Firing Flight Attendants Who Watched iPad Could Cost United $2 Million

Earlier this year, after a jury awarded $800,000 to veteran United flight attendants Ruben Lee and Jeanne Stroup, fired in 2013 for watching a video on an iPad for approximately fifteen minutes and failing to wear aprons during one flight, attorney David Lane, who represents them, predicted that this dollar amount could eventually double.

Turns out his forecast may have been conservative. This week, U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Daniel upped the damage award by nearly $620,000, taking the total over $1.4 million. And that doesn't include attorneys' fees for Lane's firm, Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, which, by Lane's calculation, will likely add at least another $500,000. That would bring the award to around $2 million.

The key to this boost, Lane says, is that Daniel found United's sacking of flight attendants with more than seventy years of combined experience to have been "willful." And that single word could prove plenty expensive.

Speaking to Westword in March about the case, Lane made the same charge. "We're not alleging United has a pattern and practice of age discrimination," he conceded. "But in this particular case, they tried to make an example out of a couple of older flight attendants, and it backfired on them."

Read more: https://www.westword.com/news/firing-flight-attendants-who-watched-ipad-could-cost-united-2-million-10918602