I recently went through an invalid travel document fiasco.
I hold a passport from an Asian country that mandates that I have a visa to travel to the EU. I procured a multiple entry visa from the German consulate that had the expiration date marked as 04-01-09.
I thought that my visa was valid till 1st April 2009 which in reality was 4th jan 2009. So I booked a flight on NWA-KLM to go to Germany on Feb 12th 2009.

Now the NWA ticketing agent at SFO airport never even bothered to look at my visa and just scanned my passport and gave me a boarding pass for SFO-Amsterdam. Obviously when I reach passport control at Amsterdam I was stopped by immigration authorities as my visa had expired on 4th Jan. I had to go through a lot of harassment at Amsterdam airport and had to pay money out of my pocket to book a hotel in Amsterdam airport ( luckily the had one) and then arrange for a flight to come back to SFO. the worse part is that my 18 month son was traveling with me and had to undergo 22 hours of flight within the a 40 hour period and miss a bunch of meals and eat whatever was available at the airport.

When I land back in SFO the station manager for KLM at SFO refuses to even budge in that it is their fault. he keeps on insisting that it is my fault and that his agent just made a human mistake of reading the wrong date.
I understand that it is my responsibility to procure travel documents but isn't it also the responsibility of the airline to ensure that I have the right documents. If they had verified and told me I had the wrong visa at SFO I could have gone back home and change my ticket or another day. now my ticket is used and I spent additional money out of my pocket to come back and NWA-KLM is not willing to compensate me for any of it. I feel this is not correct. I doubt anyone else has been in my state but what are your thoughts on the airline compensating for their mistake. I know that the Dutch Immigration authorities have levied a fine on NWA-KLM so that proves that the airline is responsible and at fault.

What is a good way to approach the airline to compensate me for the extra expenses ? Gurus and fellow Flyertalk brethren , what do you think ?