MSPeconomist

Don't lawsuits need to be based on actual realized damages? IANAL but you've said might be be criminal and would say something about blame, but wouldn't lead to a number for damages AFAIK.

Bartolo

Human compassion is decidedly absent from this story. Not always about the rules.

No one has mentioned child welfare issues (legal perspective) since the young man was <16 years at the time of the incident. This is the age identified in the Child and Services Act (ON).

Ammendment: just saw the post a few up about child protection).

simpleflyer

Some thoughts, as a layperson (I also ANAL):
Since the connection point was in Canada, it was there that any injury would be deemed to have occurred, so one assumes Canadian law, not American, would prevail(?)

The following is from a site in Australia, but may have a bearing nonetheless. It purports to explain the nature of the legal duties owed by teachers and school staff towards students :

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/scho...utyofcare.aspx

In order to successfully bring a claim in negligence for compensation for an injury, a person must establish, on the balance of probabilities, that:

a duty of care was owed to the person harmed at the time of the injury
the risk of injury was foreseeable
the likelihood of the injury occurring was more than insignificant
there was a breach of the duty of care or a failure to observe a reasonable standard of care
this breach or failure was a cause of the injury.

The fact that a duty of care exists does not of itself mean that a school [***or airline ? ***] will be liable for an injury sustained by a student. In order for the student to succeed in a negligence claim, all of these elements must be established.

*********************


A duty of care was arguably owed by AC BUT when it comes to any injury, I wonder:

Pearson airport, not AC, is responsible for security and other services of the airport.

Past experience reveals airports to be places where people have had to spend many hours of time, sometimes overnight if delays are extensive and hotels are full (or the patron elects not to go to the hotel.) Unless Pearson airport has a known reputation for being particularly dangerous, i.e more dangerous than a kid's hanging around a hotel lobby, say, AC could argue that the foreseeable risk of injury was not more than insignificant. (?)

Some part of the distress was owing to the length of the delay, which is only somewhat predictable by even meteorologists or ATC (weather forecasting is still an inexact science, plus AC is not the only airline using Pearson, so how long any specific flight is delayed, is not always easy to predict.)

So the 'cause' of any injury a judge might hold to be attributable to many factors, not just AC. ?

MSPeconomist

My point was that I don't think there was an injury.

Maybe the kid was hungry, but he should have been able to fix that: he should have had cash or a (possibly prepaid) credit card with which he could purchase food during the trip.

28isGreat

Easy. If it's a 17.95 year-old, I hold AC's feet to the fire for failing to uphold their own promises about helping minors. If it's an 18.1-year old, then we can return to our usual FT bickering about what AC should have done or not done due to situation that is arguably not 100% black-and-white "under AC's control"/"not under AC's control".

Edit: yes, it's an arbitrary boundary, but so's everything age-related with driver's licenses, drinking, 1.99-year old "infants" on laps, etc. The line will get drawn somewhere.

flyquiet

What the child "should have had" is irrelevant. AC did not make its service conditional on having cash or credit cards for emergency purposes. They could very well do so, but did not. Making OMW mandatory is a good idea for these travellers, but also not in force.

AC does not make direct-flight-only UM service mandatory age 12-17, and nevertheless does explicitly commit to helping out older UMs on connections. Despite this, they apparently did not help him either proactively (using their passenger data to note that a minor would misconnect requiring some intervention) nor on request (by the minor asking for help).

It is entirely possible that they passenger and surrogates are exaggerating for effect, but sometimes it takes this to get attention. AC relies far too much on "no blood no foul" level of service to vulnerable passengers.

However, using that negotiating talk to disparage the passenger seems unfair as does a lot of the woulda shoulda coulda comments. Those counterfactuals are good advice for someone trying to avoid experiencing the kid's situation in the future. However those do not change what did happen and how scary it was for him. As I previously posted, it's not for anyone else to determine how scared is the right amount of scared for a vulnerable person in this situation, and he is entitled to feel as scared as he felt, and he is entitled to gild the lily if needed to get Mother's attention. We complain about cold nuts and missing kitkats and email executives over offences as small as being smirked at by uniformed personnel when stumbling in public areas of the airport.

That said, we should all take some comfort that the kid will never forget or dismiss the need to plan for irrops on his future travels.

canadiancow

This has been mentioned a few times. I think it's clear to point out that while he was not eligible for UM service, he was absolutely an "unaccompanied" "minor".

Let me know when that's happening and I'll tag along to watch

That doesn't sound creepy.

The smallest state

That said, we should all take some comfort that the kid wasn't harmed or hurt as well. Anytime a minor asks for help you would think a responsible adult would do something to assist him/her. He was turned away by multiple AC employees, some who (correctly) told him which desk could help him and others who (termination offence IMHO) told him they were unable to assist.

flyquiet

If you read my whole post and previous post, you see I agree with you.

The smallest state

Agreed 100 percent.

If only AC cared about this boy like the people of FT do/did.

Jumper Jack

Then AC would not be AC lol

The smallest state

Picture an AC gate agent on the shore shouting............."did you parents order Unaccompanied Minor?????"

CZAMFlyer

I'll be the first person to confess I have no idea about the 192 bus or Link option from YYZ. I can count the number of times I've left the terminal there on one hand, and each time was met by a friend in a car at the curb.

I think Transpacificflyer mentioned many food outlets close at 23:00, so I don't doubt your late night experience. But the teen in our tale arrived much earlier and did have sufficient time to find grub.

Re: ice, yes I've seen the same helplessness in the face of that thing called winter. Is the 'warmer climate' to which you refer actually Victoria itself?

Your comments about abandonment are completely valid in the case of an accompanied minor. But this kid wasn't in Air Canada or anybody else's care. He was traveling independently and thus no obligation or duty exists, does it? We can agree that basic levels of human compassion and customer service are expected. If he was abandoned anywhere, it was by his guardian back in Denver. The airline can be crucified for its apparent unwillingness to assist, but I don't subscribe to the abandonment theory.

HomerJay

THIS A THOUSAND TIMES OVER. And do not scoff at the danger and vulnerability. This teenager publicly asked for help and did not receive it. What if a stranger overheard him, heard the refusal, and then offered to "help" the boy by offering a hotel room? As a journalist for four decades, I've heard too many variations of the vulnerable teen story to dismiss such a possibility. I'm talking about variations with nightmare endings.

ffsim

This is been mentioned often enough, but it obviously bears repeating: AC's policy specifically states that it will look after passengers 12-17 traveling alone. I'm not going to dig up the actual wording of the policy but it's probably been quoted a dozen times upthread.

The airline absolutely had both the obligation and duty to look after this kid. And they didn't.