weero

1. no airline wanted to transport an inebriated passenger
2. Japan didn't want him either...
3. they wanted to introduce him to the joys of a different legal system...

who knows?

globetrotter94941

Wow what would happen if he happened to be drinking champagne instead of red wine? The bubbles really could have pushed him over the edge.

ajax

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

The man needs to take responsibility for his own actions.

It was just under $3 million (the vast majority of which was punitive damages against McDonalds awarded by the jury and which was later reduced to $480,000). Compensatory damages - and this was after Ms Liebeck offered to settle for $20,000 - were $200,000, reduced to $160,000 as Ms Lliebeck was found to be 20% at fault.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

And if you've got a strong stomach, here is a picture of the third-degree burns on her leg.

EsquireFlyer

Thanks for making the correction; $700,000 is very different from $14,000,000, and it seems that these numbers tend to get inflated quite a bit as "crazy lawsuits" rumors spread.

Also, to clarify for other readers: the $480,000 punitive damage award (3x actual damages) is to deter McDonald's and other restaurants from serving scalding-hot (literally, scalding hot) coffee in the future and injuring other people. Since not everyone who gets hurt sues, the people who do sue sometimes get punitive damages, the purpose of which is not to compensate them for their loss, but just to punish the defendant by making them pay out as much as they would have paid out if every injured person had sued. (That way, the defendant can't rely on a low probability of lawsuits in its cost-benefit analysis, and find that it's cheaper to just injure the customers rather than make the product safer.)

And thanks also for the picture. It actually makes the $160,000 actual damage award look actually reasonable.

No one here has stated whether the passenger appeared drunk during the flight, because we were not on the flight and do not know. So, yes, if the passenger was not visibly drunk on the flight, then it's not the FA's fault. But if the passenger was visibly drunk, then FA might be partly responsible. But I don't think we can be sure that the lawsuit is total ......... because we don't know this key fact. It's just as inaccurate to assume that the pax looked fine during the flight than to assume that the pax was already belligerent during the flight.

VivoPerLei

Are you sure about that picture? Everything I've read about this case mentions burns to her thighs, buttock, and genitals, but nothing about lower legs. It also kind of looks like a man's leg to me, but then again maybe she stopped shaving awhile back

superEGO

That was a picture to illustrate how bad a third-degree burn is.

weero

Silly me - and I always thought that punitive damages were invented to bribe greedy state legislators and 'contributors' to the legal system in order not only to give them the sway of the law but also monetary power.

Much along the pillaging the military folks did in former times which added affluence to their armed strength.

And now I learn that the pillage actually has an origin in 'safety'. Much like anything else afflicted to us these days .

weero

Which follows from the original quote(emphasis mine):

I guess for 'legal' language that is good enough.

ryan182

Yes we can, there is no excuse for hitting someone, drunk or not. To allow this type of garbage you'd be saying that every bartender/bar/restaurant would be liable for every bar fight or if someone leaves a bar/restaurant and beats his wife. This is a couple and a sleazy lawyer who obviously want to try for a quick buck rather than take responsibility for their bad behavior. This is very very different than with bars where they need to try to prevent patrons from consuming alcohol and then driving (ie cutting them off, calling a cab) as its entirely reasonable to conclude that the bartender should foresee the possibility of someone being hurt/killed if a drunk drives, are we now to conclude that FAs should foresee wife beating if one is served wine? No, at least I hope not. Crap like this BTW is why most people don't like lawyers.

EsquireFlyer

Wait, what? Punitive damages go to the plaintiff (i.e., the victim), not to the government. How does that have anything to do with greedy legislators or military pillaging?

The system in which punitive damages go to the plaintiff is certainly open to some criticism (e.g., "why don't the punitive damages go to charity instead? why should this particular victim get them?"), but I fail to see how the government bribery criticism applies.

Unless you are referring to the taxes collected on punitive damages? If so, shouldn't your beef be with the "the greedy IRS" rather than "greedy state legislatures"?

No one--not even the plaintiff--is saying that being drunk excuses the husband's behavior. Instead, the plaintiff is trying to argue that the people serving alcohol are potentially also partly responsible.

So, you think that it's the lawyer's fault that the wife decided to sue? What happened to people taking responsibility for their own behavior? Crap like this BTW is why most people just don't get it.

If you think that the husband is exclusively responsible for his drinking and violence, and that the airline is not responsible for the drinking even though supplied the alcohol--then why wouldn't you also think that the wife is responsible for filing a frivolous lawsuit (if indeed that's what this is), but that the lawyer is not responsible for the suing even though he filled out the forms?

Plaintiffs can sue without lawyers; whereas lawyers cannot sue without plaintiffs. And just as it's the FA's job to serve alcohol, it's the lawyer's job to fill out forms. So I don't see why you're simultaneously being so hard on the lawyer (instantly assuming that he's "sleazy" just based on his touching this case) if you're willing to give so much benefit of the doubt to the airline.

ryan182

And that is rubbish, to say that someone should foresee violence if someone serves someone wine is ridiculous and not analogous to the bar example where it is foreseeable that a drunk driver is likely to cause injury.

