Looks like I'm in a bit of legal trouble

[Ruslan]

So, looks like I'm in a bit of legal trouble now. You see, I sold a house. Same house, sold it to two different people. The first person came, gave me a check, I took the check, gave him a key, let him into the house. So far so good. The second person came, gave me a check, I took the check, then told him, as per normal practice, "looks like the house is overbooked, would you like a hotel voucher instead?".

He became belligerent. That's okay, I know how to deal with a belligerent customer. I called the police. When they arrived, I said, "could you please drag this man away, kicking and screaming? If you can, bloody his nose too." Well, guess what, they arrested me instead. Me! They called it 'fraud'. They told me I'm going to jail. Why? What did I do wrong? All I did was overbook a house! Normal practice...

This is a parody. None of this really happened

[Aedilred]

All I did was overbook a house! Normal practice...

And there's the difference. It's not normal practice. Land is one of the relatively few areas in law where items are not considered interchangeable - that is, if the contract is breached you can demand restitution of the original land, where normally you're only entitled to financial compensation or an equivalent. In the posited situation that wouldn't work because of the contract with another, but you can't sell the same house to two different people, so that would be automatically fraudulent.

When you're dealing with a hotel room or airline seat, however, firstly these are rented rather than purchased, so that makes a difference. Secondly, one hotel room is considered, ultimately, equivalent to another hotel room of equal value. Overbooking hotel rooms is thus standard practice as insurance against cancellations, because you can always make good by paying for guests who lose out to stay at another hotel. Likewise if you overbook a plane and find that there aren't enough seats for all the passengers who arrive, you can transfer them to another flight and compensate them for the lost time. It is not ideal from a customer perspective but it is normal from a business perspective. The rate of cancellation means that it's a hedge against flying with unnecessarily empty seats - important both financially and environmentally (the latter having a bearing on the former) and most of the time it works out fine.

The possibility of its happening will be covered in the T&Cs of booking the room/ticket, in a way that it's not when buying a house, so the customer consents to this risk.

[Keltest]

I'm going to assume that youre being sarcastic, since legal advice is something we aren't allowed to give here, and also because of your white text flat out saying so.

So, uh... is this just a joke that fell flat or something? Not really sure it deserved its own thread.

[2D8HP]

I'm going to assume that youre being sarcastic, since legal advice is something we aren't allowed to give here, and also because of your white text flat out saying so.

So, uh... is this just a joke that fell flat or something? Not really sure it deserved its own thread.

My guess is that it's in reference to certain passenger delivery merchants that have the same initials as "Unearthed Arcana".

[Vinyadan]

What, this is actually hilarious! In the hope it isn't accurate :P I thought it could also be a UA commentary.

[Knaight]

So, uh... is this just a joke that fell flat or something? Not really sure it deserved its own thread.

If you've been reading the news lately: Replace "house" with "airline ticket", and "I" with "United".

[lio45]

So, looks like I'm in a bit of legal trouble now. You see, I sold a house. Same house, sold it to two different people. The first person came, gave me a check, I took the check, gave him a key, let him into the house. So far so good. The second person came, gave me a check, I took the check, then told him, as per normal practice, "looks like the house is overbooked, but would you like me to refund you 2.7 times what you paid for your troubles?".

He refused to resell me his title to the house for two point seven times what he had paid, and became belligerent. That's okay, I know how to deal with a belligerent customer. I called the police. When they arrived, I said, "could you please drag this man away, kicking and screaming? If you can, bloody his nose too." Well, guess what, they arrested me instead. Me! They called it 'fraud'. They told me I'm going to jail. Why? What did I do wrong? All I did was overbook a house! Normal practice...

Edited to make your analogy slightly more correct.

[Liquor Box]

Aedilred is right. United Airlines never sold Dao its plane - it promised to provide a sevice (carriage on a particular flight) in exchange for a payment. Thus, the seat on the plane did not beling to Mr Dao in the same way your house would have belonged to a legitimate purchaser Ruslan.

The plane remained United Airline's property, and it had the right to remove Dao (or any paying passenger). However, in removing him it may have been in breach of its contract with Mr Dao (the promise to provide a service), depending on the terms of the contract. I have no doubt that somewhere in United's terms of carriage there is a clause that says that United has the contractual right to remove passengers in circumstances such as these. If this term was buried within terms that Mr Dao never saw or agreed to, there may be some question as to their applicability, so it is possible that United breached its contract.

