For $9,500.00. Phil, an attorney from Cleveland was on a DL flight with a 400-pd guy "plastered" up against him. He said the guy was nice enough, it just made the 2-hr flight unbearable. Complaints got him nowhere, and still, the airline calls the lawsuit frivolous.
In looking for the text of this article, I found this. Two in one day. Are more than just a brave few finally suing or have many already been at it, and we just haven't heard about it because the airlines have quickly settled before the news wire picked it up. Given that I haven't heard any win or lose outcome in any of the previous, spotty reports of lawsuits, it would seem that settling is what airlines automatically do to avoid the publicity, yes, but mostly so no one would think its a commonplace thing to do, and the problem is with them, the individual, not the airline.
http://kcal9.com/topstories/StoryFol...725711666_html
Aug 2, 2002 12:02 pm US/Pacific
(CBS)-(NEWARK, N.J.)-Four New Jersey men sued American Airlines on Friday, claiming they were wrongly removed from an airplane and strip-searched because of their Arabic names.
The men say they were headed home from a March vacation trip to Florida when airline officials asked them to leave the plane.
Three female employees then searched them in full view of other passengers for 30 minutes, forcing them to lift up their shirts and unzip and lower their pants. The men said the captain eventually apologized and allowed them to get back on the plane.
The men Eyhab Matari, 25, Osama Zeidan, 20, Ehab Abdelaziz, 22, and Waesam Hamdan, 22 are all U.S. citizens of Palestinian descent. They seek unspecified damages in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Newark.
``I don't feel American now,'' Hamdan, who was born in the United States, said Thursday during a news conference at a Teaneck mosque. ``I feel second class.''
A spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline declined to comment, saying the company would not discuss pending litigation.
American Airlines lost two airliners to Arab hijackers on Sept. 11.