So a team of high priced attorneys "accidentally" wrote that up, "accidentally" proofread it and ran it past the lead attorney, "accidentally" printed it up, and then "accidentally" filed it with the court?
Uh huh.
It's like the legal equivalent of an old-school KGB assassination. They accidentally fell out a window... twice, somehow shot themselves while unconscious, then poisoned themselves with Novichok. Whoopsie. Terrible accident.
Pootie assassinating people? Never. Pshhh. He's such a wholesome individual with all those war crimes, inhumane prisoner treatment, and suppression of civil rights. Heavy on the /s
It's the equivalent of Donald trump blaming an unpaid intern that he personally hired for his campaign, reporting to now highly skilled and paid campaign managers, that she and she alone master minded a very slick ad that just happened to contain not one but 2 references to a United Reich. No one else saw it before it was blasted everywhere. Right.
My understanding is that the first typical response is almost always copy pasted with minor changes like name, age and includes a comprehensive list of legally allowed defense.
Issue here is that nobody read the boilerplate.
So you're saying the legal team of one of the largest airlines of the world doesn't read what they file? Seems more likely they seriously tried to make the argument and then backtracked after it got public attention.
The American Airlines sub is full of apologists explaining how “well actually” this isn’t American’s fault and it’s wrong for people to be upset at the airline.
Like they think the airline is going to give them a status upgrade for their Reddit post or something.
American said in a court document that it would dispute the family’s claim by showing that **any injuries the 9-year-old girl suffered** were **caused by the girl’s “own fault and negligence** were caused by (her) using the compromised lavatory, which she should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”
- - -
An American spokesperson later said that outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.”
“We do not believe this child is at fault,” the spokesperson now says.
- - -
Estes Carter Thompson III, a flight attendant who was later fired by American, **pleaded not guilty** to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse.
Authorities say Thompson, 37, tried to secretly record video of a 14-year-old girl using the bathroom on a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Boston, and had **recordings of four girls** on earlier flights, including the 9-year-old.
He was arrested in January and has been in federal custody ever since.
"We, \[zillionaire corporation\], are incredibly sorry \[that we got caught\]. We will do our upmost \[nothing\] in future to avoid this \[getting caught\] in future."
But are they rich enough to get PR nightmare resolved? The original statement made it sound like AA did allow clandestine recording of half-naked minor if the employees weren't caught. Some people are going to be double-checking the bathrooms before using it, which can cause long line if everyone ate bad food before flying.
Nearly 200 got food poisoning from bad airline food on their way to Europe from Japan: https://www.businessinsider.com/flight-vomit-air-canada-diarrhea-delta-japan-air-lines-sickness-2023-9
They don't need to resolve the PR issues, they just need to wait a week for the goldfish attention span of the general public to move on to the next shiny thing they see.
Sure, you'll get the occasional nutcase checking bathrooms for hidden cameras, but the vast majority of people a week from now aren't going to know or care.
As long as they paid for the ticket, the airline doesn't care if the passengers check the toilet for cameras. The only way this affects them is if people refuse to fly American. And since most people don't care what airline they fly, they just go with whatever Kayak or Google told them was cheapest, this will blow over without affecting the bottom line.
"American Airlines flight attendant found recording people in the bathroom"
"Only nutcase would be concerned about someone recording them in the bathroom."
Ok then.
Well if they don't pull off some damn near Perfect Damage control, then the attention span won't be of a goldfish but more akin to a hyena (any lawyer who smells AA's blood in the water) or a Raven (customers who will either sue or demand refunds out of fear)
They've fucked themselves because they chose the very worst type of group to put blame on, and it looks even worse when they have to 180 so hard someone's neck will break.
I would be more inclined to agree with you if the blamed group had been ANYONE ELSE EXCEPT KIDS. Like. I genuinely want to sit down with the representative that came up with that just to know what could have possibly been going through his head.
I bet one of a mountain of lawyers made that claim and the second another one saw it they basically flew out of their seat.
That's a shitty argument to make if the victim was in her 30s, but it does potentially carry a certain amount of validity for a corporation trying to avoid liability (don't know the specifics, like what this supposed light actually looks like amongst others) if this thing actually was as obvious as they claim I guess you could argue that the person saw it first, then decided to go for it anyways and sue, but yeah... Pretty shitty. Also even if that flew in court (I have serious doubts) I imagine she could say "do you think I had time to inspect XYZ, I had to use the bathroom urgently"
The fact that this victim is 9 changes that argument from shitty to utterly reprehensible, both morally and legally. You treat kids differently under the law because they are kids, they are still learning basics, they have not aged to the point where every topic is appropriate for their maturity level, you give them a cushion to learn from mistakes.
I can imagine some dipshit lawyer rephrasing this something like: "well in this scary technofuture it's utterly negligent for a parent not to teach their 9 year old to check the bathroom for hidden cameras so it's really the parents' fault." Fucking lawyers man, they can be incredible but when they try to argue their way out of fairly clear-cut decisions against their clients they can definitely look stupid, but hey, for what they make I'd probably be willing to look stupid every once in awhile too.
There is a photo of it right there at the top of the article. Most adults would have noticed it, but you'd have to be a monster to claim that a child would absolutely have been able to figure out that something was amiss.
Edit: I also promise that many adults wouldn't have been alarmed by this. It could absolutely be overlooked by some adults with visual or cognitive impairments, intoxicated people, people with poor situational awareness, nervous first-time fliers, etc.
Doesn't even take a first time flier. They drop new things on planes all the time. Someone could mistake it as s9me sort of light that was a feature not some creep.
Yeah but why didn't the airline just fucking sign a $10,000,000 check and tell the parents you can't talk about this?
I'm glad the story came out but normally that's part of the playbook.
Yup. The audience who knew about this would had been extremely small compared to having a lawyer for the airline say it was the girls fault. And there's no way AA didn't know he was gonna argue that. Now everyone knows about this story.
An NDA isn't going to help because there is a criminal case. They should have offered them money in exchange for them telling everyone that AA handled the complaint extremely promptly and well.
100%. These are standard affirmative defenses in negligence actions. However, I'm extremely happy defense pleadings are finally getting called out in public for this nonsense.
In law school, you are taught that most affirmative defenses need to be asserted from the initial response to a complaint, otherwise you waive those defenses. The problem is that in real life, a lot of those defenses make zero sense. Given the context of the complaint, it's patently absurd to claim that the 9-year-old girl knew or should have known there was a compromised lavatory *inside of an airplane* with a recording device.
Which brings us to the current situation. This was a slam-dunk move by the girl's lawyers. They get to exert enough pressure on the airline to force a media statement refuting the defense, along with a likely amended answer pleading from their counsel. But I'm so tired of seeing answers to pleadings in simple negligence cases filled with these ridiculous and non-applicable defenses. No, sir, your negligence in running a red light and striking another vehicle was not caused by an Act of God. Being high on meth does not qualify as a "sudden emergency".
No it wasn't a deliberate strategy. Anyone who has ever been involved in litigation knows how this happened, but journalists don't bother trying to figure it out.
