Pilots streamed airplane bathroom video to cockpit

Tommar98 said:
Wow - now people who benefit from ADA regulations are bad
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No, that's not what he said at all. He didn't suggest that all ADA claims are a scam. We know for a fact that some ADA lawsuits are not based on any real grievance.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Causes of action are 1. Invasion of Privacy, 2. Intentional or Reckless Infliction of Emotional Distress, 3. Sexual Harassment, 4. Retaliation (with respect to SWA)

Seems like they could get somewhere with #2, though the jury might thing the whole lawsuit is a joke.

As to 3 and 4, SWA has not filed a response yet.
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As to Count I, if there was no filming of her, then there would be no such invasion.

As to Count II, in my state (not sure what the law applicable to this case is) intentional infliction of emotional distress would not be actionable for this kind of alleged prank. It has to be "outrageous" conduct. One example upheld as meeting the definition is brandishing a gun. But, these types of standards are subject to creep, so over time, they can be eroded to the point where a judge will permit anything to get to the jury as a "question of fact" that would never have been allowed when the tort was first dreamed up by a judge.

As to Count III, there has to be some discrimination against her based on a protected characteristic, such as her sex. Rude behavior isn't enough. Can she prove they pulled this on her because she was a female? I dunno. But that is what she would have to do to win. I didn't read the complaint, but from this thread I haven't seen any evidence that they pulled this prank on her because she was female.

As to Count IV, I got nothin' to add because I don't know enough of the facts.
 
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MuseChaser said:
And I fail to see how there NOT being a camera in the lav and the whole thing being a joke falls into any possible category of being sue-worthy.
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That's the issue. Somewhere we have gotten the bad idea that bad manners should give rise to a cause of action.
 
If you are joking WITH someone, and both sides laugh then its a joke, like if the pilots and the stew were good friends. But if you are making the stew the butt of the joke, and you know it is distasteful to her, then its bullying, not joking. People have a right to have their working environment a fair place for all. Would the pilots like it if the stew brought them their food and there were bugs in it? Could anyone at a school these days set off a firecracker as a joke?
 
Bill Greenwood said:
If you are joking WITH someone, and both sides laugh then its a joke, like if the pilots and the stew were good friends. But if you are making the stew the butt of the joke, and you know it is distasteful to her, then its bullying, not joking. People have a right to have their working environment a fair place for all. Would the pilots like it if the stew brought them their food and there were bugs in it? Could anyone at a school these days set off a firecracker as a joke?
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Not the same. And I disagree with your premise of what a joke and bullying is.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
If you are joking WITH someone, and both sides laugh then its a joke, like if the pilots and the stew were good friends. But if you are making the stew the butt of the joke, and you know it is distasteful to her, then its bullying, not joking. People have a right to have their working environment a fair place for all. Would the pilots like it if the stew brought them their food and there were bugs in it? Could anyone at a school these days set off a firecracker as a joke?
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Interesting to hear someone talk about a modern sense of fair treatment/respect of coworkers while at the same time referring to flight attendants as ‘stews’.
 
I ve probably know as many "stews" as you have. Maybe the difference is that I never thought the word stewardess, or the job of being a stewardess was anything to be ashamed of, therefore when I am abbreviating I may use '"stews", and it seems pretentious to come up with "Flight Attendant". I could have written FA. You can make most anything, no matter how ridiculous, into trying to blame someone if that's what you want. For instance, I love Chinese food, and my Son says it shows disrespect to refer to it as Oriental food ,we are now supposed to call it Asian food. When I bought these rugs they were called Oriental rugs by the seller, are they now Asian rugs? When I was growing up, the term was most often "colored people" and that is what the organization, NAACP is, and you can go back and listen to any Dr. King speech and that's the term he used. Nothing at all wrong with the term. But now the ultimate nonsense, we are supposed to say "African American" for people who have never been anywhere near Africa. I was at the CAF show in Midland when the 2 DC snipers were on tv and watching it with a young "African American airman which is as silly as calling me an English American. So we weren't supposed to say "colored people" but the preferred term was "people of color". Try to make some logic out of that.
How about this, we should never refer to that part of a prison as death row, lets call it "wing of eternal sleep."
 
