UpstateNY

That's exactly the point -- if it's unreasonable to expect an FA, who has all sorts of other duties, to keep track of all of this stuff, then that person will not be deemed negligent if he or she gave someone a couple of extra drinks. Remember that all of these factual questions (including the question of whether some conduct was reasonable) are judged by 12 ordinary folks, who presumably are just as capable as the people on this forum of making sound, commonsensical decisions.

Speaking as a former defense-side products liability lawyer, no friend of the plaintiffs' PI bar, and also as someone with many colleagues who study the civil justice system more rigorously, I can say that juries and courts together, by and large, do a pretty good job administering these liability rules. The system is cumbersome and expensive, but not arbitrary. Occasional outlier verdicts get a lot of press attention, but people don't hear about the vast majority of cases with reasonable results.

Linguistically, mea culpa implies it was Mrs. S who did something wrong. Her claim is that her husband was the wrongdoer. She's not trying to excuse herself from personal responsibility. As someone earlier in the thread pointed out, she was sitting next to Mr. S, but maybe she fell asleep and didn't see how much he had to drink. But to make the case more interesting, imagine that she was waiting at home for him to return from a trip. He got soused on the flight and came home and beat the heck out of her. Why is it a failure of personal responsibility if she blames both Mr. S and the airline for her injuries? What are you saying she should have done differently?

As for the $$$ lawsuit potential, I love to quote one of the greatest judges in American history, Learned Hand, who said that, other than death, he would dread nothing more than being involved in a lawsuit. Litigation isn't pretty. Most people would pay good money not to have to sit through a couple of days worth of depositions in a personal-injury action. And, at the end, the payoff isn't as $$$ as many people think. Look through a state verdicts and settlements reporter sometime, and you'll see many, many cases saying something like "Leg amputated by industrial metal-stamping machine . . . jury awarded $75,000." Really, buying lottery tickets is a much better bet than filing lawsuits.

joejones

Not just case law -- it's black-letter statute in most states (known as a "dram shop statute").

Apparently California's law only applies if the person being served is a minor. If the couple had their fight in ORD, on the other hand, the wife could invoke the Illinois law which also applies to serving intoxicated adults.

SAT Lawyer

Actually, based upon a quick PACER check (although her complaint isn't yet available online, the docketing information is), it appears that Mrs. Shimamoto is only suing UA. And both Mr. and Mrs. Shimamoto are represented by the same attorney, which may present a conflict of interest down the road. Here is some more information about the lawsuit. The jurors and other armchair analysts are free to draw their own conclusions, but the posture of the case speaks volumes to me about the Shimamotos' warped sense of responsibility.

N965VJ

I guess 9/11 happened, but cases like this one are a perfect excuse to get the Nanny-State in our lives.

Mark_K

Unless they could prove he drank too much during the 30 minutes the plane was over the state of Illinois, why would Illinois law prevail?

gbsfo

I'm not saying it is a lack of her personal responsibility, but his. The whole point is that UA didn't force feed the guy shooters and it was his choice to drink. He was responsible for his own actions and unless UA can be faulted for failing to cut him off when he was beyond his own self control (and this will be hard to ascertain unless he was rolling about the cabin) then I can't see how they are at fault. If he was personally responsible for his own actions then the wife should be charging/divorcing him, not filing a claim against UA.

People just need to buck up and stop looking for blame everywhere but at home.

John26

Interesting side note: When a pax appears to be intoxicated, and a FA believes the pax needs to be cut off, it is standard procedure for that FA to inform other FAs of this, especially before going on break. This helps avoid the pax tricking another FA into serving more alcohol and making a bad situation even worse.

joejones

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.7) S11HT)

Under the IL law, dram shop liability is based on where the injury occurred, not where the alcohol was served.

So if someone gets plastered in Gary, drives across the border to Chicago and runs someone over, the IL dram-shop statute applies.

Grace B

Perhaps I should sue for being underserved...

Mark_K

Michigan once had something similar in its MIP laws (didn't matter where you drank, if you were in Michigan still above .02), it was eventually declared unconstitutional.

mvoight

Yeah, sure... every 20 minutes all of the way from Japan to the US.
No jury is going to believe that story.

EsquireFlyer

I'm not familiar enough with judicial interpretation of the Warsaw Convention in non-luggage contexts to be able to say whether the Convention bars state common-law claims here. Maybe one of your colleagues who teaches admiralty law or constitutional law (federal treaty preempting state law) would know the answer. If even they don't know the answer, this could make an interesting (although cruel) examination question.

My guess is that if the answer was so obvious, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs would have found it before filing a lawsuit that could be totally frivolous (assuming that he's working on contingency), but hey, I guess Rule 11 wouldn't exist if not for some lawyers who make the rule necessary.

Under the federal constitution? Or the MI state constitution?

I have no idea which specific state's law would apply even if U.S. law applied, but my guess is that, if the state actually has a dram shop statute (or common law rule) that allows the drunk person to sue, then that state's courts probably do not recognize contributory negligence as an automatic bar, since that would completely defeat the purpose of the statute (which is to impose liability on the bar in addition to the drunk person). OTOH, if only a third-party victim can sue, that actually appears to be what happened here: the plaintiff is the wife, and it's hard to see how the wife could be >50% at fault (i.e., the drunk husband and the airline combined are less than 50% at fault), if she was just sitting on the plane. Maybe if she was having a drinking contest with her husband, but it would have to be something extreme like that.

Thanks again for the really clear and concise (and of course, accurate) explanation of negligence liability. On the jury point, I'd say that the jurors would be in a different situation from the FTers here in that they would have some more detailed facts presented to them, as well as having some facts and argument specifically screened away from them, as a result of evidentiary rules.

gre

If we could I'd be one rich SOB!

jhanserd

this is a bunch of BS

mahasamatman

That's a big IF because the FAA makes the assumption that the FA is expected to be able to make that determination.