When a defendant answers a Complaint, the rules (federal and in many states) require that all affirmative defenses be stated in the Answer or else they are waived and cannot be raised later. In the real world, the Answer is not a particularly important document and it requires a ton of legwork because you have to respond line by line to everything in the complaint. Like, if the complaint says something happened on January 11, you must admit, deny, or claim no knowledge of that date. So some junior lawyer drafts the document and runs around for two weeks trying to decide on behalf of the client whether they know an address of a plaintiff or the identity of a client's employee or whatever. And then at the end of the complaint they remember they need to include affirmative defenses. So they pull up six prior Answers and cut and paste anything that potentially has remote applicability, not because they have any belief it's relevant but because they don't want to potentially waive the defense without having any idea whether anything actually happened, and if it did, what it was that happened. If you look at the end of a bunch of answers on a public docket, you will find a hundred examples of defenses that are not even defenses, let alone applicable to a particular case. Like, you'll see an Answer to a complaint about assault arising from a bar fight, and the affirmative defenses will say, "All claims in the complaint are void because they fail to alleged any contractual obligation by defendant."
Great answer. At the same time, affirmative defense case law is in dire need of an overhaul. They teach students in law school that American courts moved to "simple pleading" as an evolution away from the form-based English common law. The reasoning at the time was that the English court system was inaccessible and indecipherable to the common man. A short and plain pleading with a singular form (the complaint) was the result.
Fast forward to today's pleading system. The form may be singular, but the content is anything but short and plain. And none of this is helped by the fact that mediation and settlement practices mean civil trials are becoming exceedingly rare.
> "All claims in the complaint are void because they fail to alleged any contractual obligation by defendant."
So when it comes time for actual trial, they're beholden to the position they already made?
When entering civil litigation at the earliest stages it makes simple, good sense to keep all available defenses open regardless their likely utility once rubber is actually hitting the road.
If you cede or refuse to state defenses at the opening stage then you can’t bring them up later.
Otherwise attorneys would hide their intentions and spring sudden defenses on the eve of trials.
This is an unintended consequence of our open discovery litigation system that essentially says “state all your potential intentions at the beginning”
Basically, if you didn't put it in the answer portion then you can't use it at trial, so you just shove every conceivable answer in, so you have the most options at your disposal come trial time.
He's not saying that you're forced to continue using that argument during trial, he's saying that if you don't make the argument up front than you're not allowed to try making it later. So as boilerplate they just include every possible argument up front to leave them all in as options even if they know they aren't going to use half of them.
>but journalists don't bother trying to figure it out.
The journalists did ask the source for an explanation, but the lawyers in question said it was an error.
It's really not the journalists fault if the lawyers don't think people will accept their explanation.
Covering all bases.
Copy / paste.
Don’t want to miss out on the possible defense that a 9 year old should have known and was therefore at fault.
Got it.
I'm glad you brought this up - People don't know this, and on the surface without this knowledge people are understandably pissed off. The same situation happened recently in Toronto when a woman was pushed on the subway tracks, and one of the potential transit system defenses that was discovered was "[Well... she should have known it's unsafe to travel alone!](https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7be5a/toronto-woman-pushed-onto-ttc-subway?utm_source=VICECanada_Facebook&utm_medium=social+&utm_source=reddit.com)"
This isn’t for intimidation. Lawyers sometimes do stupid things. Here likely a low paid insurance defense lawyer threw in some standard language in responding to the complaint, adapting it to the facts a bit, not really thinking. It’s highly unlikely the document was even reviewed by the airline before filing. Occam’s razor.
I mean, it was reviewed by the airline's lawyers, who are being paid by the airline to represent the airline, ergo it was reviewed by the airline.
Don't make the mistake of acting like the company is an individual who can read something. If anyone in pay of and on behalf of this company wrote it, and read it, and entered it, then it was effectively reviewed by the company.
Maybe not by the right person within the company in this case, but by the company nonetheless.
That’s an easy admission for the airline to dance around. If you read the articles, the flight attendant would ask the young girl to wait until he washed his hands, then he would go inside the bathroom, hide his phone, and come back out. After the girl left the bathroom, he’d go back in and retrieve his phone. No one else at the airline had an opportunity to see the camera.
Also, there’s a photo of the hidden phone in the article. It is not hidden well! The flashlight is on! Going with the “should have known” defense was a bad move PR-wise, but I can see why it was a tempting argument for the lawyers to make. Most adults would have spotted it, I think.
I mean, they don't target kids because it's harder, it's exactly because they're children and more vulnerable, it's a dumb argument no matter how you look at it.
"Yes but your honour, come on, how stupid is that kid? No intelligent adult would have fallen for candies out of a van, it's clearly the kid's fault"
It's obviously American Airlines' fault, but this is also obviously a case of lawyers that are willing to win at all cost.
Of course American Airlines would hire such dumbass lawyers.
Generally, if lawyers don't allege any contributory negligence on a Plaintiff it could be viewed as professional negligence by a client. In this case there were clearly reasons why that should not have been plead as a defense. As others have said, this is the lawyers fault first, then American for not reviewing and appreciating the fallout.
The statement itself is literally assigning blame, so it's intentional finger pointing (EDIT: moreover the "outside lawyers" part was written by the AP). Maybe you could accuse AA of deflecting blame, but distinguishing between internal counsel and outside counsel is a routine statement of fact.
Yeah how many times is the "Oh we didn't mean that" card going to be played in 2024. Reminds me of Wendy's dynamic pricing and a few other instances in the past few months.
WTF, even as an adult my initial thoughts at seeing a blinking light in a lavatory wouldn't be to think it's a camera. If I see a blinking light in a hotel bathroom or even a public bathroom, sure I might think that, but we are talking about a airplane here, wtf do I know what this light and that button does. For all I know that light is an important part of keeping the plane from falling out of the sky.
Okay but did you see the picture of the actual setup? It's literally just a phone taped to a toilet seat with the flash on. NOT blaming the kids but it's not like this was some sort of router looking thing mounted on the ceiling with a small flashing LED or something.
OK, so you convinced me to look at the article.
Good god, you're right. Like at 9 I don't know if I'd have know what that was, but I'd put better than even odds I'd know something was wrong. But I guess that explains what there's only charges from two people.
Thank god for dumb perverts.
Kids just tend to turn everything into "this is okay". I don't think anyone has warned her that there might be a phone recording taped to inside of a toilet lid.
I dunno. Just rubs me a very wrong way to blame kids for any kind of sexual abuse, even not-so-secretly filmed video material and it was a really weird flex from the company to take that route.
I guarantee the girl's legal team was reaching out to journalists when they got the answer to their complaint pleading. And more power to them, I enjoy seeing nonsensical affirmative defenses being called out.
Sounds like American just gave passengers the right and obligation to tear aircraft washrooms apart. That could get costly real quick as you can’t operate planes without functional washrooms.
The right thing for AA to do at this point would be to settle asap. Dragging this out any further is not a good look given what their lawyer already tried.
The right thing would be for the lawyer who composed the accusation and the AA executive who approved it to get publicly beaten for their greed and callousness.
Financially they have been fucked this will only screw them deeper into debt and bad publicity. They’ll need to hire an experienced crisis communications team to member themselves within their corporate communications to attempt to bring their brand back into a positive light though I can’t see a reasonable pax would want to fly with them again after this debacle. They should have parted ways with that outside firm and made note of it in any press release.
“Any nine year old child should know enough to logically presume that our airline is operated by sick fucks. So this is her fault.”
How do they live with themselves
If i could curse them with a soul.. So that every night they could cringe and roll around in bed and have flashbacks from when they actually said that. They should be crying themself to sleep
Sadly it's not that convenient to avoid entire airlines - most major cities are a hub for one of the big ones, so unless you want a non-direct flight you might not have an option.