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Bill Greenwood said:
But if you are making the stew the butt of the joke, and you know it is distasteful to her, then its bullying, not joking.
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I would agree with that. But I am not sure that this necessarily made the flight attendant the butt of the joke. It's not like they necessarily were ridiculing her. Some people might have taken this as good-natured ribbing, found that it was funny themselves, and laughed it off. The nature of these types of pranks is such that you can't ask the other person if it is ok to prank them in this particular manner. So, the prankster has to use their own judgment. Unfortunately, it's not always received as intended. This is why pulling these pranks in the work place are frowned upon. But, sue worthy? I would want to see more evidence of sexual harassment (which is, obviously, not ok) before someone runs to the court house.
 
I know what I'm about to say may come off as neanderthal in our current state of societal (de)evolution, and I am NOT in ANY way condoning sexual abuse or harassment... just questioning what really defines it. An anecdote or two..

Years ago, when I was working as a musician in a house band in Lake Placid at the Lake Placid Club Resort (before they bull-dozed that amazing place... sigh), one of the patrons at the bar offered to buy me a drink during a band break. This was a commonplace thing folks did to express their enjoyment of the band.. I didn't think anything of it. While chatting with this fellow, I learned he was a Canadian customs officer. During the conversation, out of the blue, he mentioned he was gay, would like to ..umm.... well, nevermind..., and he grabbed my junk lightly. I, not quite as lightly, gave him what looked like a light-hearted backfist punch to the chest to the rest of the bar (not enough to hurt him, but enough to let him know not to do it again)... then we proceeded to have an enjoyable chat for the rest of our break. Nice enough guy... just crass and misread things, I guess (I was married at the time... to my wife... and still am). No harm done, I wasn't scarred in any way, and I certainly didn't sue him.

As a youngish public school teacher in upstate NY back in the late 80s, a 50-ish female teacher used to pinch my butt in the teacher's lounge... in front of other colleagues. Everyone would get a kick out of it, and I didn't care. Eventually, it got a little old so I pinched her butt back once. We all laughed about that, too. It all stopped after that, though. Again.. no one cared, no one got sued, no one was harmed.

My wife feels exactly the same way about all of this. If someone whistles at her, or gets too touchy-feely, she tells'em to knock it off, shoves'em away, or, if deserved, slaps'em and moves on with her life. She doesn't understand why folks don't just stand up for themselves, rather than sue or have someone arrested for small, admittedly stupid stuff. My wife is 5' even, and not much over 100 pounds... she's not exactly an MMA fighter.. but she is attractive, cute as a button, and smart.

If someone says, "Stop," "Don't do that," "I don't appreciate that," "that's not funny," or anything else that clearly indicates to the offender that certain behavior, actions, or speech are not welcome, and the offender CONTINUES, then that is harassment and indefensible. Abuse, to me, rises to a level where physical or psychological harm is done. Obviously, we all have different levels of what we consider physical or psychological harm. Mine is admittedly pretty high, and I'm not suggesting my personal definition/threshhold of "abuse" is appropriate for everyone. However, the terms harassment and abuse (among others) have become used so much that some use them to mean simply something they disagree with or find distasteful. By those definitions, several of our forum members are abusive and harassing in almost every post. Where is the line?

"Unwelcome sexual advances"... how in the world do you know IN ADVANCE if an advance is welcomed? "Excuse me, miss... would you be open to a sexual advance of some kind? I certainly wouldn't want to offend you. Do you have an application I could fill out?" Yes, there are boorish, classless sexual advances, and incredibly romantic ones, and everything in between... but how do you know if any of them are wanted in advance? Such stupid.

