The fact that you believe a business has a contractual obligation to do something doesn’t necessarily entitle you to remain on the premises of the business until that obligation is fulfilled. You may have to leave and go to court, which is where contracts are interpreted when there is a dispute. Even if you’re 100% right in your interpretation of a contract, that doesn’t confer on you the right to enforce the contract on the spot by standing your ground and refusing to leave.
It’s like how being arrested illegally doesn’t give you the right to resist arrest.
I have to hand it to you, Smapti - a couple months ago, your approach to law enforcement made you one of the most hated people on this board. Now, based on the United incident, it seems that your views have become mainstream, perhaps even predominant. Well done.
You act as if this was some grand stand in defense of one’s civil rights in the face of an intolerant state action.
It wasn’t.
This was one man deciding that the rules didn’t apply to him and that his needs as an individual override the needs of the many whose flights would have been cancelled or delayed if the flight crew hadn’t been able to reach their worksite on time.
This is “the customer is always right” syndrome turned up to 11.
That’s your opinion. Personally, I saw it as a grand stand in defense of one’s consumer rights in the face of an intolerant corporate action. Not quite Rosa Parks, I agree, but cut from teh same cloth.
How was that David Dao’s problem? The airline screwed up, the airline should fix it at their own expense, not at the expense of an innocent bystander. The essence of being a mensch is not dumping your problems on someone else.
however, you have to make at least some attempt to hold your ground and attempt to have the contract enforced, otherwise you may lose your legal standing. it can be said that you agreed with the decision at the time that you had no claim to the services.
in that case it would be elitist prick. he felt that his obligations were more important than some other passenger - they should have to give up their seat, not him.
And I’m sure lots of other people on that flight had a good reason to be in Louisville the next morning, but it’s not the airline’s job to rate your value to society when it comes to randomly selecting someone for deplaning.
And how many other customers should suffer because of one man’s unwillingness to abide by the rules he agreed to when he bought a ticket? If he didn’t want to play by the same rules every single other passenger abides by, he should’ve caught a Greyhound.
Right. If you don’t like the airlines’ rules, just don’t fly. If you don’t like the ISP’s rules, just don’t use the internet. If you don’t like the electric company’s rules, just sit there in the dark. So long as you have a choice.
Correct. Participating in a civilized society means you have to follow the rules. If you don’t like the rules, feel free to go live in the forest and scrounge nuts and berries for sustenance until you die of an infected ferret bite at the ripe old age of 23.
There was only a short distance involved. How hard would it have been to charter a small plane to fly the airline personnel? Surely cost-effective given the delays required with the bumping method, and the now-obvious risk of insufficient volunteer bumpees.
For that matter, why not offer volunteers a limousine ride to Louisville, champagne included? (Would that be legal? It’s often shown in movies! )
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BTW, if I were bidding to be bumped, I would much prefer $400 cash over $1000 in vouchers.
Normally that’s not a huge risk. This is typically handled at the gate, and if the chosen passenger wants to shout that it’s unfair and refuse to accept it, that’s no big deal because they’re not on the plane yet.
I heard on the network news last night that the airline personnel were authorized to offer up to $1350.00 for a volunteer to give up a seat, but that they made no such offer before dragging that guy out of his seat. Fuck those assholes. They sure saved that money, huh? Dumbfucks.
I don’t think there’s a cap on how much they’re allowed to offer. $1350 is the most the airline can be required to give when someone is involuntarily bumped. (Of course, so long as that cap exists, they don’t have much of an incentive to offer more than that. The vast majority of involuntary denials do not result in violence or news coverage.)
The whole problem with this (and I say this as a person who has been handling contract disputes for far too close to 30 years) is that very roughly half the people involved in contractual disputes are incorrect about their position.
So let’s tweak the situation a little. Let’s take it as read for the purpose of this example that the guy on the plane was not contractually or ethically entitled to be on it but sincerely believed he was.
What now? Should the guy who is on there just be allowed to stay because he’s there and he’s refusing to leave ie might is right? Should there be a quick judicial hearing? How is this civil dispute to be decided? The law takes the only practical course which is to say, if a property owner demands that a person leave, the police will enforce that demand. If - as it turns out - the demand was a breach of contract then the property owner will be made civilly liable at a later date. If - as it turns out - the demand was unethical but not actionable then presumably the property owner will (or at least should) suffer in the hands of public opinion, as is usually the case for someone who does something unethical but lawful.
The guy on the United flight was outrageously manhandled and I have no sympathy for those who did that.
But as a matter of legal and civil policy, it is completely appropriate that United has an enforceable entitlement to make immediate decisions (even civilly actionable or unethical but lawful decisions) about what happens on their property.
If someone interfered with your property in a manner that caused immediate problems for you, but claimed to have a civil right to do what they were doing and the police (with their total lack of knowledge of civil law) said “sorry, we accept his version of what the contract means, we’re not going to stop what he’s doing” I think you would change your tune rather quickly.
I’m just highly skeptical of the ability of lawsuits to resolve anything, especially when one side is a megacorproations with multiple law firms on retainer, and the other side is just an average schmuck. The power imbalance is too great. Lawsuits take years, cost huge amounts of money and generally only benefit the stronger party. Saying that they’re a viable solution to a situation like this is a pipe dream. The best way to win a suit is to prevent it, and you do that by standing your ground and not giving away what you’v already got. In the case at hand, what he was was a seat, and not giving it up was the smart thing to do.
The only power an ordinary individual has over someone vastly more powerful than him is the ability to say “no”.
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