for his behaviour.

People supporting this guy are drink on liberal drivel, group think and general inability to understand how law and order works.

Please respond if you want to challenge me and look stupid.



UnderstatedCornHole on 13 April 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
binary solo said:

Depends on the terms of the rental agreement obviously. You'd be kinda dumb to sign such a rental agreement, but if you were domb enough to sign it with that sort of condition, then yeah, the landlord would have a defence for forcibly removing you if they have a lawful basis for demanding your departure.

That's how contracts work, you abide by the terms of the contract or you suffer the consequences. If the terms of the United ticket, which represents a contract for service, says that you can be bumped at any time for specified reasons then you are bound by that contract and United is entitled to enforce it. And if necessary to vacate you from their private property possibly be legally justified in using physical force.

And don;t equate United employees with "buddies". They are employed under contract too, which both the employee and United are obliged to comply, and that will include getting them to where they are required to be to do their job. Or to be delivered back to their home after ending their shift under specific terms. Are you wanting to prefer the passenger's rights over the rights of the conditions for the United workers? 

Should United be a lot more organised in managing passenger and staff logitics? No doubt. But that doesn't change the probably lawful rights United has given itself in tickets.

It's actually not...

If there's anything that contravenes actual laws in there then it really doesn't matter what the contract says, those terms aren't binding and shouldn't have consequences (well, maybe for the party that wrote the contract there will be consequences, but they shouldn't be trying to illegally take advantage of people in the first place so...)

It actually is.

Haven't you heard of a bi law? It's where law and order at state or federal level is also handed to operators of travel methods for example security at an airport.

People being taken advantage of illegally? What!!!? Where?

You are taking liberal feel good fluff that has no basis in reality. Time to wake up and live in the world that is, instead of playing make believe.



Dark_Lord_2008 on 13 April 2017

This was a hate crime. This airline should be boycotted and the victim should be compensated millions of dollars for the bad treatment and the public humiliation he endured.



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Hedra42 on 13 April 2017
UnderstatedCornHole said:
The guy was resistant to the law.
You resist the law and the law will deal with you until you resisting.
He deserves everything he was subjected to and quite frankly he deserves to lose his job permanently as a medical professional for his behaviour.

People supporting this guy are drink on liberal drivel, group think and general inability to understand how law and order works.

Please respond if you want to challenge me and look stupid.

The only people looking stupid are the airline, the security guys and the passenger involved.

Like I said, nobody comes out on top in a situation like this. Except, maybe, the lawyers. And now that he's launched legal action, some lawyer will probably do well out of this.



binary solo on 13 April 2017
SvennoJ said:
binary solo said:

Depends on the terms of the rental agreement obviously. You'd be kinda dumb to sign such a rental agreement, but if you were domb enough to sign it with that sort of condition, then yeah, the landlord would have a defence for forcibly removing you if they have a lawful basis for demanding your departure.

That's how contracts work, you abide by the terms of the contract or you suffer the consequences. If the terms of the United ticket, which represents a contract for service, says that you can be bumped at any time for specified reasons then you are bound by that contract and United is entitled to enforce it. And if necessary to vacate you from their private property possibly be legally justified in using physical force.

And don;t equate United employees with "buddies". They are employed under contract too, which both the employee and United are obliged to comply, and that will include getting them to where they are required to be to do their job. Or to be delivered back to their home after ending their shift under specific terms. Are you wanting to prefer the passenger's rights over the rights of the conditions for the United workers? 

Should United be a lot more organised in managing passenger and staff logitics? No doubt. But that doesn't change the probably lawful rights United has given itself in tickets.

What you can draw up in contracts is also bound by rules. The same goes for using reasonable force. Otherwise it would be ok for Nintendo to call the swat team on anyone playing botw on Cemu.

We've gone over this before in this thread, no where in the contract of carriage from United does it state that you can be removed from the plane in case an employee needs the seat. The rules for overbooking are all about being denied boarding. As well as the official regulations regarding overbooking. The only rules after boarding are safety/disturbance related.

So it seems the airline called airport security under false pretenses to intimidate the guy into leaving. The guy called their bluff and instead of airport security trying to mediate, they decided to use force. There was no security issue, no disturbance until security started pulling on him. It also seems they never charged him with anything, didn't arrest him, so using force was unjustified. There was no trespassing charge.

After all that, it most likely was unreasonable force as well.
https://www.nij.gov/topics/law-enforcement/officer-safety/use-of-force/pages/welcome.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor
The question is were they trying to arrest him and was he thus actively resisting arrest. Or were they simply impatient and decided to drag him out.