If the flight attendant in question was traumatized by this prank, enough so that her life was changed and she deserves compensation beyond an apology, then, unfortunately, she probably had suffered damage earlier in her life. I am NOT making light of that. Perhaps, if someone is carrying difficult past burdens and whose sensitivity levels are higher than one would generally assume, the appropriate thing to do would be to make your colleagues aware in advance. "Hi, my name is Ralph. I've had some tough times in my life, and as a result I really struggle with (off color humor, comments on my looks, whatever...). If you folks could keep this in mind, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks, and great to meet you!" No one would think less of anyone, AND everyone would know in advance what to avoid.

I have a twisted sense of humor, and I dial it up and down dependent upon location and the people I'm with. Everyone once in a great while, I make a bad decision and overstep someone's humor threshhold, sincerely apologize, and don't do that again with that person. As long as it's witty and not ill-intentioned, I find some really awful things funny.... because they are said to be FUNNY. Not to be harmful. Yes, humor at other people's expense is a fine line... but humans have been practical joking each other since Og put a tarantula in Groc's sleeping area. I've been on both ends... a zillion times... and have never been harmed, nor harmed another. Never would. Of course, I would have no way of knowing unless the person I harmed actually told me. I'm hoping that, out of mutual respect, we can all just tell each other, instead of law enforcement or HR, if we feel harmed.
 
Good God. Make it stop.

If this one doesn't work, maybe she can spill some coffee in her lap at a McDonalds drive-thru.
 
If they really did put a camera in the restroom, then its not just a harmless joke. It means the privacy of not only the stews, but hundreds of passengers has been invaded. That's way over the boundaries. And since children use the restroom, it is likely a felony in the way of child porn.

Now if in some way they just put some image on their laptop and it really wasn't from a camera, that might be a little different. but still I think anyone with half a brain is going to see that is not a welcome joke.
What if the pilots had a really difficult flight, they were late getting to the plane due to traffic, and had a turbulent flight and made a poor landing. And then the lady comes into the cockpit and says. "Hey, I don't want to worry you but I heard those guys in row 2 talking and I think they are FAA inspectors. Is that a good joke? What if she gets her photo taken hugging one of the pilots and then says, "Hey, I'll make a copy for your wife too." Is that a funny joke?
It works both ways. And I love humor also. As for as "gay" flirting, I have never had that really happen to me. We have gay ski week here, and once I was skiing some precise turns in perfect snow right under the lift and a guy yelled down, "Perfect turns". They don't seem to bother people here and rather have a big time amoung themselves.
By they way, I don't know which runs she boards, but I never had Darall Hannah compliment my skiing.
 
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By the way, anyone who uses the case of the hot coffee at Mcdonalds as customer sue happy is full of it, and I don't mean coffee. The three simple facts were McD was heating coffee to 175 * in a flimsy cup , obviously dangerous, they knew of previous cases where customers had been burned, and ignored it, and the elderly lady suffered 2nd degree burns to her lap and thighs, very painful and no joke.

There is a restaurant , Benihana which cooks Japanese food right at the table, would it be ok if they were burning customers?
 
Bill Greenwood said:
If they really did put a camera in the restroom, then its not just a harmless joke. It means the privacy of not only the stews, but hundreds of passengers has been invaded. That's way over the boundaries. And since children use the restroom, it is likely a felony in the way of child porn.
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Agreed... that would be illegal, and cross every line imaginable. That's not what happened here. There was no camera in the rest room, at least as I gathered from reading the various articles about this case.

Bill Greenwood said:
Now if in some way they just put some image on their laptop and it really wasn't from a camera, that might be a little different. but still I think anyone with half a brain is going to see that is not a welcome joke.
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Practical jokes are rarely "welcomed" by the person on the receiving end. This wasn't a very nice one, granted, but does it really rise to level of abuse?