Even if United did breach his contract, Mr Dao had no right to refuse to leave the plane (United's property). His remedy would be to seek damages for breach of contract - what was his loss by missing that flight? Did have to book another flight, and then arrive home late getting a poor night's sleep? If so the Court would put a moentary value on that, and Dao could potentially recover it.

I have no doubt tha Dao would lose any case against United seeking recovery for his injuries. United was entitled to remove him from the flight. They asked him to leave, he refused, so they called the police to assist. United is not responsible for how the police handled the situation - but from all reports it sounds like they acted reasonably as well. I think that is why he has been very public about a potential lawsuit rather than simply filing it - a lawsuit may be a PR disaster for United, so they are trying to leverage of that to gain a settlement in an amount they would be unlikely to achieve in an actual court case.

[Ruslan]

Thank you for the comments. I want to reply to one I found particularly disconcerting. The general public is apparently so drunk on the toxic coolaid of being powerless against the large corporations, that some find even the suggestion that a multi-million corporation should not trample on their customers difficult to swallow.

The rate of cancellation means that it's a hedge against flying with unnecessarily empty seats - important both financially and environmentally (the latter having a bearing on the former) and most of the time it works out fine.

The possibility of its happening will be covered in the T&Cs of booking the room/ticket, in a way that it's not when buying a house, so the customer consents to this risk.

Since you seem to be very knowledgeable in the T&C, please let me know which part of the T&C covers a full refund to a passenger who decided not to show up to his flight. Go ahead. I'll wait. What you say? Yes, there is no such part, of course.
When a passenger pays $200, or $800 or whatnot for a flight, he had already paid them. If the passenger does not show up, the airline already has the money. There is no risk for the airline to lose any money on an empty seat. The money is already in their bank account.
Contrary to what certain lobbyists will have you believe, overbooking is not 'hedge against losses'. It's greedy way to pig out on even more money by selling the same product to more than one person, while cynically counting on one of them not to use it for whatever reason (but still pay for it!). And if both show do up, well, one of them has a problem. Too bad.

Also, I'm glad you brought up the issue of buying a house. We considered buying a house from a large construction firm. Until we read their T&C. Turns out, they can postpone the delivery of the house for any time they like, for any reason whatsoever. It's right there, in the finest of prints. It's good to be a multimillion company! Did you know that when you buy a house from a multimillion construction company, they have the right not to give it to you? Indefinitely? I bet you didn't know that. We said screw it, and bought a house from a private seller. Who does not have a lobby and can't afford to write this type of &#$! in his T&C.

I have no doubt that somewhere in United's terms of carriage there is a clause that says that United has the contractual right to remove passengers in circumstances such as these.

Whoosh. The existence of this clause is exactly the problem I am trying to draw attention to.

I have no doubt tha Dao would lose any case against United seeking recovery for his injuries.

It's difficult to lose a case that will in all likelyhood be settled out of court for 'an undisclosed amount'.

[Liquor Box]

Edited to make your analogy slightly more correct.

An even closer analogy would be as follows:

Ruslan bought a new roleplaying game, which eight people could play (he is GM). In his experience 99/100 times at least one person he invites doesn't show up, so he invites nine people to cover for that - he mentions this fact to the invitees at the end of a long email that most do not read. He asks everyone to contribute $10 to cover the cost of the game and snacks.

Amazingly all nine people show up and want to play. Ruslan explains that there are only eight places in the game and asks if anyone is willing ot forgo their place - he promises to invite them to the next playing of the game free of charge. All refuse.

Ruslan is then left in a difficult situaiton - he simply cannot play with everyone who he invited. He therefore politely asks one of the people (lets call them lio45) to leave - he offers to host Lio next time free, and offers a cash payment as well. Lio refuses to leave. Ruslan tries to persuade him but fails. Ultimately Ruslan says that Lio is trespassing in his hourse and orders him to leave, saying he will call the police otherwise. Lio still refuses and tells Ruslan he may call the police if he wants.

Ruslan does call the police - what happens from that point on is the police's responsibility, not Ruslan's. But we will cover it for completeness. The police ask Lio to leave, Lio refuses. The police tell Lio if he doesn't leave he will be arrested for tresspassing afterbeing given notice to leave, but Lio says he would rather go to jail than leave the house. The police tell Lio that if does not leave they will have to forcibly remove him. Lio tells them to go ahead. The police do forcibly remove Lio and Lio resist. During the struggle Lio strikes his face on some furniture, suffering minor injuries. There is no suggestion from any witness that the police caused this to happen deliberately or that they struck Lio. Ultimately Lio is removed, and Ruslan's game proceeds.

