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Chicago-lawyer Thomas Demetrio spoke today about his client, Dr. David Dao, who was violently removed from a United flight this past Sunday after he refused to give up his seat for a United crew member.
Demetrio gave, what CNN just called, a “master class” in how to represent your client to the public. A slow-speaking, no-nonsense regular-guy Chicagoan, Demetrio made clear that a lawsuit was likely coming, and that it would focus on more than the mistreatment of his client. The suit would address the larger angst that many Americans now feel about air travel.
It’s a brilliant move by Demetrio, as an already-expected-to-be-friendly jury (because of the ubiquitous video evidence) would likely sympathize with the larger argument about just how awful air travel has become for many Americans.
Demetrio broke a bit of news today as well. Dr. Dao suffered a concussion, a broken nose, sinus damage, and lost two front teeth. The various videos are bad enough. But having the damage this extensive ups the public’s and the jury’s sympathy for Dao, and potential damages, and only reinforces how out of control the Chicago cops, acting on behalf of United, actually were.
We’ve set up a petition, that already has over 75,000 names on it, calling on United to make things right with Dao, but also to fix its policies so that no other passenger ever has to go through what Dr. Dao did last weekend. Please add your name and share.
Also interesting, yesterday afternoon some new video surfaced, taken by the passenger behind Dao, in which someone in an official capacity, either the United flight attendant or the Chicago aviation security people, kept telling Doa to give up his seat. Doa, quite calmly and politely replied “no,” and explained that he was a doctor and had to be in Louisville the next day to see patients. The response: We’ll going to drag you from your seat. While some are saying “why didn’t Dao just leave?”, I think a lot of people, when threatened to be dragged from a plane for no just reason, would respond “try it.”
So now we know that Dao only screamed once he was attacked by the security people as they forcefully yanked him, followed moments later by the infamous image of Dao’s head being thrown into a seat rest.
Lawyer Demetrio made clear that United not only needs to make his client whole again, but the airline also needs to address this issue of “overbooking,” or whatever United calls it when, at the last minute, they choose to remove passengers from the flight in order to accommodate their own crew.
We’ve set up a petition, that already has over 75,000 names on it, calling on United to make things right with Dao, but also to fix its policies so that no other passenger ever has to go through what Dr. Dao did last weekend. Please add your name and share.
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