Law Professors, Law Students

United Airlines: A Great Law Student Hypothetical About Corporate Responsibility Life

Advising a client may lead them to the legal path, but not necessarily without ramifications.

By  
on

United planeHypothetical: Per your usual industry practice of overbooking flights, your company’s flight is oversold. You offer your usual pittance compensation, but this time no one jumps. Seems like everyone wants to get where they are going, no matter how much you up the ante. Finally, you call out people to be involuntarily bumped, but one passenger refuses to leave.

You call security. Security forcibly removes the kicking and screaming passenger, until he is injured. They do so in front of what appears to be 1 billion cameras. He somehow manages to get back on the plane, blood dripping from his face. He is then removed again.

Your public relations office sends out some half-hearted apology. Your CEO doubles down with an employee memo (which is leaked) that blames the entire thing on the passenger.

Student, advise your client.

I would start with the rules here. Of course, United is free to bump passengers. Involuntarily bumped passengers must be compensated. It’s in the rules. Oh good, so we’re free and clear and the passenger was totally in the wrong. After all, the passenger ignored a flight crew instruction, and that means the passenger is in trouble. Adhering to flight crew instructions is a rule is about flight safety and the safety of the crew and flying public. My client is in the “right.”

I would add that United flight 3411 is also a United Express flight. So it’s actually operated by a contract carrier and not even full-fledged United! Ha!

Sigh. That’s all you have to say? What about the footage of the passenger being forcibly removed and injured?

Sponsored

That’s not on us. After all, that’s security (who we called). But those aren’t our employees. Besides, an officer has been placed on leave for violating protocols regarding this type of thing. We’re good.

What if your client was the passenger?

I would have told him he made a mistake. You can’t always avail yourself of remedies at the time of injury. This is particularly true with airlines. Your remedy awaits after you deboard the plane. Next time, don’t resist.

Sigh. Of course, it also means that you’ll likely get all sorts of fun background stories about you, no matter how irrelevant to the matter at hand.

The lesson here is not that those who work within the bounds of the law will always be victorious. United is clearly LOSING this battle, even if it was within its rights to have the passenger removed. And the passenger, bruised and bloodied, has the sympathy of every single person bumped from an airplane ever. There are a lot of us.

Sponsored

Yes, airlines oversell flights. That’s because airlines hope the highest paying passengers sit in the seats. Sometimes those passengers don’t show up, and then the lower fare passengers fill the profit void. Notice that bumping compensation is capped. That’s because if you’re bumped you’re essentially profit-sharing with the airline.

Yet the rule is awful for passengers. It isn’t the only one. That’s the joy of regulatory capture. The regulated industry helps craft the rules and the flying public gets to “enjoy” the benefits. Passengers aren’t going to care that your company is within its legal rights, because your company helped craft the law.

Compassion could go a long way. Instead, United chose to issue a bland statement about “re-accommodating” passengers. Passengers who read that statement are going to put the videos of the passenger being dragged out of the airplane in their minds as they read “re-accommodating.” If you’re having an Orwellian moment, you get extra points. And the CEO’s letter to employees is worse, reading a lot like this Twitter thread.

The lesson here is that the company’s lawful actions (by bumping a passenger) could have unintended consequences. United employees surely didn’t intend for the passenger to get bloodied and bruised (they only intend that when they bring the beverage carts through the aisles). But that’s what happened. Selling that as “not our fault” is terrible public relations. Especially when you have a history of booting people off of planes for reasons other than overselling. Muslims, people wearing Marvel Black Panther hats, crying babies, and my favorite, being Muslim and asking for a beverage. Your company’s actions are observed in historical context. Oh, by the way, now your bumping of a passenger has international ramifications. That leggings incident — used by United’s competitors for marketing — wasn’t that long ago, either, making people not in the “regulatory know” (i.e., the flying public) even more skeptical about your actions.

These are lessons lost on United. United doesn’t seem to care much. It doesn’t have to care. This isn’t like when you get bad service at a restaurant and can choose one of a hundred others. This is like the town where you keep going back to the same terrible restaurant hoping the service improves because you don’t have much of a choice.

The lesson for you, dear student, is to be careful out there. Advising a client may lead them to the legal path, but not necessarily without ramifications. Now let’s go have a Pepsi.

But, if the system is so bad, why doesn’t Congress compel something via legislation? Or why isn’t there pressure on the DOT to revise the rules to make it more fair?

Hahahahahahahaha! We’ve already talked about regulatory capture. Let’s not have another discussion of Citizens United.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

Topics

, , , , , ,