This analogy is closer because Ruslan doesn't selll his house at all, only invites someone into it for a time (in exchange for money). It's not a perfect analogy because there is probably no contract between Ruslan and Lio, so I'd be happy if someone could improve it further.

Edited to address Ruslan's point about telling the players in advance.

[Liquor Box]

Whoosh. The existence of this clause is exactly the problem I am trying to draw attention to.

Great. The fact that attention has now been drawn to it (by the situaiton moreso than by your post) actually means it is not problematic any more. It was problematic [I]because[I] many people signing up to it probably did not know it existed. Now that they do know it exists they enter into the contract with the carrier in full knowledge of the clause, so can choose to pay more to have a guaranteed seat.

It's difficult to lose a case that will in all likelyhood be settled out of court for 'an undisclosed amount'.

Yes that was my point. I think Dao is angling for a confidential settlement. It's not a given though, United may decide it would be worse PR to payout than it would be to go through the case an ultimately be succesful. I think that there's a fair chance Dao is just bluffing and no proceedings will be filed.

[Ruslan]

An even closer analogy would be as follows:



This analogy is closer because Ruslan doesn't selll his house at all, only invites someone into it for a time (in exchange for money). It's not a perfect analogy because there is probably no contract between Ruslan and Lio, so I'd be happy if someone could improve it further.

I can easily improve it.

And nine people absolutely need to play a roleplaying game, otherwise they will not be able to show up for work the next day and will be fired. Also, if the DM was honest about inviting nine people instead of eight, one of the nine could have gotten a place at a different roleplaying game that does not overbook players*. But he chose to be dishonest to maximize his ability attract players.

That's a much better analogy.


* difficult to find. Since the DM lobby is so powerful, they can all afford to overbook

[Liquor Box]

I can easily improve it.

And nine people absolutely need to play a roleplaying game, otherwise they will not be able to show up for work the next day and will be fired. Also, if the DM was honest about inviting nine people instead of eight, one of the nine could have gotten a place at a different roleplaying game that does not overbook players*. But he chose to be dishonest to maximize his ability attract players.

That's a much better analogy.


* difficult to find. Since the DM lobby is so powerful, they can all afford to overbook

It might be a better analogy for the point you want to make, but it is not more accurate. You invented several facts.

First, I don't think it's true that Dao would have been unable to work the next day, he just would have got home late and gotten less sleep before reporting to work.

Second, there is no suggestion that Dao would have been fired, that was just invented by you.

Third, United was honest about inviting more people than it has seats - its honesty was just buried in pages of contractual text which most people didn't read - I agree with you that is problematic. I have amended the analogy to account for that.

I have made that third change - are you happy with the analogy now - or is there another improvement that can be made to better match the United fact situation?

[Ruslan]

Anyway, no matter how you spin it, a flight ticket is not a D&D game. Your life isn't significantly affected by my decision to play - or not play - D&D with you. But when people buy a flight ticket, they are making some plans that require them to be somewhere. Plans they made far in advance and paid a lot of money for. Possibly life-altering plans. I can't support the right of multimillion dollar corporations to cynically trample on whatever important plans people have - and paid for - just so they can make a teensy-bitsy more profit.

edit: In fact, one of them main selling points of most airlines will be reliability. "We get you where you need to be, when you need to be", or a variation thereof appears in most airline ads. That's what they say out loud. And then, in fine print "oh, we actually have the right not to get you anywhere, if it makes us a bit more money, so screw you". I can't view it as anything but a legalized fraud.

[Liquor Box]

Anyway, no matter how you spin it, a flight ticket is not a D&D game. Your life isn't significantly affected by my decision to play - or not play - D&D with you. But when people buy a flight ticket, they are making some plans that require them to be somewhere. Plans they made far in advance and paid a lot of money for. Possibly life-altering plans. I can't support the right of multimillion dollar corporations to cynically trample on whatever important plans people have - and paid for - just so they can make a teensy-bitsy more profit.

Completely true. No analogy is perfect - the DND analogy was just closer than your original house sale analogy.


Stepping away from the analogies, I don't think there is anything wrong with the Airline's practice. It is inefficient to have empty seats, and if airlines did not overbook some seats would usually be empty. Having the empty seats costs the airline potential revenue*, and in any competitive market it would make up that revenue by simply increasing prices. The end result if this was not the airline's practice, would be an increased cost of flying for consumers,

* I saw your reply to Aedilred, and you are partly right - some tickets are refundable, some are not depending on the terms of the ticket (and in practice both refundable and non-refundable tickets exist). But at the end of the day, the point is irrelecant to the economics of the situation. The extra revenue to the Airlines (even if it doesn't replace refunds to passengers who pulled out) still means they do not need to increase prices to remain profitable in a competitive industry.

