Originally Posted by
bocastephen
You should have invoked the trip in vain rule the moment you figured out the client meeting was going to be a miss - UA would have been forced to fly you back to YYZ from IAH and refund the ticket.
YUp. The original poster's thread title asks whether there is a "lemon law for flights". There is. It's called the "trip in vain" provision and it's a rule (or internal policy/customer service convention) on United that says that if your travel gets badly messed up by irregular operations before you get to your destination, and if the trip is no longer useful (e.g. you're gonna miss a client meeting), you can ask United to fly you right back to where you started AND give you a full refund.
That's sort of like the "lemon law" for cars where in some jurisdictions if you buy a car from a dealer and the car turns out to have a lot of problems with it (it's a "lemon") you can return it and get a refund.