Not his (or her) fault the wife tried to sue, but he/she needs to be responsible for their behavior in accepting the case. Not sure whats people "don't get" you don't have to accept every case, tell the crazy woman: no.

Because its not reasonable to conclude that serving someone some wine will result in beating your wife, the lawyer in filling out the forms knew, or should have know, this was ridiculous and frivolous and is just trying to score a quick buck.
Just as its the FAs job to try and discern if someone should get more booze it is the lawyers job to discern if a lawsuit is frivolous or not. I instantly assume s/he is sleazy because this is an obvious try for a quick buck and trying to duck personal responsibility for a sleazy wife beater.

EsquireFlyer

So, do you now think that it is the FA's job to use good judgment in deciding who should get more booze, and who should be cut off?

cblaisd

The FARs certainly think that it is.

^

And yes, absolutely.

Having had my spouse the victim of someone seriously over-served on a redeye flight who was knowingly given drink after drink after drink the FA should have known better.

ryan182

Of course! No one is saying its not their responsibility to use good judgment on deciding who should get more booze, if the guy had needed medical attention due to say alcohol poisoning or something like that I could see it, but to say that if he goes off and smacks his wife after drinking is somehow their fault is over the top. They can only go on what they see, if the guy didn't look impaired how would they know?

Exaggeration is usually a good indicator of when someone knows the facts are against them, and I'd say claiming his glass was refilled @ 20-min intervals from Osaka-SFO is a HUGE exaggeration. This is just a jerk who did something dumb and doesn't want to accept the outcome so is trying to blame someone else.

EsquireFlyer

I think that a lot of the wrath on this board arises from the fact that the victim suing is the aggressor's wife. The fact that they are married makes the plaintiff look bad, and makes people conclude that the couple together should take all responsibility for what happened.

Whereas, if it was a random innocent woman who got beaten up in SFO who was suing UA (and perhaps she was suing UA instead of the aggressor because the aggressor was bankrupt), then people wouldn't be so pissed at the woman for filing a lawsuit. However, the specific issues of

(1) whether the FA had a duty to limit the amount of alcohol served to the (2) if such a duty did exist, whether the FA failed in that duty, and
(3) if such a failure did occur, whether it caused the victim's injuries

are all exactly the same regardless of which victim is filing the lawsuit.

I agree: if the passenger looked outwardly normal and not drunk, then the FA didn't know, and did nothing wrong. (Unless she literally served him a full glass of wine every 20 minutes from Osaka to San Francisco--which would be something like 24 glasses of wine--in which case the amount of alcohol alone should have been a red flag. People have different alcohol tolerances, but 24 glasses of wine is a lot for anyone. Well, I guess it's not as bad if it was 24 of the tiny C wine glasses.)

The reason I don't follow to your conclusion (that this lawsuit obviously lacks any kind of merit) is because we don't know how the man looked on the plane. Because we don't know, I don't think we can say for sure that the case is crap. For example, if the guy was already beating his wife on the plane, the FA definitely should have cut off the booze. My guess is that the case was not that extreme; but nor do we know that it was the opposite extreme (i.e., that the guy looked totally fine on the plane). So my point is just that, without knowing how the guy behaved on the plane, it would be premature for us to just conclude that the case is total crap.

So, if somehow that number was literally true (one refill every 20 minutes), and that the plaintiff isn't just lying to the court, would you then think that the case is non-frivolous?

I don't think that a UA FA would automatically refill someone's wine glass 20+ times one one flight, but I could see it happening if the guy kept asking for it.

If the lawyer knows that the case is frivolous and ridiculous, then yes, he shouldn't have accepted it. But if the case was not frivolous, then it was okay for him to accept it--it's his job to help access the legal system. And I'm not inclined to immediately assume that it was frivolous based on just this news story quoted by the OP, because the news story: (1) states no details about how the man acted while on the plane, and (2) in fact, cites legal experts as saying that the plaintiff's claim "would be a likely slam-dunk if United's conduct in question had taken place in a bar, rather than on an international flight" (emphasis added).

If this lawyer, who interviewed the clients and got all the facts, determined (as the legal experts consulted by the newspaper did) that the wife's case was a "slam dunk" if the drinking had happened on the ground, and was only a potential uphill battle because the drinking occurred on the plane, then I don't think the lawyer did anything wrong in accepting the case. It was reasonable, and responsible, for him to accept the case to help the plaintiff at least determine whether the bar standard applies to airlines. And unless a very similar case has been litigated before, there's no way to get a definitive answer to that question (are airlines serving alcohol on international flights liable under state dram shop statutes?) except by litigating a case to test it out.