Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/23/american-airlines-blames-a-9-year-old-girl-for-not-noticing-the-hidden-camera-being-used-to-film-her-in-jet-bathroom.html
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Terrible argument, even if the victim had been an adult.
That this happened to prepubescent minors and that’s what the defense came up with is fucking appalling.
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They backtracked as soon as it hit the media. But it’s staggering that any human being, even a lawyer, would think that response was anything short of reprehensible.
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It’s mind boggling that anyone ever thought such an argument would not have such terrible optics…
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Pretty wishy-washy backtrack too:
“Directed it to be amended?” If they were really serious they would announce that they were immediately firing and suing that legal counsel for malpractice, and offering the victims multimillion dollar no-strings-attached compensation without requiring them to waive their rights to sue for more. Even as a purely amoral act of self interest that would make more sense than the airline fighting any of this.
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I find it very difficult to believe that there wasn’t someone from American Airlines legal at least sitting in on the trial and vetting motions for American’s interests. If there isn’t, then they need to ask their general counsel to explain why not.
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Class Action these aholes into oblivion.
And…grosssssssss…
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The trial hasn’t started yet. These are all pretrial filings. I’m not at all surprised that American Airlines is letting outside counsel handle everything. That’s actually pretty standard. In house counsel doesn’t handle litigation. Typically, they can’t because it’s considered a conflict of interest.
That being said, the defense in the filing is inexcusable. It’s not consistent with the tort law involved here. At all. It actually doesn’t even matter that the victim is 9. If she’d been 49, she still couldn’t have been expected to know there was a recording device in the bathroom. No reasonable person would expect that. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
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They won’t do anything immediately.
The airline is trying to squirm out of responsibility for the criminal actions of their employee. But this isn’t about just one lawsuit. Any company that size with that many customers is hit with thousands of lawsuits every year, and many will be about criminal acts committed by their employees. And some of those will be mishandled by incompetent attorneys.
Their in house legal team will want to be sure that they set what will be seen as a very limited precedent by their long list of plaintiffs in other actions.
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I don’t care how big the company is. If there are enough cases of employees sexually exploiting minors while on the job that they’re worried about “setting a precedent” by immediately settling, then that’s not a company that should continue to exist.
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This isn’t an acceptable defense with other crimes:
The plaintiff should have known from all the blood stains around the parking lot that he was likely to be bashed in the head or kneecaps with an iron pipe, yet he persisted.
Why don’t we just treat this as the admission of guilt it is?
Hey, our client didn’t try to hide what he was doing so please keep that in mind during sentencing, also that we have saved you many days of sitting on those hard jury benches by skipping any actual defense, you all can go deliberate on the sentencing now, k thanks bye!
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Is it not unresonable to ID the stupid MF lawyer or law firm that spewed such a discusting argument?
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I understand that a defense lawyer is supposed to defend their client no matter the charges, but I’m still considering the opinion that this particular lawyer should be catapulted into the Sun.
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It could scapegoat people for decisions made above their heads. So I wouldn’t do it in a tossed-off blog post.
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Nothing to stop folks from seeking that info out on their own, though.
Whoever thought of that shitty ‘defense’ needs a thorough public shaming.
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Well of course the point is that if we are supposed to assume that every American Airlines plane lavatory is fitted with hidden cameras, we must insist that the company proves to each passenger every time they go to the loo that there aren’t any cameras.
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I’m surprised general counsel or some subset doesn’t have a hand in. When large entities hire outside counsel to defend them, and they have a general counsel, the general counsel (or some other in-house attorneys) is usually acting as the client and has as much control as a single individual client. A company this big would have at least a few attorneys in-house whose only job is to manage litigation. Review pleadings, contribute to strategy, and help manage discovery. I do not believe their statement the company was unaware. If their in-house attorneys are not at least reading the drafts of the pleadings, they aren’t doing their jobs. I don’t see how an entire in-house legal department would be conflicted out of participating in the defense of the company.
Even if they don’t, that outside counsel is incompetent. Absolutely agree with your analysis of the use of that defense. Public relations should have been one of the factors in deciding what to say during the answer. To include such a ridiculous defense that also sounds so very bad was a bad move.
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Guess who just got some very serious leverage over their insurance company with that post.
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It dawns on me that someday I might be very grateful to boingboing coverage if I am in voir dire for a trial. In this case I wonder if AA will try to avoid a jury trial.
