embarcadero1

This is exactly right. United's case is ludicrous, all they're basing this on is the threat of expensive litigation.

Just because United wants customers to use its products one way doesn't mean consumers have to do so.

mduell

No, but they are aggressive about it beyond their competence to correctly reflect who did show. I've been bit on real flights since the merger, not bus/train segments.

raehl311

No it isn't.

Let's say you have a contract to have someone to construct an addition on your house. As your neighbor, I don't want to deal with the construction, so I contact the contractor and offer them money to not do the construction.

That's called "tortuous interference", and it's legally actionable - you can't act to discourage one party from honoring the terms of a contract with another party.

In this case, United has a contract of carriage which prohibits hidden city ticketing, and the defendant is encouraging one party to that contract (the customer) to not honor the terms of that contract.


I think the key issue here is the contract doesn't exist until the purchase is made, which is after the fare search - so it's hard to interfere with a contract that doesn't exist. But maybe tortuous interference also applies when encouraging someone to agree to a contract they have no intention of honoring.

matrixwalker2012

And UA also has the right to refuse business from customers who continuously abuse their products. Key word is abuse. Sure, plans can change mid-trip. It can even happen a lot. UA is pretty good at detecting abuse though.

mgcsinc

Thank you for bothering to understand what United's claim was.

bocastephen

This is a stretch...I'm no jurist, but I agree that you cannot commit tortuous interference before a contract is signed or even considered (customers using the site are just researching options). What is not a stretch, which I recognized after reading the claim, was a more plausible and valid concern that by providing a direct link to the booking engine, this website was acting as a de fact agent, and by encouraging a customer to buy a ticket that violates the CoC, they got in the middle of the transaction and thus should be stopped from doing so.

Had they separated the hidden city function to a different area of the site and provided no direct link to book a hidden city ticket, there would be little UA or Orbtiz could do to stop them as the site is only providing options to savvy travelers - not posting a how-to education program on prohibited ticketing practices (which in itself would walk a fine line between free speech and TI).

mgcsinc

Sorry, but no. There's even an entire species of tortious interference claim, often called "interference with prospective business relations" or something similar, specifically to deal with this circumstance.

I'm not sure what being a "jurist" or not has to do with being right or wrong about the basic elements of a cause of action.

Kacee

Tortious interference with a prospective relation generally requires the interference be "wrongful," a much more difficult standard than interference with a contract.

I do agree though that the allegations of this complaint do not seem frivolous.

mgcsinc

They do in California. I didn't mention it because I'm not sure what the elements are in other states, but it makes sense that it would be fairly uniform in that regard, otherwise it's too easy to plead.

LaserSailor

It will be trivial to construct a revenue management model showing potential damages in the millions of uSD loss from this.

bocastephen

Sorry, damages to your beloved United need to be actual, not potential. UA would need to show evidence of hidden city ticket usage which could be attributed back to this website and the economic loss generated by those tickets. Again, the website does not explain hidden city ticketing methods or benefits, nor provide any coaching to site visitors - so while the booking link was stupid on the part of the site, and would provide the evidence of economic loss needed, the only legitimate remedy is to block the site from linking to any legitimate travel agency or to UA in order to book tickets which may violate the airline CoC.

I'm pretty sure almost none of us ever heard of this website prior to the thread, so the number of tickets is likely minimal.

mgcsinc

This is just a bunch of made-up law.

bocastephen

Your opinion, not necessarily fact - which is why we have the adversarial court system so a Judge and perhaps a Jury can decide which party's claim is correct.

If I'm on the Jury, neither UA nor Orbitz gets a dime unless they show me actual examples of real damages traced back to this site. As far as the TI claim, I looked at skiplagged and I didn't even recognize a hidden city booking option at first and had to figure out what their pricing graph was even showing me - therefore, the TI claim on its face is a non-starter for me. They are not teaching or training people, or even outright suggesting a specific violation of an airline CoC.

787fan

Actually the website is entirely at fault here. The user searches "LAX-JFK" and it delivers a bookable link for "LAX-JFK-BOS", which can only have 2 reasons :

1. The website delivered an incorrect link (through extremely poor IT), and the unsuspecting traveler will end up at the wrong destination from the original search request if the traveler flies the entire itinerary as delivered by the website.

2. The website delivers a link that encourages the customer to violate the airline CoC, and the savvy traveler follows through with the booking knowing in full that his/her actions are in violation of CoC, and with every intention at the booking not to fly the itinerary as displayed

There's a major difference between bloggers talking about the technique (which is freedom of speech), and engaging it commercially, with intent to directly profiting from the practice.

bocastephen

Again, eliminate the link - if they presented the information the same way that, for example, ITA shows flight options and instructs customers they must book on their own and the site does not provide booking services or links to booking services, then it's a different story.