A man on an overbooked United Airlines flight was forcibly removed from his seat and dragged through the aisle on Sunday, and video of the anguished protests by him and other passengers spread rapidly on Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics. A police officer involved in the episode has been placed on leave, the authorities said.

People should make a big deal of this, but I really hope the government stays out of it. That guy's future lawyer and the free market will dispense plenty of justice.

Technically, the legal system is the government. If that guy's lawyer gets any justice, the government will be involved.

You mean you hope the legislatures stay out of it.

People should make a big deal of this, but I really hope the government stays out of it. That guy's future lawyer and the free market will dispense plenty of justice.

People should make a big deal of this, but I really hope the government stays out of it. That guy's future lawyer and the free market will dispense plenty of justice.

Not seeing a problem here. The airline was fully within its rights.

Sorry... this is Hellfire, not enough arguing in this thread yet. There's a rule, no ten civil posts in a row.

United is very much in the too big to fail camp and got bailed out in 2003, they don't have much to worry about from market pressures. Did anyone else read their creepy non-apology? They don't care.

"We're Altering Your Seating Arrangements. Pray We Don't Alter Them Any Further."

CHICAGO, IL – Local patient Sam Johnson, who is being “taken care of” at Mercy Hospital, has not been able to leave for 7 months. Internist Dr. Kyle Redding has failed miserably at placement.

“He is the literal definition of a rock,” administrator Janell Robbins told reports. Besides the inability for Robbins to know the difference between literally and figuratively, she has been unable to place Johnson in any kind of step-down care.

“We are literally at the end of our ropes around here,” Robbins continued. “The only care Mr. Johnson has received in the last 2 months was a blood transfusion, which was eventually linked to daily blood draws that were never stopped.”

A blessing for Robbins literally came from the sky when United Airlines forcefully “re-accommodated” a physician. “If they can drag a doctor off the plane, they can surely get rid of Mr. Johnson,” Robbins schemed. “Heck, I can’t even get rid of some of these doctors around here, United Airlines has something special.”

United Airlines jumped on the chance to to remove someone. Unfortunately for Mercy Hospital, United was too rough on Sam Johnson and he suffered multiple blows to the head, body, and left arm and therefore had to be readmitted. Let’s hope Mr. Johnson makes a speedy recovery so United can get another crack at it!!!

Well, the problem here is that the free market is already unable to operate because the airline industry has huge barriers to entry, is exempt from anti-trust rules, and has quasi-police powers over passengers, all of which has resulted in an oligopoly and a massive imbalance of bargaining power between the airlines and the passengers. Most of that is unavoidable given the nature of air transportation, though, so what the government should do is craft the rules to at least correct the imbalance to some degree so market forces can actually operate more normally. On this issue, for example, one way to do that would be to establish - by regulation or judicial decision - that contract clauses giving the airline the right to bump passengers at will are per se unenforceable. The effect of that rule would be to actually increase the ability of market forces to operate again because airlines that overbook would have to bargain with passengers they want to bump and keep increasing the offering price until some passenger accepts and trades back their seat.

Really, this is part of a much bigger problem with modern contract law. Most of the principles underlying contract law were developed in an age when agreements really were negotiated on a semi-personal level, but that just isn't the case anymore. Most contracts people agree to these days are prepared by the side with all the bargaining power and then "offered" to the other party on a take-it-or-leave-it basis and then "accepted" by a click-through link or even an implied acceptance-by-use. There's no actual agreement being negotiated, so the terms are massively one-sided, and it's really just an outdated legal fiction to pretend otherwise. The law does recognize this to some degree by theoretically disfavoring these so-called "contracts of adhesion", but in practice that doesn't mean much. I think the answer is for the law to start putting some teeth into that theoretical disfavor by actually applying the doctrine of "unconscionability" much more frequently and aggressively when it's a contract of adhesion like this. That will at least put some pressure on the companies using these contracts to draft reasonable terms rather than giving themselves the right to utterly screw their customers if and when they feel like it.

Dear United: When in a PR hole, the best response is NOT to keep digging.

Yeah they probably should have learned that after the leggings incident.

The CEO doesn't appear to have empathy. Or the capacity to learn.



Notice how he's not apologizing for a customer getting the **** beaten out of him, but for having to "re-accommodate" people. Like having to deal with people is stressful and frustrating to him.