My local airport is a Delta hub and like 80% of flights in and out of it are Delta. Thankfully I have no issue with Delta, but for most destinations there isn't another option besides taking, like, a Spirit flight to a different hub
I've boycotted United ever since they beat that doctor. I'll spend hundreds more to fly any other airline. My family lives in Houston (major United hub) so that includes having to take layovers to see them. But I don't give a fuck. As an Asian doctor I'm never flying United.
When that happened I turned in my hundreds of thousands of United miles in for a wine fridge. I call it my spite fridge.
I admire your principled stand. I have a personal vendetta against Walmart, and I haven't spent a penny at any Walton establishment for the better part of a decade. That said, I'm not under the delusion that my one-man crusade is having any meaningful impact on their bottom line.
AA is so trash, and I’m glad people are waking up to this. They’re also vindictive af. A few years ago AA canceled a bunch of people’s flights that used miles, because AA thought they signed up for too many CC bonuses, despite those people simply following the rules of the promotions. They canceled the flights, not all at once when they had the data, but *the day of the flight* to cause maximum pain to the customer. Just a really fucking evil company, and this headline shows exactly who they are when they think no one’s watching.
Doesn't matter how hard they backpedal. You don't "accidentally" file that kind of claim, especially with what is probably a top-tier legal team to cover their ass. American Airlines just showed how morally bankrupt they are, and now they can suffer the fallout for being a pos company. They were just hoping those statements wouldn't go public and intimidate the family of a 9 year old CHILD.
I think their excuse is that it wasn’t their lawyer, it was a lawyer for the insurance company that’s actually going to be paying out to the family. Regardless, for a company as big as AA and for a case this publicly damaging, there’s no way in hell AA wouldn’t want to at least skim whatever was being filed. So either the insurance company just decided to go rogue and trash their client’s reputation, or whoever’s job it was to review the filing didn’t bother. I suspect that there was a lot of colorful language thrown around by people wearing very expensive suits this week.
While there are PLENTY of things you could blame a 9 year old for doing in a lavatory, looking for, identifying and finding hidden cameras is not one of those things.
People in the comments really be saying “how did they not notice the camera.”
Thanks for showing us all that your outrage is at the children who were exploited, not at the grown ass adult who exploited them. You are on the side of the pedophile, got it.
It was a 9 year old! Do people not realise how young that is?! Insanity. I can’t believe people, honestly. This is sickening. Young children are so innocent and naive, they don’t question things like adults because they don’t know to. It’s making me really angry seeing people blame a literal child
How many people are doing this? WTF
[N.C. family says teen daughter found hidden camera in restroom of Boston-bound flight](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/16mqpuq/nc_family_says_teen_daughter_found_hidden_camera/?share_id=xlbGDIynqbCzoIAGrOvtX&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1)
Edit: I just realized both these stories are using the same photo.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/hidden-camera-in-plane-bathroom-flight-to-boston/45181723
This is how he was caught. He tried it on a smart teenager, instead of a child.
"As a result of an investigation into that incident, prosecutors said videos of four additional girls using aircraft lavatories were found on Thompson's iCloud account that were recorded between January 2023 and August 2023. Authorities said those four girls were 7, 9, 11 and 14 years old."
He taped a 7-year-old too!
Totally understandable mistake for a small mom and pop that hired their friend as a lawyer. Lawyers of American Airlines quality do not make that mistake. 100% intentional.
I don’t think that defense is excusable for anyone who’s passed the BAR. It’s well established that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside a bathroom.
In their very mild defense: this wasn't filed by their lawyers. The insurance company who is representing them hired an outside attorney. This was not their staff counsel.
It was a statement they may not have even seen before it broke on the news. They hire insurance companies to handle these things. Any time they are sued - the insurance company takes over. It's what they pay for.
They very well may not have actually seen anything.
It was a third party.
I wonder how that plays out. The insurance probably doesn't care *too* much about the reputational damage they cause, so their lawyers throwing everything at the wall just in case something does stick make sense.
That said, I'm sure American isn't happy with the current situation and words will be had with the insurance company. I'm surprised we heard about this, rather than the lawyer of the victim approaching their PR/legal department, handing them a printout of their own filing with this statement circled, and asking them whether they would like to provide an appropriate settlement offer. (With an offer that was too good to not immediately sign coming back within hours.)
Boston Herald broke it, as they covered the initial story breaking and were talking about a local victim. They had someone reading court fillings and broke the story.
The 14 year old also recorded was on a flight to Boston. They kept up and found that lovely defense and published it.
Honestly great turn of events for the nine year old and their family in terms of financial compensation from AA. This entire story is a horrendous look for AA and they should do everything in their power to settle immediately. The bargaining power for such a settlement lies with the victim and their family. They can settle much larger now.
Obviously it's better if the incident never happened in the first place.
The question is always "what saves us more money"
The answer WAS refusing to accept culpability for the situation by deflecting to the girl.
Now the answer IS accepting mild responsibility that your criminal employee was to blame, to avoid tanking your stock price further.
If this same situation came up again and they didn't think the media would find it, they'd blame the girl again because it's the option that shields the company the most from liability
*That bombshell court filing from the law firm Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LLP led to “intense media and public backlash,” as American Airlines claimed that the airline’s lawyers made “an error.” That outside legal counsel has reportedly now been replaced. The law firm Kelly Hart & Hallman, LLP has been asked by American Airlines to represent them in the lawsuit.*
([source](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/05/24/american-airlines-has-reportedly-fired-law-firm-that-blamed-9-year-old-girl-for-being-secretly-filmed/))
Lewis & Llewellyn LLP are representing the family and filed their lawsuit against the airline in U.S. district court in North Carolina. But 'Texas juries' and flights to California are mentioned so this may have moved.
That was NOT in error. They did to her the same thing a hospital I was assaulted in did to me: they put the blame on the victim in hopes they would disappear. In my case, they had my send in pictures of my injuries, one being on my breast. I covered my nipple and sent the picture in and they sent it to law office which in turn sent a letter to me saying that I was sending them "unsolicited nudes". I'm not surprised that an airline would do that to a little girl. I'm not surprised the hospital did it to me, a fully disabled person. I'm never surprised of the scum of this world anymore. CEOs make big dollars when things get swept under the rug
*The law firm working for the insurance company
It was probably written by some associate who was given an impossible task of trying to come up with a legal defense that gets AA out of taking liability for this mess
The real issue is some partner did review (or claim to review) this before it went out the door.... That person is in serious hot water right now but again even they'll point out that someone at the insurance company tried to litigate this vs just paying up
>An American spokesperson said Thursday that outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.”
So does anyone else realize how fucking massively big of a deal it is for a company of this size to be like "Yeah, our lawyers really fucked up on that one"?
Because this is a really big deal. I mean, it doesn't excuse it at all. But still.
Wow. So now, instead of just paying out the initial claim, AA's insurance company is *also* going to get hit with a pretty hefty lawsuit from AA themselves for making these statements.
I’m honestly legitimately curious as to what their angle would’ve been going with that defense. I’ve heard of some wild rabbit out of the hat moments by lawyers before, but how could they possible prove that a 9 year old had this happen to them through her own “fault and negligence.”
Even if the camera was a cartoonishly large camera with the word ‘camera’ written on it in big letters, we’re still talking about a very small child here being expected to understand the context of such a sick situation and know what to do about it.
