Boraxo

It is waste of time to provide legal analysis to this crowd. They are 100% certain that they are right, United is wrong and DOT and small claims court judges will be certain to compensate them for their professed reliance on the screen that showed "4 miles" (putting aside the fact that in most cases there are no actual or consequential damages". The legal concepts have been explained ad infinitum through both threads.

chinatraderjmr

I don't think anybody believes UA should be absolved from liability. They should be held liable for any damage caused to its customers/passengers that bought these 4 mile ticket. The problem is there were no damages, no one lost anything, no one got hurt, no one was ripped off so what should they be liable for?

3451 posts and you just figured this out . Al least you didn't give us an analogy

andyh64000

*DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* we have a winner...and DoT will see it the same way.

Fredd

What about mental anguish? I'm suffering that just from following this thread.

ldpeters

Yes, somewhat. I'm not as solid on the details of this in the US -- it falls outside of contracts and contract theory (my area of expertise) and runs into consumer protection, which varies widely from state-to-state. I do know that the protections here are weaker than in the UK or EU.

In contract law, the kinds of contracts where it applies are ones with grossly unfair provisions of the sort of a 1000% interest rate on late payment, and not on the you-should-have-read-this sort of informational provisions. The one-sided ability to cancel at any time is not, AFAIK, the kind of thing that would trigger oversight from a contract law standpoint. That kind of term does not fit any of the classic unfair bargain scenarios.

However, many US States have passed stronger consumer protection laws that specifically address things like this, and the Federal Government has DOT -- which actually muddies the waters. There are complicated things like supremacy of Federal Law and applicability of state law to an airline that I do not pretend to really know about -- and none of you should either, unless you have a law degree, are admitted to a state bar, and are aviation or consumer protection lawyers.

HNLbasedFlyer

I tried the no damages quote what seems like thousands of posts before thinking reasonable people would realize that - but guess what - reason doesn't apply here - it is all emotion.

colpuck

Contract damages as anyone with any experience in contracts is the benefit of the bargain. For those that had their tickets canceled, that is reinstatement of the tickets or replacement tickets on another airline.

DFWsakp

You may want to sue Flyertalk for that :-)

Vacation time

United will pay for there mistake either in honoring the tickets or paying a nice fine.
Even if they claim there software had a problem they still broke that new law the Dot passed and this is the prefect test Case to show the airlines clean your .... up.
Knight investments had a software glitch they lost over four hundred million dollars and the Sec will not help them one bit.....

ldpeters

I was going to write something really extensive about how wrong this is, especially the second sentence, and then I thought I'd leave it at this:

Colpuck, I'll make you a wager. If you booked cancelled tickets, and these are the damages you are able to win in a court of law, I will pay you $500 and leave 50,000 United miles at your disposal.

If you are laughed out of court, you owe this entire thread an apology and an admission of how wrong you are.

If you accept the wager, you agree not to make any more statements about the law in this thread, unless they relate to the factual progress of or actual arguments made in court by you or on your behalf.

Shanye2233

UA made a mistake UA pays for the mistake . Be it honoring tickets or a fine .Why should they be treated any different ...

DING DING DING DING !!!!

chinatraderjmr

I may not be a lawyer but I would bet I have more experience with contracts then most people here. We write contracts every day in my office. Sometimes we make a mistake and have to eat it, sometimes we find another way out if a mistake has been made. But these contracts we draw up are cut & dry. Regardless of what anyone says here (with no law degree), there is NOTHING cut and dry about this situation.

colpuck

Instead of explaining yourself, you go for a mocking statement. That's cool. Actually, in US law equity remedies are not generally issued. (IE specific performance) If someone were to sue (and win), the appropriate remedy would be the passenger would purchase a ticket through another airline and United would have to make up the difference in cost to the passenger. I only know that because I actually sued an airline over a dishonored ticket and won.

Never mind the blatant miss-characterization of my posts and my position. Now, you've already publicly apologized, for being wrong, to me once. So, you really want to go for two?

Actually, I believe a magistrate explained the error in your damaged calculation. I guess if you want to call that "emotion," that's cool.

chinatraderjmr

Yes, I apologized when I was wrong.(something most of us are a few times in our lives) I also stand by my statement above. I have not miss characterized anything. Your post clearly made the assumption that while I know nothing about contracts, you are an expert. I was just replying that I know quite a bit about contracts (not as much as a contract lawyer perhaps, which is why i pay one) just a disclaimer everyone here should use including you. (unless of course contract law is your specialty).

My post simply said there is NOTHING cut and dry about this 4 mile situation

burmans

Not hard at all in this instance.