Newsweak.
Pretty much settles it. Whatever they say, the opposite is true.
Well, technically Newsweek just picked up the article from law blog.
The writer is a professor of law at Cornell Law School.
UA will be settling this one outside of court pretty quickly.
The more I learn about the laws in this incident, the less sympathetic I am to the airline.
I still believe the media HYPE regarding it is overblown.... considering the Bundy-Oregon case and the numerous incidents of religious freedom being denied by government agents and the courts....NEVERTHELESS, if all that I have learned in the past 24 hours is true and without contradiction, then UA ought to work really really hard to make friends with this guy.
This may be one of the exceptions to that rule - when they tried to buy him off the plane with $800 or so, they kind of admitted that he had a right to be on it. Asshole or not, he may make a lot from their screw ups.
Actually, in this instance Newsweek merely reprinted an article that appeared on a law site here.
I know the tendency among conservatives is to support police, but it is my understanding these were one security officer and two airport cops. There is no question they used excessive force.
Also, some people want to use Dao's past brushes with the law as a reason to say he deserved what he got. Sorry, that doesn't wash. The incident on that plane had zero to do with anything in Dao's past. From all accounts, he was peacefully seated and minding his own business when asked to voluntarily leave. He refused and instead of looking for another means to solve the airline's problem, the airline personnel decided to bully and force this guy off the plane.
There is a reason this has been such a PR nightmare for the airline. Most people see what happened and know that what the airline did both during the incident and after with the CEO's boneheaded comments.
United Airlines is screwed because they flagrantly broke their own law and nearly beat one of their passengers to death after violently removing him from his seat and the plane AFTER had already boarded and was ALREADY SEATED, BEHAVING APPROPRIATELY AND QUIETLY MINDING HIS OWN BUSINESS.
They sicked the neanderthal cops on him, knocked him unconscious, broke his nose, knocked out two of his teath and humiliated him by dragging his unconscious body along the floor of the plane in full view of the remaining passengers! All because UAL overbooked the flight and had four non-paying UAL crew members "dead heading" so that they could serve as crew on flights leaving from the plane's next destination.
Simply put United Airlines royally "screwed the pooch" and are going to be rightfully sued to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and they are going to lose because UAL didn't abide by their own contractual laws.
As for the doctor's criminal past: it has no bearing whatsoever on the matter and is just UAL and its surrogates playing the usual "blame the victim" card.
In actuality what UAL criminally did to him, they could have done to ANYONE OF US. He was just the unlucky recipient because UAL chose his name instead of yours or mine had we been on that flight. That is why this crime is so egregious.