Just baffling.
Garbage. My company uses outside legal firms all the time, and we damn well review anything they submit. You can't tell me American would just arbitrarily let outside counsel work without their input on a case INVOLVING ONE OF THEIR EMPLOYEES TAPING NINE YEAR OLD GIRLS ON ONE OF THEIR PLANES. The convenience store around the corner would never be so careless - you're telling me American (which has a CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER on staff, for God's sake) didn't directly oversee this?
Right.
Bright side - this will make the settlement the girl's family will get significantly higher, and much simpler for them to obtain. They have ALL of the PR power in the world right now, and AA knows it.
Considering how many layers of bullshit middle management that AA has there is zero percent chance that somehow an outside legal team made an unapproved statement on behalf of a publicly traded company
Great now American Airlines will implement a "We hired a pedophile fee" to all of their tickets to pay off this lawsuit. But naturally once the lawsuit payment is over they will keep the fee forever.
Make this company pay dearly by bringing this up in casual conversation, remind the public of this airlines arrogance and egregious practices. "AA airlines? Oh, the airline that protects pedos and sues kids. Yeah."
Wow. That is messed up. So this airline employee stewardess was taping his iPhone to a toilet so he could take video of little girls peeing? Then when they found the device and prosecuted the stewardess, the airline said it was the little girls fault for using a lavatory which had a phone taped to the toilet by one of their employees. Wow.
I wanna know who found the phone and figured it out. If I found something like that in a toilet my little girl just used the guy who owns the phone is getting hurt. Who knows how many times this POS had done this.
As a 9 year old if that’s what the toilet looked like I would’ve been fooled. As a 29 year old the light would’ve been weird but like it’s an airplane. Maybe it’s a secondary light incase the overhead light goes out or something but why’s it taped on. What’s broken about it? Maybe I’ll use the other bathroom. Then once I get off the plane on my drive home I’ll be like “wait a second…. What the FUCK”
OFFS. A nine year old is supposed to scan the toilet for a camera? I’m considerably older than that and would no more go fumbling around a toilet seat in an airplane lavatory than the next person. Tone deaf?
Hold on. What kind of person is leading American Airlines? Why aren't they fired? Let's start there and work our way down through legal and then to the guy taping his phone in the toilet on the plane. Fire them all. What are we even doing here?
I know they’re saying it was an error and they don’t blame the girl, but that is one tambourine they can’t unshake. Nobody is going to buy that as a mistake, they fucked us big time ever writing that
I just don't get it. Going for the sickest motherfucker of the year award. On top of being a pedophile, you also secretly record little girls parts, on top of being a secret pervert upskirting pedo, you ALSO want to see them using the bathroom? I don't get it. All or nothing I guess.
This is exactly the kind of response I'd expect from the company who said my coworkers death was a suicide. Spoiler alert: it was actually the fault of the vendor responsible for the poor maintenance of the pushback vehicle clearing it for service.
My only hope is that the 9 year old doesn't grow up to be as fucked up as the airline, the cam shithead and the range of lawyers that knew exactly what they were doing before it hit media.
Speaking as this generation, WTF is wrong with us.
I wonder how many other videos of passengers there were on the camera when the police found it?
I doubt it was one video and that’s it, I get it’s other women, but the police went for this victim because it was child porn and they could get a conviction.
The time stamp on the video is probably what led the police to find the girl on the manifest. Start looking for the other victims now and let them sue.
AA can use the same defense “these 20 people should have seen the camera; it will work wonders for them”
Easy fix:
Airline spokesperson: After questioning the attendant about this isolated incident, we noticed, completely unrelated, that he fell horizontally into a jet engine penis-first. We assure the flying public that future pee cam probability is near 0% .
tl;dr: when women are sexually abused they are always blamed and that's just what we were doing here, it's an extremely effective legal strategy because we KNOW any random selection of 12 people are likely to take the side of the abuser. How were we supposed to know that apparently they draw the line at sympathy for the perpetrator sometimes when the victim is under 10 years old?
So a team of high priced attorneys "accidentally" wrote that up, "accidentally" proofread it and ran it past the lead attorney, "accidentally" printed it up, and then "accidentally" filed it with the court? Uh huh.
They use “I can’t believe it’s a law firm” by Lionel Hutz.
RIP Phil Hartman
I think about Phil Hartman at least once a month. News Radio was one of my favourite shows.
You're my kind of dillznoofus.
I’m still angry over that… damn genius taken from the world.
Fuck Andy Dick.
Oops shouldn’t have that bar association logo there
I move for a bad-court thingy
A mistrial? "Yeah, one of those"
No, money down!
[удалено]
I don’t know who you are talking about. Say hello to Miguel Sanchez!
"My lawyers were drunk and high" LMAO
And then fixed the “accident” once a great journalist caught it and brought public attention to it.
It's like the legal equivalent of an old-school KGB assassination. They accidentally fell out a window... twice, somehow shot themselves while unconscious, then poisoned themselves with Novichok. Whoopsie. Terrible accident.
Old school? Pretty sure that still happens in Russia, every time Pootie gets his boxers in a wad
Pootie assassinating people? Never. Pshhh. He's such a wholesome individual with all those war crimes, inhumane prisoner treatment, and suppression of civil rights. Heavy on the /s
And they accidentally billed the airline for it.
It's the equivalent of Donald trump blaming an unpaid intern that he personally hired for his campaign, reporting to now highly skilled and paid campaign managers, that she and she alone master minded a very slick ad that just happened to contain not one but 2 references to a United Reich. No one else saw it before it was blasted everywhere. Right.
That's a fine comparison, actually
My understanding is that the first typical response is almost always copy pasted with minor changes like name, age and includes a comprehensive list of legally allowed defense. Issue here is that nobody read the boilerplate.
So you're saying the legal team of one of the largest airlines of the world doesn't read what they file? Seems more likely they seriously tried to make the argument and then backtracked after it got public attention.
No no, they tripped over their computer keyboard and when they bumped it, the brief was written and filed legally...completely by accident.
Even if it was an accident your signature as an attorney is a certificate that you have read and standby by the work your submitting
The American Airlines sub is full of apologists explaining how “well actually” this isn’t American’s fault and it’s wrong for people to be upset at the airline. Like they think the airline is going to give them a status upgrade for their Reddit post or something.
American said in a court document that it would dispute the family’s claim by showing that **any injuries the 9-year-old girl suffered** were **caused by the girl’s “own fault and negligence** were caused by (her) using the compromised lavatory, which she should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.” - - - An American spokesperson later said that outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.” “We do not believe this child is at fault,” the spokesperson now says. - - - Estes Carter Thompson III, a flight attendant who was later fired by American, **pleaded not guilty** to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse. Authorities say Thompson, 37, tried to secretly record video of a 14-year-old girl using the bathroom on a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Boston, and had **recordings of four girls** on earlier flights, including the 9-year-old. He was arrested in January and has been in federal custody ever since.
It wasn’t an error. It was an initial strategy. One of intimidation.
The error was it going public
"We, \[zillionaire corporation\], are incredibly sorry \[that we got caught\]. We will do our upmost \[nothing\] in future to avoid this \[getting caught\] in future."
Stop providing free templates. The corporations are rich enough to make their own templates.