Bill Greenwood said:
What if the pilots had a really difficult flight, they were late getting to the plane due to traffic, and had a turbulent flight and made a poor landing. And then the lady comes into the cockpit and says. "Hey, I don't want to worry you but I heard those guys in row 2 talking and I think they are FAA inspectors. Is that a good joke?
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YES! And a perfect way for the flight attendant to return the joke. Perfect.

Bill Greenwood said:
What if she gets her photo taken hugging one of the pilots and then says, "Hey, I'll make a copy for your wife too." Is that a funny joke?
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Absolutely. It's only "unfunny" if she actually sends the picture and unjustly accuses the guy. Let him stew and sweat for a minute or two, then everyone laughs. Great bit.

Bill Greenwood said:
It works both ways. And I love humor also. As for as "gay" flirting, I have never had that really happen to me. We have gay ski week here, and once I was skiing some nice turns in perfect snow right under the lift and a guy yelled down, "Perfect turns". They don't seem to bother people here and rather have a big time amoung themselves.
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Flirting is flirting. Straight, gay, whatever. Some folks are very shy, some are totally tactless, and everything in between. Being stupid and offensive should only rise to the level of criminality if it continues AFTER clearly being told to stop.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
By the way, anyone who uses the case of the hot coffee at Mcdonalds as customer sue happy is full of it, and I don't mean coffee. The three simple facts were McD was heating coffee to 175 * , obviously dangerous, they knew of previous cases where customers had been burned, and ignored it, and the elderly lady suffered 2nd degree burns to her lap and thighs, very painful and no joke.

There is a restaurant , Benihana which cooks Japanese food right at the table, would it be ok if they were burning customers?
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At Benihana, they don't let the customers handle the cooking, so they aren't at risk until the food gets handed to them. Pretty sure it's pretty hot, there, too. Isn't some meat supposed to be cooked to 165 degrees?

I'm not gonna look it up, but didn't she have it in her lap, driving, in her car? If so, there you go. Again, not gonna look it up, but the original award was something stupendously outrageous,if I recall correctly; and "second degree burns" sounds a lot more impactful than "I got some blisters when I slopped hot effing coffee on myself."

I do know it's painful, as my wife did it to herself; she liked to sit on the floor and do her makeup, her Styrofoam cup tucked in 'twixt her thighs. Perhaps we should have sued the cup maker, as they must have known an adult human could accidentally pop the top off the cup, because it flexes too much?

We'll have to disagree on this one; in my mind, someone hands you a cup of liquid you certainly know is hot, though likely at least 37 degree below boiling, perhaps less, and you carelessly mishandle it enough to blister yourself.
 
We have a very popular bakery here and at times the line gets long. Sometimes and all too often some people start pushing from the back. By some people I am referring mostly to a too often true sterotype from the SE part of the country. I don't see this behavior from people from Texas. When I tell the person that there are people in front of me and I am not going to push them, I almost always get a version of this lie, "Oh, I didn't realize I was doing it."
The behavior was wrong before I said anything. Hard to believe how some people can behave when all that is at stake is few minutes to wait for a cookie. Guess that's how they were raised.
By the way, this bakery serves hot chocolate and coffee, and in 40 years they have been in business I have never seen or heard of a customer being injured.
 
Eric Brunelle said:
If you need to tell someone that you were only telling a joke, or you were only joking - then it is neither a joke nor is it funny.
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That is an incorrect assessment. Because pick a comedian any comedian someone's going to find him funny someone is not going to find him funny does not mean that he's not telling jokes.

