LAWSUIT

The smarter consumer: When to sue a company — and when to shame it

Don’t have a tantrum.

You might feel like it after a company says “no” to your polite email asking for a refund, product replacement or an extension on your warranty. But you should understand that “no” is often a default answer, a kneejerk response to a customer question.

Yes, even on the third or fourth try. Even after you’ve filed a credit-card dispute – and lost.
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TSA backtracks on private screeners amid lawsuits

It’s not hard to image how much louder the public outcry would have been during the pat-down controversy last year if the Transportation Security Administration had also shut down it Screening Partnership Program, which allowed airports to privatize their security.

After all, private screeners were seen as a loophole to avoid increasingly aggressive federal transportation security officers. Several airports were reportedly considering “firing” their TSA screeners after the new body-scanners began appearing, accompanied by more intrusive physical searches.

In short, the program was an escape valve through which the traveling public let out a steam of rage. Had it not been there, who knows what would have happened?

But here’s more evidence that the federal agency charged with protecting our transportation systems understands the importance of timing. It waited until yesterday — two months after the enhanced-screening media circus — to freeze the program. I wonder how long they’ve been meaning to do that.

So what does that mean to us?
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Troubled TSA heads into holidays with egg on its face

Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse for the beleaguered Transportation Security Administration, they have.

This morning I reported on a new poll that says travelers feel the federal agency charged with protecting our transportation systems offered the travel industry’s worst customer service in 2010 — worse, even, than the nation’s airlines. But that is likely the least of its worries; after all, the agency apparently doesn’t care about its public image.

The latest incident involves a passenger who passed through a checkpoint with a handgun. Airport security is known to be porous, but this latest example, in which a loaded snub nose “baby” Glock pistol managed to get carried through a Houston TSA screening area without being detected, is shocking by any standard.

It gets worse. Last week, respected security expert Bruce Schneier confirmed what we’d suspected for several weeks: The TSA turned off most of its full-body scanners on Opt-Out Day, and oh, by the way, the current security procedures at the airport don’t work. At all.

But there’s more.
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Lawsuits against TSA are piling up quickly

The Transportation Security Administration’s little body-scanning/pat-down problem isn’t just keeping us media types busy. Lawyers are having a field day with it, too.

The latest lawsuit against the TSA was filed earlier this week by two Harvard Law School students who claim the airport security checks involving full-body scanners and pat-downs are unconstitutional. The suit claims the screenings violate their Fourth Amendment rights prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures.

Here’s a rundown of the most high-profile cases.
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Thank you

It’s official — the lawsuit against me has been dismissed.

I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who helped:

• My Florida-based attorney, Greg Herbert of Greenberg Traurig in Orlando, who understood that this was about more than a blogger being sued by a travel agency. The case raised some important First Amendment and press freedom issues, and I’m grateful that he saw them and was willing to devote his energies to helping me.

• The Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund, which awarded me a grant to help with my legal expenses. In particular, I want to thank Clint Brewer, chair of the SPJ National Legal Defense Fund, and Salley Shannon of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, both of whom were instrumental in making the grant happen.

• My lawyer, Anthony Elia, who told me six months ago that the case was over. Anthony — you were right.

• The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which helped me find legal representation, and Charles Davis, the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and Creve Coeur City Council Member Laura Bryant, who introduced me to the Berkman Center.

• The various media outlets and blogs who covered my case, including Diane Lade at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Jim Gaines at Orlando Weekly, Jim Walker at Cruise Law News and SLAPP expert Marc Randazza.

• None of this would have been possible without you, the readers of this site. Many of you offered to help by writing to your elected representatives, encouraging them to restart Florida’s stalled investigation into travel agencies that sold unlicensed insurance. It was your phone calls, emails and letters that pushed the state of Florida to finish this investigation, which has led to numerous settlement agreements with travel agencies.

After this experience, I feel a responsibility to get behind new laws that would prohibit so-called SLAPP suits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation. The Citizen Participation Act (H.R. 4364) is a good start, as is supporting a group like the Public Participation Project.

Thank you, all.

(Photo: v ernhart/Flickr Creative Commons)


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No more lawsuit limits for passengers under proposed government rules

Editor’s note: This is part eleven in a series about the Transportation Department’s sweeping new airline passenger protection rules. You can read the entire document here (.DOC). Please take a moment to comment on these proposed rules at Regulationroom.org. The future of air travel depends on it.

As someone who is currently being sued, you might think I’m the last person who would support a new rule that would allow more people to file a lawsuit against an airline.

But you’d be wrong.

True, getting sued is no fun. But I don’t think the airlines are having fun, anyway. Maybe their passengers will after this passes.

At issue is something called a choice of forum. Forum choice, in the legal sense, is a clause that allows the the parties to agree that any litigation resulting from a contract will be initiated in a specific court.
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