United passenger suffers concussion, broken nose – lawyer

Without defending the actions of the LEO, I'd note that in all probability, they were called in with just "We have a passenger who's been told to leave and is refusing to leave," and the implicit context of an unruly passenger instead of just one who refused to volunteer.

I wonder if that exposes United to the same vague class of liability as if they had SWATted him - they called the police in a way where they should have expected the police to use force, and they should have known that no force was required. It looks like the statute on disorderly conduct covers "reporting information when, at the time the call or transmission is made, the person knows there is no reasonable ground for making the call or transmission and further knows that the call or transmission could result in the emergency response of any public safety agency"; could a sufficiently clever lawyer argue that this happened?

  > LEO

Low Earth Orbit?

A bunch of lawyers seem to disagree.

Imagine if the surgeon had informed flight crew that he was needed for important surgery, and then the captain informed the surgeon that the plane would not be flying with him aboard so the only way that he could get to the hospital on time would be to leave now, and find alternate transportation.

And further imagine that the surgeon sat tight anyway, and that a United lawyer then informed him that he, the surgeon, could be sued by every other passenger who was unable to travel to important appointments.

In other words, the guy could have been rationally talked off the plane.

In fact, United could have contacted the hospital where he works, informed them that he would not be flying today, and given him a phone so that he could discuss the situation with his boss and his employer. They too could have rationally talked the guy off the plane, or alternatively they could have given United information that would lead to letting the guy fly.

> He's a doctor too, so he's probably already making enough money.

Why do you assume that?

I get the reason for the stereotype that doctors are well-remunerated, but, real talk, the compensation varies immensely, especially for nonspecialist solo/family practitioners. They bill what strikes the rest of us as a lot, but also face very high expenses, particularly as they relate to liaising with insurance and beating claims out of them, but also malpractice insurance and staffing. And in low-income areas where they're stuck with Medicaid claims, well, that's not a good living.

This generalisation makes as much sense as saying that software developers make good money. Yeah, Full Stack JavaScript Ninja RockStars at VC-funded Silicon Valley companies do. Elsewhere in the country, there are a lot of financial services sweatshops and ordinary small businesses. I know lots of rather talented software and systems people with salaries in the $30k-$50k range as they work for some middle-of-nowhere county government, ordinary third-tier midsize municipality, urban school district, or soft drink distributor or whatever, and those are just the pay scales. About the only thing you can say is that they tend to be better paid than the general population as a whole.

Doctors work the same way, within their own sliding scale. There are lots of small-town solo practices that hardly make any money and at best yield a very ordinary salary for the doctor. Not enough for business class.

Lawyers are another good example. The lawyers we see do corporate litigation and make more money than god. But in the real world, there are lots of burnt out, woefully overworked public defenders who are paid beans. There are lots of associates at small to midsize firms who must endure a hazing ritual of 80 hour weeks and slightly-better-than-paralegal pay for ten years before they can move up. There are lots of mind-numbing in-house counsel type jobs for surplus law school graduates; reviewing vendor contracts in the dimly lit warehouse office annex of a fast food chain doesn't pay much. I personally know a lawyer who tried for ten years to get by as a solo family and bankruptcy attorney, and in the end found it too hard to survive. He wasn't a bad lawyer, it was just a time/place/demographic/market situation. He became a bus driver; he loves the superior steady pay and benefits.

So, it all depends.