Originally Posted by
Midships
[Considering the witness evidence:[[i]"After this had gone on for considerable time we were completely exasperated by the situation and were understandably cross, as any reasonable people would have been", said Banner.]
Or in the alternative, that the chain of causation started when BA and/or their servants and/or their agents and/or their assigns had made him "understandably cross", such crossness manifesting as behavior that rightly or wrongly, (don't know wasn't there), resulted in him being offloaded.
Or further in the alternative, that his understandable crossness resulted in him making a complaint to BA and on telling the cabin crew of this complaint they unreasonably and without due cause instructed the Pilot to return the plane to the stand, so he would look like the bad guy and they would not get into trouble for making him "understandably cross."
I've had a look and cannot find any case law whether the test of "reasonable and understandable crossness" is an objective one, (what an independent bystander would consider sufficient to reasonably and understandably warrant crossness), or a subjective one, (whether it is sufficient that the claimant or defendant himself was pushed to "crossness.") An advice will be needed on this point. Anyone know a good QC that could assist?
Bear in mind that the passenger admits - at the very least from all we know - to swearing. Unlike you, I haven't checked case law, but I imagine that the threshold for anyone to make a case that somehow the BA behaviour would have made the swearing understandable/inevitable to the point that it should not be considered a potentially legitimate cause for offloading would be pretty high.
As for the notion (suggested by the passenger) that the offloading was due to him making a complaint, I expect that he would have an extraordinarily difficult time making a credible case.