Continental Airlines says nine pilots got “paper” divorces from their spouses and then remarried after securing lump-sum distributions from the carrier’s retirement plan. Federal regulators have in the past indicated that plan administrators should disallow sham transactions intended to qualify for tax-favored retirement benefits. Two pilots have now countered with charges that the airline invaded their privacy when it investigated whether their divorces were really what they seemed. [Houston Chronicle and followup]
Posts Tagged ‘airlines’
Mandatory employee breaks, cont’d
Evil HR Lady has more thoughts on the United Airlines incident, along with some kind words for this website.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: United Airlines customer service
There is a horrifying tale on Consumerist about a family that missed a flight to visit their dying mother in the hospital because a ticket agent refused to help them because it was time for her break. What the story doesn’t tell you, and what none of the commenters seem to realize, is that it’s the trial lawyers that put United Airlines in that situation. Oregon labor laws California labor laws require workers to be permitted to take breaks; plaintiffs’ attorneys have made a multi-million-dollar cottage industry out of class action lawsuits against employers where customer service was permitted to take priority and workers occasionally didn’t take their breaks. (In California, the penalty for failing to provide a ten-minute break is an hour of pay.) To avoid this, the employer has to enforce the break period stringently, because they can potentially be held liable even if the employee voluntarily avoids the break.
Claim: $1 million for missing XBox
Yale student Jesse Maiman says US Airways lost his XBox videogame console and he thinks $1 million would make a fair exchange. [Cincinnati Enquirer]
March 3 roundup
- “Illinois trial lawyers take a swing at youth baseball” [Curt Mercadente, Illinois Civil Justice League]
- Luzerne County, Pa. scandal: “Court Filing Says Former Judge Met With Felons Twice a Month” [Legal Intelligencer]
- You’d think Obama could find some person without major-league trial lawyer connections for the cabinet seat on health, but you’d be wrong [Wood, PoL, on Kathleen Sebelius, and earlier on Tom Daschle]
- Remember the many times when town officials do or say something arguably racist and the U.S. Department of Justice opens an investigation? Doesn’t seem to happen with the Detroit City Council [Nolan Finley, Detroit News]
- Copyright enforcement doesn’t scale and that’s another reason its future looks bleak [David Post @ Volokh]
- Thought it wasn’t going to happen? “Some Passengers Mull Lawsuits Over Life-Saving US Airways Crash-Landing” [ABA Journal, WSJ law blog, earlier here and here]
- Sex shop that suddenly appeared in genteel Old Town Alexandria, near D.C. is sort of the zoning equivalent of a spite fence [WaPo]
- Claim of British researchers: lawyers’ IQ-point edge over general public has declined over last decade [The Lawyer]
Buffalo plane crash
The client-chasing has begun on Continental Flight 3407, ably chronicled by Eric Turkewitz.
January 30 roundup
- Irvine, California class-action lawyer Sandeep Baweja: sorry, I bet the class’s $2.7M wage/hour settlement on the stock market and lost it [ABA Journal, WageLaw]
- Litigant alleges his iPod playlist is worth $1 trillion; also, another kicked-by-exotic-dancer lawsuit [Lowering the Bar]
- Lawyers representing victims of Long Island’s “Agape” Ponzi scheme would do well to be modest [Scott Greenfield]
- More on that litigation filed by Dallas developer H. Walker Royall against author Carla Main, who wrote a book critical of eminent domain abuse; her publisher, Encounter Books (which is also publishing a book of mine); a reviewer, and his newspaper; and even eminent scholar Richard Epstein, for giving a blurb [Real Clear Politics, Somin @ Volokh, Sullum/Reason “Hit and Run”, earlier]
- “OMG, there’s mercury in the high-fructose corn syrup!” scare doesn’t sound very scare-worthy [Coyote]
- Another reason we (sometimes) go too far in search of safety: “Availability Bias and Water Landings” [Cernovich]
- Supreme Court mulls whether to grant certiorari on Bilski (business methods patent) case [SCOTUS Blog]
- Trial judge lops $32 million off that $55 million verdict against San Diego Gas & Electric for helicopter crash into unlit utility tower [CalBizLit]
January 29 roundup
- Free class-action swag if you bought department store cosmetics between 1994 and 2003; not that they’re giving away the very best stuff or anything [Tompkins/Poynter, California Civil Justice, WSJ Law Blog, settlement site] We’ve been covering the story for quite some time;
- Law school “can be a financial disaster” for unwary students [Law and More] Law schools not immune from economic downturn [Above the Law]
- Bruce Bawer on Dutch prosecution of Islam-criticizer Geert Wilders [City Journal]
- More on possible passenger suits after the miracle Hudson-landing USAir Flight #1549 [USA Today, earlier] Update: NY Post, NY Mag.
- Bad news for patients and other living things: Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen somehow got named to a key FDA panel during the late Bush administration [Point of Law, Postrel, Bernstein/Volokh, Hooper & Henderson/Forbes]
- “Friends weren’t really trying to reach me!” class action against Reunion.com encounters another setback [Spam Notes]
- Stand and deliver it back: “Minnesota: $2.6 Million in Red Light Camera Tickets Refunded” [The Newspaper]
- Gary, Indiana’s is the last standing of what were once thirty “gun sales = nuisance” suits filed by cities; now Indiana high court says it can go to trial [Point of Law]
Air passenger misconduct and the USA PATRIOT Act
Ken at Popehat thinks the Los Angeles Times, and Keith Olbermann, have gotten this recent story rather badly wrong. P.S. Much further discussion at Scott Greenfield’s.
“Can the Passengers of Flight 1549 Sue for Emotional Distress?”
Asks Dan Slater at the WSJ Law Blog.