A lawyer representing American Airlines has shockingly claimed a 9-year-old girl who’s suing the company should’ve known she was being videotaped by a creepy flight attendant while using a plane bathroom.
The airline’s attorneys made the “outrageous” suggestion in legal papers filed Monday as part of an ongoing lawsuit the girl’s family brought against the company last year, the child’s lawyer said.
Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, was arrested for allegedly secretly filming multiple girls between the ages of 7 and 14 over several months last year, according to federal prosecutors.
You Should Be Fired If Incompetent’: American Airlines Suspends Employees Involved In Removing Black Men from Flight Over Body Odor as CEO Promises to ‘Regain Trust’Several American Airlines employees have been suspended following a humiliating incident in January in which every Black man was removed from an airline before takeoff after one employee accused them of emitting a foul body odor.
But the eight Black men were scattered throughout the plane and did not even know one other and were not even sitting together when they were singled out one by one by a male flight attendant whose name has not been made public.American Airlines CEO Robert Isom (right) pledges to make things right after several Black men were removed from a flight over alleged body odor. (Credit: YouTube/CBS News Screengrab/Getty)
It was not until they were off the plane that an American Airlines employee informed them that “someone had complained about an offensive body odor,” according to the lawsuit filed last month by three of the Black men who had exchanged contact information with each other during the incident.When the Black men accused the airline of racial discrimination, the employee outside the plane responded by saying, “I agree, I agree,” but did nothing to correct the situation, according to the lawsuit filed by Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, and Xavier Veal, who all live in New York City.
American Airlines told the men they would be placed on a separate flight but were unable to do so after an hour so they were allowed back onto the original plane where they had to endure the stares and glares from white passengers who had been informed the delay in takeoff was due to these men emitting a foul body odor.
But none of the men were emitting a foul body odor, according to the lawsuit which states the incident took place at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona during a layover from Los Angeles to New York City.They suffered during the entire flight home, and the entire incident was traumatic, upsetting, scary, humiliating, and degrading,” the lawsuit states.
The Backlash
Since the filing of the lawsuit on May 29, shares of American Airlines have dropped by two dollars, going from more than $13 a share, where it had remained since the beginning of the year, to just over $11 a share, where it has remained for almost a month.
The lawsuit was then followed by a statement from the NAACP on June 4 accusing American Airlines of displaying a pattern of racist incidents going back years, threatening to issue another travel advisory recommending Black people avoid flying with American Airlines as the organization did in 2017 following a series of high profile incidents against Black passengers.Now American Airlines CEO Robert Isom is describing the latest incident as “unacceptable” and vows to take action in order to “regain trust.”
Some following the news across social media had mixed reactions to the news. Many asking whether the passenger with the alleged foul odor was ever identified. Another called for the employees to be fired.