American Airlines' Preaching Pilot

"Wai Doan Hsu" wrote in message
om...
"PTRAVEL" wrote in message
...
"Wai Doan Hsu" wrote in message
m...
"None" wrote in message
hlink.net...
"PTRAVEL" wrote in message
. com...

I take it back. There very well may be grounds for a law suit,
specifically
negligent and/or intentional infliction of emotional distress.

This guy is a nut bag! If AA doesn't fire him, and PUBLICLY, then
I
think
a
letter is in order from everyone who, like me, refuses to fly with
pilots
so
lacking in judgment that they can do this.

Right now the bean counters at AMR are weighing the pros and cons of
the
"christian" business they'll loose if they fire his ass, and the
rest of
the
traveling public's business lost if they don't.


It has nothing to do with the Christian business. If they fire him
for breaking a rule, Christians should understand. Nobody is telling
him that he can't be Christian, and other airlines would do the same.
However, AA would not disclose firing him because it would violate
their rules on employee privacy. If he makes it public, they would
probably refuse comment, but insist it was not based on his religion.

I've never heard of a company whose privacy rules prohibit disclosing
the
fact of an employee's termination. What makes you think AA has such
rules?


Only the myriad articles that have been written on this specific case
that quote AA as saying so. AA explicitly said that they would not
comment on disciplinary actions or terminations because it violates
their policy.

And there policy, almost certainly, has nothing to do with privacy and
everything to do with minimizing costs associated with defending frivolous
litigation.


I really wish that people would take the time to read the press on
this. If you can read threads that are hundreds of articles long, you
can at least read a few newspaper articles to find out what verified
sources have said.

I've read them. You're imputing to AA a rationale that hasn't been
articulated.

(Miguel Cruz) wrote in message .. .
Wai Doan Hsu wrote:
Yes it does. Companies are directly responsible for the actions of their
employees and for the consequences of those actions toward their
customers. If the customer had a reasonable expectation based on published
policy and the airline did not meet that expectation, the customer has
every right to sue.

The customer has to be able to show harm. A surprise is not harm.

What if every airplane you'd ever been on had green carpeting, and one day
you board one and discover it has red carpet? Surely you could have
reasonably expected green carpeting. Can you therefore sue?

miguel

No, that's not a reasonable assumption. If I had firsthand knowledge
that the airline had a policy against green carpeting, and if green
carpeting were known to be inherently offensive to passengers, and if
green carpeting were known to cause panic, then I might be willing to
discuss your analogy. If, instead of a history of religious zealots
taking over cockpits, launching into religious diatribes, and crashing
their planes, we instead had a history of people installing green
carpeting and then crashing planes, I might also be willing to discuss
your analogy.

However, your knack for irrelevant analogies does nothing to further
this discussion.

"PTRAVEL" wrote in message ...
"BTC/TAK on ACK" wrote in message
...
Negligent infliction requires proof of physical injury, and that proof
is
introduced through competent expert testimony, i.e. a doctor,
psychiatrist,
etc.

Rushing to judgment, your honor? There's certainly a permissible "window"
of
time for symptoms of PTS to appear and for treatment to be sought, etc.,
isn't there? Isn't that how the expert testimony comes in? No one implied
passengers' saying they were traumatized was the end... it seems to me
that
was only the beginning.

All I did was set out the legal standard. I don't know whether the
passengers have a claim or not. Everyone here likes to play lawyer. I am
one, and I've explained the law. That's all.


That's nonsense. When I said that if people came off the plane saying
how distressed they were, it's not a stretch to asume that some people
are distressed, you had a big problem with it. I never claimed that
it was sufficient to win a legal argument, but at this point, what's
relevant is whether it has merit. What happens next is yet to be
seen, but your implication is that there is no merit. That's simply
premature.

BTR1701 wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Wai Doan Hsu) wrote:

BTR1701 wrote in message
...
In article k.net,
"None" wrote:

"BTR1701" wrote in message

Then the airline can fire him but his actions don't give the
passengers the right to sue.