As we already identified, the real concern is that some passengers do not know that this may happen. It would be preferable if they did, so they could elect whether to take the risk (probably lower than 1 in a million) of being ejected, or to book a guanranteed flight without the risk of being objected, and pay more for it. They could do this based on how necessary (life-altering as you say) it is for them to arrive at their destination on time.

[Aedilred]

Thank you for the comments. I want to reply to one I found particularly disconcerting. The general public is apparently so drunk on the toxic coolaid of being powerless against the large corporations, that some find even the suggestion that a multi-million corporation should not trample on their customers difficult to swallow.

Since you seem to be very knowledgeable in the T&C, please let me know which part of the T&C covers a full refund to a passenger who decided not to show up to his flight. Go ahead. I'll wait. What you say? Yes, there is no such part, of course.
When a passenger pays $200, or $800 or whatnot for a flight, he had already paid them. If the passenger does not show up, the airline already has the money. There is no risk for the airline to lose any money on an empty seat. The money is already in their bank account.
Contrary to what certain lobbyists will have you believe, overbooking is not 'hedge against losses'. It's greedy way to pig out on even more money by selling the same product to more than one person, while cynically counting on one of them not to use it for whatever reason (but still pay for it!). And if both show do up, well, one of them has a problem. Too bad.

On that point I was conflating the hotel and plane analogies, so yeah, that doesn't work quite as well. But that said, they still lose out on any money they would have made from that customer during the flight, from in-flight sales. From an airline perspective it's always better to have a customer in the seat than not. And as Liquor Box says there is a wider consideration when spread across more than one flight.

Also, I'm glad you brought up the issue of buying a house.

You brought up the issue of buying a house.

It's difficult to lose a case that will in all likelyhood be settled out of court for 'an undisclosed amount'.

Which would be his decision.

In any case, I have heard a couple of versions of the story, and it's not clear precisely why the problem arose. In one version, it wasn't that they had overbooked the flight and wanted to replace one passenger with another. It's hard to see how a simple case of overbooking could have resulted in this because the surplus passengers should never have made it onto the plane. That sort of thing gets filtered out at check-in when boarding passes are issued - and when passengers are already seated, it seems mad to replace one with another rather than just obliging those who aren't yet seated to wait for the next flight.

The problem as I heard it was that they needed to move a flight crew to another destination at the last minute and needed the seats for them. At which point it was a choice between inconveniencing a handful of passengers on one flight, and an entire planeload of passengers somewhere else. Yes, it was still an administrative screw-up but that's why they offered the bumper compensation for the passengers who were being inconvenienced. At the point the passenger became belligerent, forced the police to drag him off, and then ran back onto the plane after being removed, you have to ask what he was expecting to happen. That's not exactly reasonable behaviour.

UA undoubtedly did not handle it as well as they might have done and don't look great as a result. But let's not pretend that the passenger wasn't also to blame for the way things unfolded.

[tensai_oni]

I gotta say this before the thread gets locked, the responses here were very enlightening.

I'm not talking about possible excuses for UA employees' actions (there aren't any good ones), but rather lengths to which people will go to defend them.

Obviously we're living in a world of 100% pinpoint karma where bad things happen only to bad people, so the passenger somehow shares the fault for what happened and it's okay that he was kicked out of the plane and beaten bloody.

No way is it the fault of greedy, unempathic people who value their own convenience and gain so much that they didn't even follow their company's procedure to the end before going "screw it, time to apply force".

It's very reassuring.

Spoiler: Obvious explanation is obvious

Show

The last three sentences were sarcasm

[Knaight]

Obviously we're living in a world of 100% pinpoint karma where bad things happen only to bad people, so the passenger somehow shares the fault for what happened and it's okay that he was kicked out of the plane and beaten bloody.

It's also obvious that there is no way that multiple police officers could dislodge one small, elderly man with anything less than the violence they chose to employ.

[Ruslan]

* I saw your reply to Aedilred, and you are partly right - some tickets are refundable, some are not depending on the terms of the ticket (and in practice both refundable and non-refundable tickets exist). But at the end of the day, the point is irrelecant to the economics of the situation. The extra revenue to the Airlines (even if it doesn't replace refunds to passengers who pulled out) still means they do not need to increase prices to remain profitable in a competitive industry.