Unless of course you're trying to say that you are the judge and jury on what is and isn't a joke for the rest of the world. In which case you must be an absolute blast at parties.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
We have a very popular bakery here and at times the line gets long. Sometimes and all too often some people start pushing from the back. By some people I am referring mostly to a too often true sterotype from the SE part of the country. I don't see this behavior from people from Texas. When I tell the person that there are people in front of me and I am not going to push them, I almost always get a version of this lie, "Oh, I didn't realize I was doing it."
The behavior was wrong before I said anything. Hard to believe how some people can behave when all that is at stake is few minutes to wait for a cookie. Guess that's how they were raised.
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Just to be clear, Bill, I'm not defending boorish behavior... I agree with a lot of what you've written in this thread. It'd be great if some folks were a bit more aware of how their actions affect others. My beef is with the leap to criminal and civil prosecution for actions and words that are much more appropriately dealt with at a personal level.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
We have a very popular bakery here and at times the line gets long. Sometimes and all too often some people start pushing from the back. By some people I am referring mostly to a too often true sterotype from the SE part of the country. I don't see this behavior from people from Texas. When I tell the person that there are people in front of me and I am not going to push them, I almost always get a version of this lie, "Oh, I didn't realize I was doing it."
The behavior was wrong before I said anything. Hard to believe how some people can behave when all that is at stake is few minutes to wait for a cookie. Guess that's how they were raised.
By the way, this bakery serves hot chocolate and coffee, and in 40 years they have been in business I have never seen or heard of a customer being injured.
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Wow, what a coincidence! I experienced this at a bakery in Arlington VA last week! I was rude in return, as in "You need to stop bumping me. Now. I'm not telling you again." and I got the "It's crowded, and I didn't mean to - you need to chill". " I asked him if his feet were being remotely controlled by someone else. He kept mumbling to his friend after I turned away, but hey, free speech, and I didn't escalate it further.
 
The McDonald's coffee suit was a fraud and it was eventually thrown out after evidence was found to refute all the claims made by the "poor old lady."

"There's a sucker born every minute," according to a famous huckster...

It seems the motivation for some people to claim harassment and assault is not because they were harmed, but because they want you to change your behavior and be punished. That seems to be a popular notion nowadays among the intolerant sub-society...
 
This joke goes back to at least the 727, if not farther. Kind of pathetic that it wound up as a lawsuit.
 
EdFred said:
That is an incorrect assessment. Because pick a comedian any comedian someone's going to find him funny someone is not going to find him funny does not mean that he's not telling jokes.

Unless of course you're trying to say that you are the judge and jury on what is and isn't a joke for the rest of the world. In which case you must be an absolute blast at parties.
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I find many comedians funny, some I don't think are funny - personal preference. But if you are pulling a "joke" on someone, make sure you know them well enough to know their sense of humor. If they don't think it's a joke, maybe you end up in the same predicament as those pilots.
 
IK04 said:
The McDonald's coffee suit was a fraud and it was eventually thrown out after evidence was found to refute all the claims made by the "poor old lady."
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That is not even close to the final outcome. Liebeck was awarded some large amount for damages, McD's appealed, and it was eventually settled out of court. This is not the clear-cut case of a frivolous lawsuit some would have you believe.

Nauga,
troped
 
The Mcdonalds suit had a verdict rendered by the jury , it darn sure was not thrown out as any fraud. My son is an attorney and I'll ask him to look up the case tonight. The damages were hundreds of thousands of $$ I am fairly sure, think I read of it in Consumer Reports
So I just looked it up. The facts, the jury awarded the 73 year old woman $2.7 MILLION DOLLARS, for 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and she was parked not driving. Upon appeal the judge got the McD to agree to immediately pay $640,000 and end the case without an appeal. One reason the jury probably was so punitive was McD had over 700 previous complaints and refused to do anything about it, the coffee was 180 to 190 degrees. The multibillion $$ company had originally offered the lady the generous sum of $800. She had only originally asked for $100k.

Ik 04 you may not like the verdict or you are connected to McD, but lets not lie about the legal facts.
 
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Sundancer said:
At Benihana, they don't let the customers handle the cooking, so they aren't at risk until the food gets handed to them. Pretty sure it's pretty hot, there, too. Isn't some meat supposed to be cooked to 165 degrees?

