Originally Posted by
stevenshev
Ticket Scalping.
Except as otherwise provided in Section 26002.5 of the Government Code and Sections 40180.5 and 99151 of the Public Utilities Code, any person, firm, corporation, partnership, or association that shall sell to another any ticket, pass, scrip, mileage or commutation book, coupon, or other instrument for passage on a common carrier, for the use of any person not entitled to use the same according to the terms thereof, or of the book or portion thereof from which it was detached, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
...let us analyze the type of transaction in question.
It is not a sale of a ticket, as the issuance of the ticket post-dates the completion of the contractual arrangement (ie the transfer of the miles).
It is in fact a sale of miles.
For starters, I venture that the cited § does not govern the sale of miles held by an individual account owner who has earned them through travel or otherwise, but rather (based on the construction of the list), "mileage books", whatever those may be.
I concede that this, however, would likely not be a serious barrier to a conviction under the statute.
What is noteworthy, however, is that the miles must have been sold explicitly for use for transport on a common carrier. This brings us back to my previous point: the contractual agreement ended upon sale (actually transfer) of the miles. So long as the seller was not in fact offering the airline ticket, but rather just the requisite miles, he cannot be guilty of the offense of providing such a ticket (or miles) for passage on a common carrier, as the use of the miles would be at the discretion of the now-legal owner.
For example, you cannot hold that the statute would apply if I sold you my UA miles, and you proceeded to use them to buy yourself magazine subscriptions. It only holds if we explicitly contract that I purchase for you, in violation of the terms of the mileage program, a ticket for transport on a common carrier. This is a limited, unusual, and rarely applicable set of circumstances.
Yes, it could happen the way you choose to interpret it. I just don't think it ever does, and any half-decent lawyer could shove enough reasonable doubt (assuming that is the standard) up the court's tuchis that it will be thrown out forthwith.
Does "ticket scalping" appear somewhere in the code, or is that the search term used to bring this section up? If "ticket scalping" in fact is part of the code, then the relevance of this section to the sale of airline miles might be more doubtful, since it might be hard to construe the sale of miles as ticket scalping.
UA has a rather low cap (15K) on the number of miles that can be transferred from one person's account to another's, and the transfer fees are substantial. So, I doubt that many "sales" involve actual transfers of miles rather than a sale of what miles can fetch, most often award travel, but sometimes other things, e.g., magazine subscriptions. Hence, in most cases it will be difficult to maintain, "It is not a sale of a ticket, as the issuance of the ticket post-dates the completion of the contractual arrangement (ie the transfer of the miles)."
I agree that "you cannot hold that the statute would apply if I sold you my UA miles, and you proceeded to use them to buy yourself magazine subscriptions. It only holds if we explicitly contract that I purchase for you, in violation of the terms of the mileage program, a ticket for transport on a common carrier." I disagree that "this is a limited, unusual, and rarely applicable set of circumstances."
"Mileage books"?! I see nothing about "mileage books;" I see a code provision which pertains to the sale to another of "any ticket, pass, scrip, mileage
or commutation book, coupon, or other instrument for passage on a common carrier."