I'm sure if it came to court the airline's lawyers would argue that "denial of boarding" can apply after a person is on the plane and the court would have to decide one way or the other. But until it is determined in court, or clarified in the law (which it is not sufficiently clear), an airline can interpret denial of boarding to include people who are already on the plane. It is reasonably arguable that it is inequitable to only deny boarding to those passengers who have not yet boarded.

Airlines have the right to forceably remove someon from the plane in a case of "Failure by Passenger to comply with the Rules of the Contract of Carriage." Since the rules of the contract of carriage include involuntary denial of boarding if there are insufficient volunteers, and if the airline abides by its boarding prioritisation in cases where denail of boarding is necessary, then a person refusing to leave the plane under a denial of boarding which meets the terms of the contract of carriage can be failing to comply with the rules of the contract of carriage and therefore be forceably removed.

But that all hinges on exactly how denial of boarding is defined. And it seems like there is sufficient recognition of ambiguity in the current law that consideration is being given to specifying that denial of boarding in cases like this can't be used as a basis for taking someone off the plane. But that can and probably will create problems of its own.



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SvennoJ on 13 April 2017
binary solo said:

I'm sure if it came to court the airline's lawyers would argue that "denial of boarding" can apply after a person is on the plane and the court would have to decide one way or the other. But until it is determined in court, or clarified in the law (which it is not sufficiently clear), an airline can interpret denial of boarding to include people who are already on the plane. It is reasonably arguable that it is inequitable to only deny boarding to those passengers who have not yet boarded.

Airlines have the right to forceably remove someon from the plane in a case of "Failure by Passenger to comply with the Rules of the Contract of Carriage." Since the rules of the contract of carriage include involuntary denial of boarding if there are insufficient volunteers, and if the airline abides by its boarding prioritisation in cases where denail of boarding is necessary, then a person refusing to leave the plane under a denial of boarding which meets the terms of the contract of carriage can be failing to comply with the rules of the contract of carriage and therefore be forceably removed.

But that all hinges on exactly how denial of boarding is defined. And it seems like there is sufficient recognition of ambiguity in the current law that consideration is being given to specifying that denial of boarding in cases like this can't be used as a basis for taking someone off the plane. But that can and probably will create problems of its own.

You hit the nail on the head, couldn't have said it better. In law, interpretation of the language used means everything. It could very well end up being decided both ways, the airline acquitted of any wrong doing in criminal court, while losing the lawsuit in civil court. That the flight was not oversold probable further complicates matters as the denial of boarding rules all refer to overbooking. Lawyers are going to be happy with this case.

I wonder what the outcome will be. For example, imagine if this was a stopover on the flight. Would the airline be in the right to remove a passenger at point B in their route from A to C to replace them with an employee for the last leg?



VGPolyglot on 13 April 2017
SpokenTruth said:
Porcupine_I said:

Are they? I'm pretty sure it said "Police" on their outfits. It should not be legal for a security company to pose as Police.

In the US, the word police is legally allowed to be used by all private security entitites.   In fact, the legal distinction is public police (sponsoreed by a government body) and private police (sponsored by a private corporation). When they are private, common language simply calls them security though they are technically police.

Some airport police are actually a branch of the local public police department but Chicago O'Hare is not one of them.

Actually, I didn't know that to be honest. It makes sense though, the police enforce the will of legislators while security guards enforce the will of corporations.



Machiavellian on 13 April 2017
Imaginedvl said:
VGPolyglot said:

If the guy was right, then he can't  be in the wrong by doing what's in the right.

Where did you get that? I did not say he was right. Anyway, I remember you comment about the police and all that. This is like talking to a wall. 

And even if you can say he is right (I'm assuming because I said he could sue if he believes so) you are again mixing 2 things... The choice United made which has nothing to do with the airport authorities or the police you hate so much and the actual airport authorities asking him to de-plane...

But this is a sterile conversation, you already told us that for you, the fact that you think you are right gives you the right to do not comply to the police.

I will say that people who do not know where your rights are at in certain situation chance the risk of getting hurt and not getting anything but an apology.  This is very dangerous thinking that has gotten people killed only to have their family members able to do nothing as the person who killed them walk the streets.  As I have made the same comments about the 2 separate situations of this incident.  The first is United calling security which was totally wrong.  The second was when security came on the scene and the Dr refused to leave.  Refusing to leave and not knowing your rights can end badly.  People believe the courts will help you in these cases but a lot of times that rarely what happens.