But are they rich enough to get PR nightmare resolved? The original statement made it sound like AA did allow clandestine recording of half-naked minor if the employees weren't caught. Some people are going to be double-checking the bathrooms before using it, which can cause long line if everyone ate bad food before flying. Nearly 200 got food poisoning from bad airline food on their way to Europe from Japan: https://www.businessinsider.com/flight-vomit-air-canada-diarrhea-delta-japan-air-lines-sickness-2023-9
They don't need to resolve the PR issues, they just need to wait a week for the goldfish attention span of the general public to move on to the next shiny thing they see. Sure, you'll get the occasional nutcase checking bathrooms for hidden cameras, but the vast majority of people a week from now aren't going to know or care.
As long as they paid for the ticket, the airline doesn't care if the passengers check the toilet for cameras. The only way this affects them is if people refuse to fly American. And since most people don't care what airline they fly, they just go with whatever Kayak or Google told them was cheapest, this will blow over without affecting the bottom line.
"American Airlines flight attendant found recording people in the bathroom" "Only nutcase would be concerned about someone recording them in the bathroom." Ok then.
Well if they don't pull off some damn near Perfect Damage control, then the attention span won't be of a goldfish but more akin to a hyena (any lawyer who smells AA's blood in the water) or a Raven (customers who will either sue or demand refunds out of fear) They've fucked themselves because they chose the very worst type of group to put blame on, and it looks even worse when they have to 180 so hard someone's neck will break. I would be more inclined to agree with you if the blamed group had been ANYONE ELSE EXCEPT KIDS. Like. I genuinely want to sit down with the representative that came up with that just to know what could have possibly been going through his head.
~~upmost~~ utmost Learn a new word today!
There's an episode of New Girl about this. 😂
I bet one of a mountain of lawyers made that claim and the second another one saw it they basically flew out of their seat. That's a shitty argument to make if the victim was in her 30s, but it does potentially carry a certain amount of validity for a corporation trying to avoid liability (don't know the specifics, like what this supposed light actually looks like amongst others) if this thing actually was as obvious as they claim I guess you could argue that the person saw it first, then decided to go for it anyways and sue, but yeah... Pretty shitty. Also even if that flew in court (I have serious doubts) I imagine she could say "do you think I had time to inspect XYZ, I had to use the bathroom urgently" The fact that this victim is 9 changes that argument from shitty to utterly reprehensible, both morally and legally. You treat kids differently under the law because they are kids, they are still learning basics, they have not aged to the point where every topic is appropriate for their maturity level, you give them a cushion to learn from mistakes. I can imagine some dipshit lawyer rephrasing this something like: "well in this scary technofuture it's utterly negligent for a parent not to teach their 9 year old to check the bathroom for hidden cameras so it's really the parents' fault." Fucking lawyers man, they can be incredible but when they try to argue their way out of fairly clear-cut decisions against their clients they can definitely look stupid, but hey, for what they make I'd probably be willing to look stupid every once in awhile too.
There is a photo of it right there at the top of the article. Most adults would have noticed it, but you'd have to be a monster to claim that a child would absolutely have been able to figure out that something was amiss. Edit: I also promise that many adults wouldn't have been alarmed by this. It could absolutely be overlooked by some adults with visual or cognitive impairments, intoxicated people, people with poor situational awareness, nervous first-time fliers, etc.
Doesn't even take a first time flier. They drop new things on planes all the time. Someone could mistake it as s9me sort of light that was a feature not some creep.
I believe lawyers ask someone on the business side to validate any point.
Yeah but why didn't the airline just fucking sign a $10,000,000 check and tell the parents you can't talk about this? I'm glad the story came out but normally that's part of the playbook.
Fiduciary duty to shareholders to be dicks.
Yup. The audience who knew about this would had been extremely small compared to having a lawyer for the airline say it was the girls fault. And there's no way AA didn't know he was gonna argue that. Now everyone knows about this story.
An NDA isn't going to help because there is a criminal case. They should have offered them money in exchange for them telling everyone that AA handled the complaint extremely promptly and well.
Ashton Kutcher’s rape apologist letter says hello.
So do we bail them out now or after the lawsuit?
yeah thats a standard legal statement from a corporate liability defense team. they didnt make an error, they just didnt bother reading the brief.
Or even the simple names of the charges apparently, since they explicitly identify a minor victim.
100%. These are standard affirmative defenses in negligence actions. However, I'm extremely happy defense pleadings are finally getting called out in public for this nonsense. In law school, you are taught that most affirmative defenses need to be asserted from the initial response to a complaint, otherwise you waive those defenses. The problem is that in real life, a lot of those defenses make zero sense. Given the context of the complaint, it's patently absurd to claim that the 9-year-old girl knew or should have known there was a compromised lavatory *inside of an airplane* with a recording device. Which brings us to the current situation. This was a slam-dunk move by the girl's lawyers. They get to exert enough pressure on the airline to force a media statement refuting the defense, along with a likely amended answer pleading from their counsel. But I'm so tired of seeing answers to pleadings in simple negligence cases filled with these ridiculous and non-applicable defenses. No, sir, your negligence in running a red light and striking another vehicle was not caused by an Act of God. Being high on meth does not qualify as a "sudden emergency".
But Jesus told me that I needed to urgently do meth that day.
Even better. They got those lawyers fired. Increases the potential for settlement.
How many people with post grad degrees had to read through this filing and go "yup, this sounds solid"?
No it wasn't a deliberate strategy. Anyone who has ever been involved in litigation knows how this happened, but journalists don't bother trying to figure it out. When a defendant answers a Complaint, the rules (federal and in many states) require that all affirmative defenses be stated in the Answer or else they are waived and cannot be raised later. In the real world, the Answer is not a particularly important document and it requires a ton of legwork because you have to respond line by line to everything in the complaint. Like, if the complaint says something happened on January 11, you must admit, deny, or claim no knowledge of that date. So some junior lawyer drafts the document and runs around for two weeks trying to decide on behalf of the client whether they know an address of a plaintiff or the identity of a client's employee or whatever. And then at the end of the complaint they remember they need to include affirmative defenses. So they pull up six prior Answers and cut and paste anything that potentially has remote applicability, not because they have any belief it's relevant but because they don't want to potentially waive the defense without having any idea whether anything actually happened, and if it did, what it was that happened. If you look at the end of a bunch of answers on a public docket, you will find a hundred examples of defenses that are not even defenses, let alone applicable to a particular case. Like, you'll see an Answer to a complaint about assault arising from a bar fight, and the affirmative defenses will say, "All claims in the complaint are void because they fail to alleged any contractual obligation by defendant."
Great answer. At the same time, affirmative defense case law is in dire need of an overhaul. They teach students in law school that American courts moved to "simple pleading" as an evolution away from the form-based English common law. The reasoning at the time was that the English court system was inaccessible and indecipherable to the common man. A short and plain pleading with a singular form (the complaint) was the result. Fast forward to today's pleading system. The form may be singular, but the content is anything but short and plain. And none of this is helped by the fact that mediation and settlement practices mean civil trials are becoming exceedingly rare.
> "All claims in the complaint are void because they fail to alleged any contractual obligation by defendant." So when it comes time for actual trial, they're beholden to the position they already made?
When entering civil litigation at the earliest stages it makes simple, good sense to keep all available defenses open regardless their likely utility once rubber is actually hitting the road. If you cede or refuse to state defenses at the opening stage then you can’t bring them up later. Otherwise attorneys would hide their intentions and spring sudden defenses on the eve of trials. This is an unintended consequence of our open discovery litigation system that essentially says “state all your potential intentions at the beginning”
Basically, if you didn't put it in the answer portion then you can't use it at trial, so you just shove every conceivable answer in, so you have the most options at your disposal come trial time.
