Surely you're not suggesting he hired a personal injury specialist law firm _before_ he bought his ticket and got on that plane?

Someone else _offered to get off this plane - for a few hundred or so bucks more than the on-site middle management was prepared to pay - so they chose to not only break his contract illegally, but physically assaulted him using hired goons to do so.

I'd bet reasonable money that Stephen Golan's people contacted Dao, and by "hired" they mean "The law form has offered to do this on a _very_ small commission, because they know just how much money United stands to lose here, and Stephen Golan plans on buying his own 747 with his 15% cut of the settlement figure".

And as much as I hate ambulance chasers - I'm cheering this one on here.

It's _possible_ I'll get o a United plane in future, but that'll require me knowing that this incident hurt them a lot - enough to ensure that nobody working at United now or in the future doesn't hear about it, and that it's blindingly obvious being part of letting a situation like this happen again will not only be an immediate firing offense, but also have United's lawyers chasing illegally acting staff for whatever they own to cover then next 8 figure damage payout.

For better or worse - this is how the justice system works against corporations - they can't choose to assault a person and put them in hospital - then just say "Oh sorry, here we'll cover your hospital bill. Now we're all good, right?" and have everybody involved just say "Company policy, soz!". Stephen Golan needs to take enough money out of United's coffers to guarantee that there's a top down message send inside United that this must _never ever_ happen again - no matter what the company policy says. (I'd also settle for United just covering Dao's expenses, and the entire chain of management from CEO down including the airport rent-a-cops as well being sentenced to whatever jail time they'd d=face if they're each personally committed this assault on Dao in public. But I'd be prepared to let Dao choose which of those outcomes he'd prefer...)

I think that's usually a reasonable presumption (that lawyers contacted him first) but it's not unquestionable if only because his past history with the legal system.

I would prefer restorative justice over punitive justice in this case. If people were not deplaned, another flight would have been delayed/cancelled affecting not one or two people but hundreds. There were jerks all around --from the people who physically took him out to the victim himself.

> If people were not deplaned, another flight would have been delayed/cancelled affecting not one or two people but hundreds.

And how does that become David Doa's personal problem?

And how are you gonna feel about "restorative justice" when United pay his hospital bills - and then assault one of your family/friends next month, because they know it's cheaper doing that than delaying/canceling flights (or, you know, getting their fucking shit together and having proper plans to get flight crews to their planes without turfing paid and seated passengers off aircraft...)

Like I said - I hate "ambulance chasing lawyers", but I genuinely hope this ends with an out of court settlement north of 10mil - not because I think Dao or the lawyer "deserve" that much, but to make it crystal clear to all United employees (including the CEO) that this is _never_ the right way to deal with this problem.

We _know_ what his seat was worth - $1600 - someone else offered to get off for that, and was "laughed in the face". United were offering $800. The one of the four crew missing their spots - worst case - affects "hundreds" of other people (people you'll note who, like Dao, have paid-up tickets and contractual arrangements with United, not Dao...).

Let's say United managed to only incur the $800 per seat costs they were offering here as compensation to the "hundreds" of other passengers potentially affected by one crew members absence. At the very low end, if "hundreds" is only 200 - that's $160,000 dollars of risk - and I admit that's something the on-site United manager needed to mitigate. Which they had the option to do for only $800. Instead - they almost certainly broke the law, purposefully mis-used non-applicable regulations, and didn't back off when things started to go pearshaped, not just in the aircraft, but with the tone-deaf initial two messages from the CEO.

So by saving $800, they put a guy in hospital, and the people who made that decision got backed all the way up the management chain to the CEO and his legal advisers - in a $22billion company.

And you're somehow implying that what the victim did here makes him as much as a jerk as the United and airport rent-a-cop people?

Sorry, we do not agree on that - you are just wrong.

And I stand by my earlier comment - if this doesn't end up with a settlement up in 8 figures, _my_ read of that will be that United fully intend to do this again next time it suits them, and that assaulting paying customers in the interest of "shareholder value" is part of their procedure manual.

It wasn't _his_ problem. But he was the one on whose lap it landed, it could have been someone else. This is not the first time airlines overbook and need to bump someone, nor the first time they had to remove someone --and it's likely not the last nor likely illegal either. I'm not saying he or anyone should "like it" but them's the breaks and those are the rules airlines work with --on occasion they have to bump people. On occasion people make bad decisions and these things come to light.

Most level headed people don't put up a struggle to get off. Most people who are thus inconvenienced or wronged will take it up via normal channels. If I'm asked to deplane, unwarranted as it may be, I'm not getting into fisticuffs --I'll take it up later via other means, and it appears most people in the same situation do the same. Very few people become belligerent. Again, not saying this is the preferred mode to operate, but it's how airlines operate. Maybe an 8 figure fine changes that but my guess is they'll just have more legalese giving them more leeway in bumping passengers. I don't think it's going to change an industry which historically operates on thin margins. Not unless they become "re-regulated" and we get the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfare like people did pre-1980s in real dollars.

Here's why I think he was a jerk --the airline, right or wrong was operating from a legal standpoint which includes the ability to take people off a plane (you may debate that) but he did not retaliate in a legal manner --he took personal affront and physically resisted removal. Separately, I think the airline were jerks because they should not have resorted to their legal options when they had not exhausted reasonable monetary options first.

You are still missing the point. It was never Dao's problem. The United staff member on scene had a solution offered to them for $800-ish more than they wanted to commit to - and instead they chose to do this.

That choice was just plain wrong, and allowing it to unfold as it did knowing there was an $800 solution on offer was morally reprehensible.

And you're being accidentally or intentionally misleading about what we can all see in the video - Dao did not "get into fisticuffs" or "become belligerent", he sat in the seat he'd paid for. United-directed rent-a-cops started the fisticuffs and belligerence.

Excusing this with "but it's how airlines operate" is such a cowardly point of view it genuinely astounds me that anyone capable of reading and commenting on a site like this could hold it. If _any_ business is designed to operate this way - where errors on their part result in a procedure that involves and excuses assaulting people - they deserve to be shut down.

I'm happy not to "re-regulate" the airline industry, I'm just saying if we're going to let "the market" be the fundamental driving factor - that "the market" needs claws. The things that they should not be allowed to do need to have powerful corrective market forces against them.

And claiming that any alternative solution to assaulting Dao will result in "the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfares" is again intentionally missing the point - THEY COULD HAVE SOLVED THIS FOR $800! AND THEY CHOSE NOT TO.

Fine them enough to _really_ hurt, or close them down and put everyone in charge in jail for assault.

(If you want to get into pure speculation worst case outcomes here - take a look at the UAL shareprice - it dropped tom 71.5 to 68.5 in the 25 mins from 9:30am yesterday - about $900mil of market cap - which then bounced most of the way back, but settled something like $450million down . If you want stupid rationalizations for why we need to change or not change the industry here - here's mine: If we allow this as acceptable practice, then obviously next time a flight crew needs a seat, the gate manager will just call his broker, make sure all the other passengers have their phones out, and beat shit out of the most photogenic passenger on board. Instant profit.)

Gee, perhaps it was because he was personally injured.

Lots of people get injured severely daily and very, very few hire high powered lawyers to litigate their case. It seems clear he wants to win "big". But you know, maybe that's what everyone one wrongfully injured does.

In civil law it's called punniative damages. It's mean to discourage same kind of behavior in the future.

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