Dive Brief:
- A flight attendant for United Airlines can move forward in charging that the airline was criminally negligent for retaining a pilot despite learning the police were investigating him for distributing pornographic images of her, a Colorado federal judge determined on Wednesday.
- The worker learned of the investigation in July 2024, after another flight attendant reported the pilot to law enforcement earlier that year. United, however, allegedly learned of the investigation in April and declined to conduct its own investigation, inform the flight attendant, place the pilot on leave or terminate him. The worker alleged this decision by United caused her anxiety, for which she needed leave, and interfered with her work, which the judge found amounted to a plausible injury.
- Pilot misconduct has been a recurring theme in employment claims against United. In 2019, for example, United agreed to pay $321,000 to settle U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that a pilot posted sexually explicit images of a flight attendant on websites without her consent.
Dive Insight:
In asking the judge to dismiss the claim, United argued the flight attendant “does not allege that she suffered any injury after April 2024” — when the company learned of the law enforcement investigation into the pilot — or that any injury was caused by the pilot’s retention. It also argued there was no injury because “conduct ceased in April 2024.”
But that argument did not take into account the worker’s allegation that after she learned of the investigation from the police but before the pilot was fired, she allegedly took a few days off work due to her anxiety over the pilot’s crimes and United’s failure to address them. She also alleged that United’s lack of action interfered with her job performance, as “personal rapport and congeniality with United’s staff and customers” are key to that performance.
United eventually terminated the pilot in July 2024, following his arrest.
While Judge Nina Wang allowed the charge of negligence for retaining the pilot to proceed, she dismissed the flight attendant’s other claims, including a hostile work environment claim, vicarious liability claims under Colorado law related to the distribution of intimate images and negligent hiring and supervision claims.
In dismissing these claims, Wang repeatedly pointed to United’s lack of knowledge about the pilot’s conduct prior to April 2024, at which point the behavior allegedly ended. She noted that the flight attendant never alleged the behavior happened at the workplace, in front of other employees or during working hours, nor did she report the misconduct to United in any way.
And while United was aware of allegations against a different pilot, “Egregious behavior by one pilot towards a different individual does not permit an inference that United had constructive knowledge of another pilot’s egregious behavior against Plaintiff several years later,” Wang found.
United Airlines declined to comment on the decision. Attorneys for the plaintiff did not respond to a request for comment.