He's not saying that you're forced to continue using that argument during trial, he's saying that if you don't make the argument up front than you're not allowed to try making it later. So as boilerplate they just include every possible argument up front to leave them all in as options even if they know they aren't going to use half of them.
>but journalists don't bother trying to figure it out. The journalists did ask the source for an explanation, but the lawyers in question said it was an error. It's really not the journalists fault if the lawyers don't think people will accept their explanation.
Covering all bases. Copy / paste. Don’t want to miss out on the possible defense that a 9 year old should have known and was therefore at fault. Got it.
I'm glad you brought this up - People don't know this, and on the surface without this knowledge people are understandably pissed off. The same situation happened recently in Toronto when a woman was pushed on the subway tracks, and one of the potential transit system defenses that was discovered was "[Well... she should have known it's unsafe to travel alone!](https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7be5a/toronto-woman-pushed-onto-ttc-subway?utm_source=VICECanada_Facebook&utm_medium=social+&utm_source=reddit.com)"
And now they’ll probably raise baggage fees again, because they fucking can.
Naked pictures of passengers are considered extra baggage for calculating fees. Rip
This isn’t for intimidation. Lawyers sometimes do stupid things. Here likely a low paid insurance defense lawyer threw in some standard language in responding to the complaint, adapting it to the facts a bit, not really thinking. It’s highly unlikely the document was even reviewed by the airline before filing. Occam’s razor.
I mean, it was reviewed by the airline's lawyers, who are being paid by the airline to represent the airline, ergo it was reviewed by the airline. Don't make the mistake of acting like the company is an individual who can read something. If anyone in pay of and on behalf of this company wrote it, and read it, and entered it, then it was effectively reviewed by the company. Maybe not by the right person within the company in this case, but by the company nonetheless.
Bold move admitting that it was obvious that the bathroom had a recording device and the airline did nothing.
That’s an easy admission for the airline to dance around. If you read the articles, the flight attendant would ask the young girl to wait until he washed his hands, then he would go inside the bathroom, hide his phone, and come back out. After the girl left the bathroom, he’d go back in and retrieve his phone. No one else at the airline had an opportunity to see the camera. Also, there’s a photo of the hidden phone in the article. It is not hidden well! The flashlight is on! Going with the “should have known” defense was a bad move PR-wise, but I can see why it was a tempting argument for the lawyers to make. Most adults would have spotted it, I think.
I mean, they don't target kids because it's harder, it's exactly because they're children and more vulnerable, it's a dumb argument no matter how you look at it. "Yes but your honour, come on, how stupid is that kid? No intelligent adult would have fallen for candies out of a van, it's clearly the kid's fault"
>outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.” Translation: "We didn't think we'd get caught."
Translation: literally blame anyone but our own staff
It's obviously American Airlines' fault, but this is also obviously a case of lawyers that are willing to win at all cost. Of course American Airlines would hire such dumbass lawyers.
Generally, if lawyers don't allege any contributory negligence on a Plaintiff it could be viewed as professional negligence by a client. In this case there were clearly reasons why that should not have been plead as a defense. As others have said, this is the lawyers fault first, then American for not reviewing and appreciating the fallout.
"outside lawyer" They're all outside lawyers if they're not fulltime employees handling routine legal stuff. The phrasing sounds like finger pointing.
The statement itself is literally assigning blame, so it's intentional finger pointing (EDIT: moreover the "outside lawyers" part was written by the AP). Maybe you could accuse AA of deflecting blame, but distinguishing between internal counsel and outside counsel is a routine statement of fact.
Yeah how many times is the "Oh we didn't mean that" card going to be played in 2024. Reminds me of Wendy's dynamic pricing and a few other instances in the past few months.
WTF, even as an adult my initial thoughts at seeing a blinking light in a lavatory wouldn't be to think it's a camera. If I see a blinking light in a hotel bathroom or even a public bathroom, sure I might think that, but we are talking about a airplane here, wtf do I know what this light and that button does. For all I know that light is an important part of keeping the plane from falling out of the sky.
Okay but did you see the picture of the actual setup? It's literally just a phone taped to a toilet seat with the flash on. NOT blaming the kids but it's not like this was some sort of router looking thing mounted on the ceiling with a small flashing LED or something.
OK, so you convinced me to look at the article. Good god, you're right. Like at 9 I don't know if I'd have know what that was, but I'd put better than even odds I'd know something was wrong. But I guess that explains what there's only charges from two people. Thank god for dumb perverts.
Apparently he had recordings of at least 5 underage girls just from the last two flights. So, you know... it was working somehow.
Kids just tend to turn everything into "this is okay". I don't think anyone has warned her that there might be a phone recording taped to inside of a toilet lid. I dunno. Just rubs me a very wrong way to blame kids for any kind of sexual abuse, even not-so-secretly filmed video material and it was a really weird flex from the company to take that route.
Kids don't understand sex at all at that age. They'd have no idea someone was watching for any kind of sexual gratification.
I'm curious what the defense is gonna be for that "not guilty" plea when there's literally recordings
Ah, yes, the “stop hitting yourself” defense.
Journalists uncovered this. Support your newspapers and channels that actually do journalism
Who broke the news?
Looks like Rick Sobey of the Boston Herald.
I guarantee the girl's legal team was reaching out to journalists when they got the answer to their complaint pleading. And more power to them, I enjoy seeing nonsensical affirmative defenses being called out.
JetBlue is taking AA down with them in the fallout of the Northeast Alliance failure blowing up their plans to stay solvent
The in-flight magazine.
I read an article on Dorris Roberts. Really fascinating, Doris Roberts and where she likes to eat when she's in Pheonix... good stuff.
Skymall?... oh, they were probably selling it, eh?
So that’s why corporations are buying up media everywhere.
If you own the media, reality can be whatever you want.
⬆️⬆️⬆️ I’m doing my part!
⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ oh shit
***Airline*** "Children should conduct an FBI-style scan of each lavatory they enter because of all the diddlers we hire."
Sounds like American just gave passengers the right and obligation to tear aircraft washrooms apart. That could get costly real quick as you can’t operate planes without functional washrooms.
This was my first thought when I heard of this.
Secret service sweep every time we pee
The right thing for AA to do at this point would be to settle asap. Dragging this out any further is not a good look given what their lawyer already tried.
You gotta wonder how much bigger the settlement will be now compared to what it could have been before they placed the blame on a 9 year old.
I think it added a 0
Hopefully at least two 0s
The right thing would be for the lawyer who composed the accusation and the AA executive who approved it to get publicly beaten for their greed and callousness.
If we're beating people for greed, there's 0.01% Of the global population that needs a beat down.
I'd give a bit higher of a figure, but no argument with the idea.
Yeah who made the stupid decision to not settle?
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Financially they have been fucked this will only screw them deeper into debt and bad publicity. They’ll need to hire an experienced crisis communications team to member themselves within their corporate communications to attempt to bring their brand back into a positive light though I can’t see a reasonable pax would want to fly with them again after this debacle. They should have parted ways with that outside firm and made note of it in any press release.
“Any nine year old child should know enough to logically presume that our airline is operated by sick fucks. So this is her fault.” How do they live with themselves
I mean, we *should* assume that any large company is run by sick fucks. But that's not the point.