I'm not gonna look it up, but didn't she have it in her lap, driving, in her car? If so, there you go. Again, not gonna look it up, but the original award was something stupendously outrageous,if I recall correctly; and "second degree burns" sounds a lot more impactful than "I got some blisters when I slopped hot effing coffee on myself."

I do know it's painful, as my wife did it to herself; she liked to sit on the floor and do her makeup, her Styrofoam cup tucked in 'twixt her thighs. Perhaps we should have sued the cup maker, as they must have known an adult human could accidentally pop the top off the cup, because it flexes too much?

We'll have to disagree on this one; in my mind, someone hands you a cup of liquid you certainly know is hot, though likely at least 37 degree below boiling, perhaps less, and you carelessly mishandle it enough to blister yourself.
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Since we're not talking about the pilots or the stew anymore, McDonald's was deliberately serving coffee hotter than industry standards knowing that it was likely to cause burns. And the jury's substantial award was something like two days' worth of McDonald's coffee profits. It sells a lot of coffee.
 
IK04 said:
refute all the claims made by the "poor old lady."
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FWIW: Having read a portion of court transcripts, the coffee was hot enough to physically weld (burn) a portion of her anatomy closed. Hardly refutable. The reason the coffee was brewed to such an excessive temperature (190) was to ensure the coffee was hot once they got to their destination.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
Ik 04 you may not like the verdict or you are connected to McD, but lets not lie about the legal facts.
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Not sure he was lying, in the sense of deliberately making false statements. These sort of urban legends get started and then spread around the Internet. If one doesn’t examine them critically and check them and then repeats them, one ends up misstating the facts.

Thanks for checking the facts and informing us.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
The Mcdonalds suit had a verdict rendered by the jury , it darn sure was not thrown out as any fraud. My son is an attorney and I'll ask him to look up the case tonight. The damages were hundreds of thousands of $$ I am fairly sure, think I read of it in Consumer Reports
So I just looked it up. The facts, the jury awarded the 73 year old woman $2.7 MILLION DOLLARS, for 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and she was parked not driving. Upon appeal the judge got the McD to agree to immediately pay $640,000 and end the case without an appeal. One reason the jury probably was so punitive was McD had over 700 previous complaints and refused to do anything about it, the coffee was 180 to 190 degrees. The multibillion $$ company had originally offered the lady the generous sum of $800. She had only originally asked for $100k.

Ik 04 you may not like the verdict or you are connected to McD, but lets not lie about the legal facts.
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There were other legal actions after the settlement. I guess the records were sealed to protect the stupid...
 
In case you haven't noticed, this is a thread about inappropriate practical jokes.

On the internet, everything you hear is true.

Who's the suckers now?
 
Peter. I'm sort of old fashioned about truth and my integrity. Really we can't all be great football players or singers or stock pickers, but we can have our word mean something.
When someone writes something about a legal case as if it was fact, they should either make sure its true or if they don't know, don't write it, if not, t being mistaken or alternate facts, that's just a plain old falsehood, and people don't just accidentally get these things wrong, they do it when it supports their prejudice or false claim, like a birther story.
Would I be just "mistaken" if I alleged that the woman died from the burns or that an infant was burned when the employee handed the coffee out and spilled it on the child?

I had an avation relatedlegal case one Lawyerig name in business circles, and opened with a claim that I landed the wrong place. He was pretty smug, until we brought out the series of photos of my landing which were real clear. He didn't have much to say after that.
 
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So, did the ''alleged video'' show the captains junk.?? Did it show an actual stream of pee.??
 
it's pretty funny.

Stupid people trick stories almost always start with "A man from Florida..."

...and

Stupid pilot trick stories almost always start with "A southwest pilot..."

it's as if the southwest pilots are as low-class as their passengers.
 
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timwinters said:
...
Stupid people tricks almost always start with "A man from Florida..."
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Hmmm.. I thought they usually started with "Hold my beer... watch this!"..

And, no exciting stories ever start with, "So, my buddies 'n' me were hangin' out, eatin' a salad..."
 
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