Too late! Four just did . . . news story to follow


People sue every day for things they about which they have no valid
cause of action. The defendant moves for summary judgment and the judge
kicks the case (and makes the idiotic plaintiff pay court costs, if he
has a lick of sense).

The fact that someone files a lawsuit proves nothing.

Some moron in Tennessee filed suit against Janet Jackson for billions
(with a "b") in actual damages over seeing her boob on the TV.

How far do you think that one's gonna get?


If the plaintiff is smart, he'll settle. But the attorney could
decide that all viewers were part of a class,

It doesn't matter what the attorney decides. Attorneys don't have that
power. A class action has to be certifie by the court with proof that
all members of the class suffered the same harm.


Of course attorneys have that "power." If an attorney does not come
to that conclusion, he would not ask a court to certify the class.
Judges certify classes at the request of attorneys with requisite
supporting evidence. If the attorney does not decide to take the case
in the first place, it would not happen. An attorney has to decide
that it has merit at the beginning before it gets to the part of my
sentence that you snipped.

mrtravelkay wrote in message . com...
None wrote:
The airline has clearly publicly stated, and to all news sources, that what
the pilot did is "against company policy" so obviously they do have a
written policy regarding same.


But is it something they are normally fired for, on the first offense?
It is probably something I would have cared nothing about, and it
wouldn't have even risen to the level of even talking to the airline
about it, much less suing them.

It does not have to offend every single passenger on the plane to rise
to that level. We are not talking about a case where a single
passenger was offended, as was the case with the Southwest "eenie
meenie" case. We're talking about a case where many passengers were
offended, alarmed, or panicked.

cheese... they have cheese?

"Wai Doan Hsu" wrote in message
om...
(Miguel Cruz) wrote in message
...
Wai Doan Hsu wrote:
Whose plane it is has nothing to do with it either. There is an
agreement to transport passengers in accordance with certain rules.

I haven't seen anyone credibly claim that the rules prohibit discussing
religion.

Then you haven't been paying attention. Many newspaper articles made
it clear that his behavior violated the airline's rules.



There is consideration. (i.e. money paid by the passenger.) So the
passenger certainly has grounds to sue.

If my plumber asks me whether I'm a Christian, can I sue?


What does that have to do with anything?

If my cat flies an airplane into North Korea, do I get free cheese?

Wai Doan Hsu wrote:

It does not have to offend every single passenger on the plane to rise
to that level. We are not talking about a case where a single
passenger was offended, as was the case with the Southwest "eenie
meenie" case. We're talking about a case where many passengers were
offended, alarmed, or panicked.

What were the results of the "eenie meenie" case?

In article ,
mrtravelkay wrote:

Wai Doan Hsu wrote:

It does not have to offend every single passenger on the plane to rise
to that level. We are not talking about a case where a single
passenger was offended, as was the case with the Southwest "eenie
meenie" case. We're talking about a case where many passengers were
offended, alarmed, or panicked.

What were the results of the "eenie meenie" case?


SW not found at fault -- but of course this sort of thing does 'chill'
expression

"mrtravelkay" wrote in message
om...

Wai Doan Hsu wrote:

It does not have to offend every single passenger on the plane to rise
to that level. We are not talking about a case where a single
passenger was offended, as was the case with the Southwest "eenie
meenie" case. We're talking about a case where many passengers were
offended, alarmed, or panicked.

What were the results of the "eenie meenie" case?

Tossed out, Southwest awarded fees and costs.

In article , "PTRAVEL"
wrote:

"BTR1701" wrote in message

But none of that was really your contention here, was it, counselor? I
believe it was a question of not having experience..... Nice change of
subject.... subtle. I like it.

And I'll say it again -- if you believe that frivolous filings are so
numerous as to constitute a significant problem, then you haven't much
experience of the legal system, your bar membership notwithstanding.

And yet here's one in the news just today. Didn't have to look long or
hard.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/10/ja....ap/index.html