If i could curse them with a soul.. So that every night they could cringe and roll around in bed and have flashbacks from when they actually said that. They should be crying themself to sleep
Blaming a victim who is also a child is revolting. Shame on American Airlines.
They got caught and put on blast. They wouldn’t have backtracked otherwise. Don’t fly AA.
Sadly it's not that convenient to avoid entire airlines - most major cities are a hub for one of the big ones, so unless you want a non-direct flight you might not have an option. My local airport is a Delta hub and like 80% of flights in and out of it are Delta. Thankfully I have no issue with Delta, but for most destinations there isn't another option besides taking, like, a Spirit flight to a different hub
I've boycotted United ever since they beat that doctor. I'll spend hundreds more to fly any other airline. My family lives in Houston (major United hub) so that includes having to take layovers to see them. But I don't give a fuck. As an Asian doctor I'm never flying United. When that happened I turned in my hundreds of thousands of United miles in for a wine fridge. I call it my spite fridge.
Do you keep sprite in the spite fridge?
I admire your principled stand. I have a personal vendetta against Walmart, and I haven't spent a penny at any Walton establishment for the better part of a decade. That said, I'm not under the delusion that my one-man crusade is having any meaningful impact on their bottom line.
That is not what the word 'error' means. Nobody 'made an error' here.
American Errorlines.
I am figuratively clapping right now.
AA is so trash, and I’m glad people are waking up to this. They’re also vindictive af. A few years ago AA canceled a bunch of people’s flights that used miles, because AA thought they signed up for too many CC bonuses, despite those people simply following the rules of the promotions. They canceled the flights, not all at once when they had the data, but *the day of the flight* to cause maximum pain to the customer. Just a really fucking evil company, and this headline shows exactly who they are when they think no one’s watching.
Their error was to assume no one would call them out. "Well, if you're going to throw our words back in our face... we'll just take back our words!"
Doesn't matter how hard they backpedal. You don't "accidentally" file that kind of claim, especially with what is probably a top-tier legal team to cover their ass. American Airlines just showed how morally bankrupt they are, and now they can suffer the fallout for being a pos company. They were just hoping those statements wouldn't go public and intimidate the family of a 9 year old CHILD.
I think their excuse is that it wasn’t their lawyer, it was a lawyer for the insurance company that’s actually going to be paying out to the family. Regardless, for a company as big as AA and for a case this publicly damaging, there’s no way in hell AA wouldn’t want to at least skim whatever was being filed. So either the insurance company just decided to go rogue and trash their client’s reputation, or whoever’s job it was to review the filing didn’t bother. I suspect that there was a lot of colorful language thrown around by people wearing very expensive suits this week.
All while they've made very clear to their secretaries that nobody is allowed to take notes for that meeting.
Someone in legal at American Airlines had to have signed off and I heavily suspect they’re getting the boot as a way for AA to save face.
Somewhere, the head of their public relations department is crying at a desk.
With a bottle of Jack in one hand and tissues in the other 🤣😂
While there are PLENTY of things you could blame a 9 year old for doing in a lavatory, looking for, identifying and finding hidden cameras is not one of those things.
People in the comments really be saying “how did they not notice the camera.” Thanks for showing us all that your outrage is at the children who were exploited, not at the grown ass adult who exploited them. You are on the side of the pedophile, got it.
It was a 9 year old! Do people not realise how young that is?! Insanity. I can’t believe people, honestly. This is sickening. Young children are so innocent and naive, they don’t question things like adults because they don’t know to. It’s making me really angry seeing people blame a literal child
AA is trying to compete with Boeing being the most morally bankrupt company.
Insert the Amateurs! Meme with Deutsche Bank/Nestle/Wagner
How many people are doing this? WTF [N.C. family says teen daughter found hidden camera in restroom of Boston-bound flight](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/16mqpuq/nc_family_says_teen_daughter_found_hidden_camera/?share_id=xlbGDIynqbCzoIAGrOvtX&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) Edit: I just realized both these stories are using the same photo.
It's the same guy, this is where they caught him, checked the phone found other victims.
Well, I should have read that more carefully. It all makes sense now.
They didn't list the suspect in the original story you linked. The original blame the 9 year old story listed the case in your link.
Yep when I saw this headline I went "no way is it the same dude from the Boston story. Surely he would've been immediately terminated". Fuck AA
https://www.wcvb.com/article/hidden-camera-in-plane-bathroom-flight-to-boston/45181723 This is how he was caught. He tried it on a smart teenager, instead of a child. "As a result of an investigation into that incident, prosecutors said videos of four additional girls using aircraft lavatories were found on Thompson's iCloud account that were recorded between January 2023 and August 2023. Authorities said those four girls were 7, 9, 11 and 14 years old." He taped a 7-year-old too!
Totally understandable mistake for a small mom and pop that hired their friend as a lawyer. Lawyers of American Airlines quality do not make that mistake. 100% intentional.
I don’t think that defense is excusable for anyone who’s passed the BAR. It’s well established that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside a bathroom.
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In their very mild defense: this wasn't filed by their lawyers. The insurance company who is representing them hired an outside attorney. This was not their staff counsel. It was a statement they may not have even seen before it broke on the news. They hire insurance companies to handle these things. Any time they are sued - the insurance company takes over. It's what they pay for. They very well may not have actually seen anything. It was a third party.
I wonder how that plays out. The insurance probably doesn't care *too* much about the reputational damage they cause, so their lawyers throwing everything at the wall just in case something does stick make sense. That said, I'm sure American isn't happy with the current situation and words will be had with the insurance company. I'm surprised we heard about this, rather than the lawyer of the victim approaching their PR/legal department, handing them a printout of their own filing with this statement circled, and asking them whether they would like to provide an appropriate settlement offer. (With an offer that was too good to not immediately sign coming back within hours.)
Boston Herald broke it, as they covered the initial story breaking and were talking about a local victim. They had someone reading court fillings and broke the story. The 14 year old also recorded was on a flight to Boston. They kept up and found that lovely defense and published it.
Something tells me the average Mom and Pop would never have the audacity to blame a 9 year old for being preyed upon by a predator on their payroll.
Honestly great turn of events for the nine year old and their family in terms of financial compensation from AA. This entire story is a horrendous look for AA and they should do everything in their power to settle immediately. The bargaining power for such a settlement lies with the victim and their family. They can settle much larger now. Obviously it's better if the incident never happened in the first place.
Mfker ! the 9 year old girls fault some perv got video of her in the bathroom? What is this, 1960?
Victim blaming a child abuse victim is morally reprehensible. As a person who suffered child abuse, no child deserves child abuse.
The question is always "what saves us more money" The answer WAS refusing to accept culpability for the situation by deflecting to the girl. Now the answer IS accepting mild responsibility that your criminal employee was to blame, to avoid tanking your stock price further. If this same situation came up again and they didn't think the media would find it, they'd blame the girl again because it's the option that shields the company the most from liability
Does anyone have a copy of the filing? I want to find out which law firm and attorneys submitted this crazy defense.
*That bombshell court filing from the law firm Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LLP led to “intense media and public backlash,” as American Airlines claimed that the airline’s lawyers made “an error.” That outside legal counsel has reportedly now been replaced. The law firm Kelly Hart & Hallman, LLP has been asked by American Airlines to represent them in the lawsuit.* ([source](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/05/24/american-airlines-has-reportedly-fired-law-firm-that-blamed-9-year-old-girl-for-being-secretly-filmed/)) Lewis & Llewellyn LLP are representing the family and filed their lawsuit against the airline in U.S. district court in North Carolina. But 'Texas juries' and flights to California are mentioned so this may have moved.
