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Soundwave said:
Machiavellian said:

Actually once security comes in and you refuse to leave a place that has asked you to leave, they can remove you by force.  People are forgetting that there is two actions going on here.  United has the right to refuse any passenger passage on any plane.  Security has the right to remove a passenger who refuse to leave a plane.  If the passenger resist which is exactly what this guy did and he was hurt as a result, then courts can look at how he was hurt.  You do not have to be a security risk, violent or anything like that.  You only have to refuse to leave.  This would be the same if you went into any building and they asked you to leave and you refused to go.  The police has the right to remove you by force.  If you resist then any injury occurred can be placed on you and if you resist and the police officer was hurt, you could be charged a felony.

This has nothing to do with United fare rules or anything like that because those things can be disputed and they can be sue for breach of contract.  The fact that comes into play is that the man was asked to leave and United does have that right.  By refusing to leave he then put himself into tresspassing.  Now once security comes on the scene they can remove any one who is tresspassing and can use force.

The guy will get something from United but it will be settled out of court and it will not be anywhere close to a million.  Hell it probably would not be more than 5K.  

lol, this is going to cost United waaaaaaaaaaay more than 5k. There are tons of high profile lawyers who would be licking their chops to take this case on for zero fees (but a cut of the settlement of course), they are going to rip United a new a-hole. They will settle out of court and settle quickly. 

A million or more wouldn't surprise me. United wants this to go away quickly, they are getting absolutely killed on the PR front. Their stock price has lost $600 million in market cap because of this today. 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uniteds-stock-is-set-to-fall-5-and-wipe-1-billion-off-the-airlines-market-cap-2017-04-11

Oh PR wise they stand to lose big no matter if it goes to court or not.  If they already lose on the PR side then it matters not what they settle for and they might be willing to toe the line. Interesting enough, notice how they apoligize for the overbooking but did not apologize to the guy that got hurt.  Classic case were they do not want to admit guilt or responsibility just in case it do go to trial.