Originally Posted by
ijgordon
Obviously, in this case, it was UA's fault.

Not necessarily. It will be UA's fault if ground told UA to hold short of the runway. It's also possible that the ground controller told UA to proceed to another intersection at the same time that the local controller cleared the AA flight for the immediate. The ground and local may have both given correct instructions and either UA or AA did not clearly understand and acted incorrectly. There is no doubt that communications between both aircraft and controllers will pinpoint exactly where the fault lies.