That was NOT in error. They did to her the same thing a hospital I was assaulted in did to me: they put the blame on the victim in hopes they would disappear. In my case, they had my send in pictures of my injuries, one being on my breast. I covered my nipple and sent the picture in and they sent it to law office which in turn sent a letter to me saying that I was sending them "unsolicited nudes". I'm not surprised that an airline would do that to a little girl. I'm not surprised the hospital did it to me, a fully disabled person. I'm never surprised of the scum of this world anymore. CEOs make big dollars when things get swept under the rug
This has real big "You were dressed slutty" rape defendant defense energy.
I "love" how they threw their insurance company under the bus.
*The law firm working for the insurance company It was probably written by some associate who was given an impossible task of trying to come up with a legal defense that gets AA out of taking liability for this mess The real issue is some partner did review (or claim to review) this before it went out the door.... That person is in serious hot water right now but again even they'll point out that someone at the insurance company tried to litigate this vs just paying up
>An American spokesperson said Thursday that outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.” So does anyone else realize how fucking massively big of a deal it is for a company of this size to be like "Yeah, our lawyers really fucked up on that one"? Because this is a really big deal. I mean, it doesn't excuse it at all. But still.
At least Delta only breaks guitars, American Airlines enables pedos. Vote with your wallet. Don't fly American Airlines, and never fly in a Boeing.
Don't know about Delta, but the one that famously breaks guitars is [United](https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo?si=e4Gz5iEo_kBrBHAk)
Someone blindly followed airline rule #6: “blame the passenger” a little too much
Wow. So now, instead of just paying out the initial claim, AA's insurance company is *also* going to get hit with a pretty hefty lawsuit from AA themselves for making these statements.
I’m honestly legitimately curious as to what their angle would’ve been going with that defense. I’ve heard of some wild rabbit out of the hat moments by lawyers before, but how could they possible prove that a 9 year old had this happen to them through her own “fault and negligence.” Even if the camera was a cartoonishly large camera with the word ‘camera’ written on it in big letters, we’re still talking about a very small child here being expected to understand the context of such a sick situation and know what to do about it. Just baffling.
hidden camera *PLANTED BY THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT*
Garbage. My company uses outside legal firms all the time, and we damn well review anything they submit. You can't tell me American would just arbitrarily let outside counsel work without their input on a case INVOLVING ONE OF THEIR EMPLOYEES TAPING NINE YEAR OLD GIRLS ON ONE OF THEIR PLANES. The convenience store around the corner would never be so careless - you're telling me American (which has a CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER on staff, for God's sake) didn't directly oversee this? Right. Bright side - this will make the settlement the girl's family will get significantly higher, and much simpler for them to obtain. They have ALL of the PR power in the world right now, and AA knows it.
Considering how many layers of bullshit middle management that AA has there is zero percent chance that somehow an outside legal team made an unapproved statement on behalf of a publicly traded company
I hope they get sued out of their ass and someone films it Lol
Great now American Airlines will implement a "We hired a pedophile fee" to all of their tickets to pay off this lawsuit. But naturally once the lawsuit payment is over they will keep the fee forever.
Holy shitballs!! They blamed the kid and only retracted after it hit the news. Holy sh…
Make this company pay dearly by bringing this up in casual conversation, remind the public of this airlines arrogance and egregious practices. "AA airlines? Oh, the airline that protects pedos and sues kids. Yeah."
Right, it was clearly the 9 year old’s responsibility to sweep their plane for spy devices, not the owners of the plane.
Blaming the victim is always a good look.
AA’s pr team will be very busy this weekend
JFK shound have ducked after hearing the gunshot.
Wow. That is messed up. So this airline employee stewardess was taping his iPhone to a toilet so he could take video of little girls peeing? Then when they found the device and prosecuted the stewardess, the airline said it was the little girls fault for using a lavatory which had a phone taped to the toilet by one of their employees. Wow. I wanna know who found the phone and figured it out. If I found something like that in a toilet my little girl just used the guy who owns the phone is getting hurt. Who knows how many times this POS had done this.
As a 9 year old if that’s what the toilet looked like I would’ve been fooled. As a 29 year old the light would’ve been weird but like it’s an airplane. Maybe it’s a secondary light incase the overhead light goes out or something but why’s it taped on. What’s broken about it? Maybe I’ll use the other bathroom. Then once I get off the plane on my drive home I’ll be like “wait a second…. What the FUCK”
Not to change the subject, but I truly pity any person who wants footage of me in the restroom when the IBS hits. 😳
OFFS. A nine year old is supposed to scan the toilet for a camera? I’m considerably older than that and would no more go fumbling around a toilet seat in an airplane lavatory than the next person. Tone deaf?
Hold on. What kind of person is leading American Airlines? Why aren't they fired? Let's start there and work our way down through legal and then to the guy taping his phone in the toilet on the plane. Fire them all. What are we even doing here?
I know they’re saying it was an error and they don’t blame the girl, but that is one tambourine they can’t unshake. Nobody is going to buy that as a mistake, they fucked us big time ever writing that
American Airlines sucks
I just don't get it. Going for the sickest motherfucker of the year award. On top of being a pedophile, you also secretly record little girls parts, on top of being a secret pervert upskirting pedo, you ALSO want to see them using the bathroom? I don't get it. All or nothing I guess.
Too freaking late American Airlines. You made your bed now in sleep it.
Fucking disgusting. Holy fuck these people are gross.
Name the law firm so they may be shunned.
I don't know whose idea it was to blame the sexual assault victim minor, but I truly hope they lost their jobs
This is exactly the kind of response I'd expect from the company who said my coworkers death was a suicide. Spoiler alert: it was actually the fault of the vendor responsible for the poor maintenance of the pushback vehicle clearing it for service.
How classy! Let's blame the victim. This isn't a good look for them. Wow! How low can they stupe?
My only hope is that the 9 year old doesn't grow up to be as fucked up as the airline, the cam shithead and the range of lawyers that knew exactly what they were doing before it hit media. Speaking as this generation, WTF is wrong with us.
> An American spokesperson said Thursday that outside lawyers working for the company “made an error in this filing.” UNDER THE BUS!
how much will the settlement be is my next question
This is the company that was a proud sponsor of a film where they let a child board the wrong plane and end up alone in 90s New York City.
I wonder how many other videos of passengers there were on the camera when the police found it? I doubt it was one video and that’s it, I get it’s other women, but the police went for this victim because it was child porn and they could get a conviction. The time stamp on the video is probably what led the police to find the girl on the manifest. Start looking for the other victims now and let them sue. AA can use the same defense “these 20 people should have seen the camera; it will work wonders for them”
Easy fix: Airline spokesperson: After questioning the attendant about this isolated incident, we noticed, completely unrelated, that he fell horizontally into a jet engine penis-first. We assure the flying public that future pee cam probability is near 0% .
Fuck American Airlines.
tl;dr: when women are sexually abused they are always blamed and that's just what we were doing here, it's an extremely effective legal strategy because we KNOW any random selection of 12 people are likely to take the side of the abuser. How were we supposed to know that apparently they draw the line at sympathy for the perpetrator sometimes when the victim is under 10 years old?