You’ve probably heard that the Flying Imams are going after US Airways for refusing to let them fly after they made a loud, scary spectacle of themselves, that seemed intentionally to mimic the behavior in which the 9/11 murders engaged. (Bravo, US Air!). What you didn’t know is that the Imams are also going after passengers who reported this loud, scary spectacle. I can’t imagine what cause of action the Imams could have against these citizens, but the mere thought of being dragged into court is going to be enough to deter ordinary people from relying on their good sense when they see something threatening for fear of being dragged into costly and humiliating litigation.
This puts me in a mind of a book I read about 15 years ago regarding personal safety. It’s called the Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence 
I guess that the Imams and their cadre are working to make sure that one of their best weapons is people’s fear of being dragged into court.
Hat tip: Power Line
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Well, you’re a lawyer – what’s their cause of action?
Hate crimes springs to mind, but I really have no idea. My kind of business litigation doesn’t take me into the sleazy world of attempting to sue people for reporting their justifiable fears to the authorities.
Defamation, probably.
Hate crimes would be a tough on to support I suspect, with police, FBI and everybody else in sight telling people to be concerned and report suspicious packages, people, etc., etc. it’s hard to see wherein doing so is going to constitute a crime.
(Although in the current climate, the President’s firing of people who work for him is evidently a crime, so I guess anything goes.)
Defamation sounds on its face easier to establish, but the reality is that it often isn’t (in court), and I’m not sure these guys’ prancing around, drawing attention to themselves quite deliberately (which shouldn’t be all tough to prove, based on published reports) will let them get that successfully established.
I’d be ashamed to take this one. I see no principle here – and no lawyer in this country needs money THAT badly.
Don’t forget about CAIR.
One can only hope that some governmental agency would take on the defense of any “John/Jane Does” named. Otherwise New York City’s motto “if you see something, say something” is undone. In the meanwhile, write congress and demand that “whistle-blower” protections be extended to citizens reporting suspicious behavior.
BW and DQ, can’t a judge simply throw this out as groundless? The imams may claim they have a cause of action, but don’t judges have the power to shut down a lawsuit that’s baseless, or that was engineered, as this one seems to be?
By the way, it may be quite difficult for them to prove that a hate crime was being perpetrated by some of the passengers, since at least one of them was Arab and reported their conversation to authorities, and was one of the main reasons they were removed from the plane.
Judyrose: The judge can definitely toss the case, but one of the abiding irritants doing defense law (which is mostly what I do), is how loathe judges are to let “innocent bystanders” out of litigation. By “innocent bystanders”, of course, I mean people against whom a legal claim cannot possibly be asserted. Many judges like to pass the buck on up through trial, so someone named in a lawsuit may find himself in it for the long haul — with all the attendant inconvenience and expense.
This is truly ridiculous. I’d like to believe that the passengers would do it all over again, just because it was the right thing to do.
I was watching Hannity and Colms last night and Geraldo was on there spewing out his pie hole how all these passengers just over-reacted based on nothing. I prefer when Geraldo just shuts his pie hole, but since he wouldn’t, we just turned the channel.
Why are judges loathe to let “innocent bystanders” OUT of litigation? I don’t get that. Call me naive. Are judges that pusillanimous?
Don’t get me started on judges, Z, but, yes, they are that pusillanimous. Let me just remind all of you that, with a few exceptions, every judge in America started as a lawyer.
There are only two ways to get be a judge in this society: you’re elected, which is lifetime pandering job; or you’re appointed, which means you spend a sizeable portion of your life with your mouth fastened to some politician’s butt. Another kind of pandering.
Actually there’s a third, now I think of it: you can be the result of a pay-off.
True story, which I shall retail (a) because I did just think of it, and (b) it’s entertaining and enormously depressing all in one:
Years and years ago, a fairly prestigious law school has a good student. He’s at the top of the class, makes Review, all the good stuff. He is recruited by a number of NY firms, and one of the old-line two name ones (not one of the multiple name ones that sounds like the starting line-up of the Ukrainian national hockey team) gets him.
They think, based on his grades etc. that they got a hot prospect – totally overlooking that a certified moron can graduate from the top of a law school class, if he is a pedantic grind who has no life whatever outside of class, and is willing to spend 17 hours a day studying. They made the elementary mistake of thinking that good grades make you smart. Amazing they overlooked this, having all been to law school themselves, but they did.
So what they wound up with was exactly that: a pedantic moron, one of the ones who, if you said “good morning” to him was stopped cold for twenty minutes while he thought out the implications of saying “good morning” back to you.
He is fairly quickly off the partner track. They can’t fire him, because that would be tantamount to admitting in front of the boys at the Union Club that they were wrong to hire him in the first place, so they’re stuck. The only thing they can do is make his life so miserable he’ll leave.
Which they proceed to do. He gets landed with jobs that paralegals routinely refuse, and is subtly made to understand that there is no chance he’ll ever get to be a partner. This goes on – I swear – for SEVENTTEN years, and this mutt won’t get the hint and leave. And of course there’s no way they can fire him at this point without looking like jackasses, they’re in FAR too deep for that.
Finally, a vacancy comes up in the Southern District, and, as is normal, the White House is looking for names. Well, one of the boys at the top of this firm is an old pal of the chief of staff of one of New York’s senators, and there is a favor owed, either by the senator or the chief of staff; so the big dog at the law firm makes a phone call and collects his marker.
And bingo, our worthless pedant Associate X finds himself with his name placed in nomination for a spot on the Federal Bench in the Southern District of New York, and lo and behold, we now have Federal Judge worthless pedant X. Shazam!
After seventeen years, they make him a partner for his last few weeks, and off he goes to buy a suppply of black ball gowns, and make judicial history.
Actually, given the world in which these clowns live, that was a pretty slickly engineered exit.
But that’s where your judges come from, America. Enjoy!
And he eventually winds up on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, right?
Nope – he’s retired and gone, after a highly distinguished career.
Actually for a judge he wasn’t horrible. Not capable of thought, of course, but that actually worked out okay, as. he’d usually manage, (by dint of a litle welding and and air hammering), to make something fit somewhere and be more or less a precedent he could borrow.
Of course, on those occasions when he had to come up with something himself, it was usually a doozy.
We have to refuse to be intimidated, if someone makes someone report them for weird behavior, then that person should be sued by the passengers for causing them distress with their behavior.
These Imams were faking and goofing on the passengers, and were probably trying to get tossed off the plane just so they could play the victim card and go to court and make a scene. Any judge who allows this is garbage.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
pretend to be terrorists
scare people on a plane
get thrown off claim racism
.