Gloria Allred Sued an Airline Over Booze — and Lost

A year and a half ago I wrote about passengers onboard a Spirit Airlines flight blasting a boom box and waving it in the air. They were confronted by other passengers and a fight ensued. And Gloria Allred sued.

This was all onboard a Baltimore – Los Angeles flight, which is certainly among the worst, most uncomfortable, flights in America.

Allred filed suit on behalf of 3 women arguing that Spirit Airlines flight attendants were negligent in serving alcohol to the problem passengers and failing to defuse the fight. She argued the crew “had an obligation to act when the problem passengers exhibited aggressive behavior” however after a 12 day trial a jury found otherwise.

Here’s the fight:

A post shared by Magu (@sweetassmagu) on

Spirit’s lawyer explained, “the court applied California law, which prohibits liability based solely on serving alcohol.” That fight occurred after the plane landed in California.

“Plaintiffs needed to prove that their version of their attackers’ behavior in conjunction with the flight attendants’ failure to monitor or curb such behavior rendered an attack foreseeable, which the jury rejected by their verdict,” he said.

If I were defense counsel I’d probably argue that (a) flying Spirit, (b) alongside other passengers flying Spirit, should be argued to entail an assumption of risk. Of course the Spirit would fire me as their counsel.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. @Dave. She is a lawyer. That’s what they do. The profession is full of [misogynist remarks removed -gary]. The American legal system is an enabler, allowing anyone (with sufficient money) to sue for any slight, real or imagined, for a bucketful of money. That genie monster can never be stuffed back into the bottle.

  2. Luckily for Spirit the jury didnt get caught up in the emotional aspects of the case which trial lawyers rely upon to get 33 to 50% of the damages even though their only contribution is to threaten the defendant with a lawsuit. Unfortunately for GA the trial lasted 12 days, so this one may have backfired. Is she losing the Midas touch?

  3. Allred & Bloom are both vile contemptuous creatures who should be forced
    to spend an evening alone with Hannibal Lector.

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