Pardon me while I barf. This is such a beat up and deplorable excuse, paraded out at any instance of corporate-greed-gone-too-far. Sure. The multi-million-dollar-paycheck-picking Oscar Munoz and his boardroom cronies need to stay competitive. After they have defrauded the US public for millions of dollars. Yes, as a US flag carrier, UA is partly financed by gov't subsidies. Which is, by the way also a reason then can get away with &!^# some other companies could not.

As we already identified, the real concern is that some passengers do not know that this may happen.

No, the real concern is that this type of fraud is legal to begin with.

It would be preferable if they did, so they could elect whether to take the risk (probably lower than 1 in a million) of being ejected, or to book a guanranteed flight without the risk of being objected, and pay more for it.

A horrible idea, which would only serve to fatten the pockets of the airlines even more. 90% buy the expensive ticket. 10% buy the cheap ticket. The airline can still overbook like there's no tomorrow, except the bumping-out is limited to the 10%. Net result - gain for the airline at absolutely no cost.

No, the preferable solution is to make selling the same product to two different paying customers illegal. It's not rocket science.

* I saw your reply to Aedilred, and you are partly right - some tickets are refundable

If a ticket is refundable, it mean a cancellation insurance is included in the price. If it's refundable, you (directly or indirectly) paid a bit extra for the right of it to be refundable.

[Liquor Box]

Pardon me while I barf. This is such a beat up and deplorable excuse, paraded out at any instance of corporate-greed-gone-too-far. Sure. The multi-million-dollar-paycheck-picking Oscar Munoz and his boardroom cronies need to stay competitive. After they have defrauded the US public for millions of dollars. Yes, as a US flag carrier, UA is partly financed by gov't subsidies. Which is, by the way also a reason then can get away with &!^# some other companies could not.

You can barf out your speech about greed etc, none of that changes the fact that UA operates in a competitive industry. If the industry wide practice was to not overbook flghts revenues would be lower, and airlines would simply offset that by charging more for tickets. If some rule were imposed preventing airlines from overbooking, the main impact would be that the cost of the cheapest fares would be higher.

It's not even an excuse, or a justification. It's simply what would happen.

No, the real concern is that this type of fraud is legal to begin with.

It can only be fraud (by any definition of the word) if it is deceptive. Now that this incidedent is so public, I think there is little chance of anyone being deceived into thinking their seat on a flight is guaranteed (unless it expressly is).

Surely you don't have any problem with people being able to choose whether to pay ordinary prices to get a seat where there is a one in a million chance of being kicked off, or paying more for a guaranteed seat?

[Ruslan]

Surely you don't have any problem with people being able to choose whether to pay ordinary prices to get a seat where there is a one in a million chance of being kicked off, or paying more for a guaranteed seat?

Yes, I would because it's a horrible idea, as per my previous post.

This is analogous to breaking your leg, then selling you crutches.

edit: Actually, more like "flying in our plane runs a risk of breaking your leg. Would you like to buy crutches in advance?"
It seems more sensible to remove the circumstances that lead to breaking one's leg than to sell one crutches in advance.

UA operates in a competitive industry

A lot less competitive than you think. As a flag carrier, they have a monopoly -ok, duopoly with AL - on some of the most profitable routes. A truly competitive company wouldn't do what UA did. Such indifference to customer can only be born from lack of competition and sense of complete entitlement that a monopoly (duopoly) can bring.

A truly competitive market leads to excellence and to customer-first attitude. The type of **** UA pull? It means they are NOT operating in a competitive market.

[Aedilred]

Obviously we're living in a world of 100% pinpoint karma where bad things happen only to bad people, so the passenger somehow shares the fault for what happened and it's okay that he was kicked out of the plane and beaten bloody.

Does he share the fault for what happened? Yes. He could have accepted the deal offered. He could have gone quietly with the police when they arrived. He chose not to cooperate either with the airline or the police, to resist his removal and thus must share some of the blame for the situation in which he found himself.

That does not mean it was ok for him to be beaten up, albeit everything I've read about what happened is so heavily tinged with outrage and hyperbole it's hard to tell exactly what happened. Was he violent? Did he strike a police officer? The pictures are shocking but they only tell us a small part of the story.

Even from the reports which are wholly on the passenger's side it's clear that he didn't behave entirely reasonably and made things unnecessarily difficult for himself.

It can only be fraud (by any definition of the word) if it is deceptive.

Indeed, the idea of "legal fraud" is pretty much an oxymoron.

[Douglas]

The Mod Radiant: I'm locking this before it gets any closer to politics than it already is.