Here’s everything that’s wrong with American society in a single arc at an airport.
A man’s family is suing after his death last New Year’s Day at the Salt Lake City airport where he crawled into the engine of an aircraft. They want $300,000.
The suit argues that the airport’s design, monitoring, and response failed in several ways.
- staff allegedly didn’t intervene as he deteriorated
- an emergency exit near Gate A4 and an exterior door lacked additional safeguards that could have slowed and alerted his escape onto the airfield
- responders were sent on a “wild goose chase” due to miscommunications about where he exited
- the city allegedly failed to alert air traffic control and pilots quickly enough about a person in the area before he reached a taxiing Delta Airbus A220-100.
The man entered the Utah Jazz store near Gate A31, where a manager reported erratic behavior and sold him a jersey at steep discount to move him along. He returned to the store shoeless, shirt half unzipped, yelling about the bag and demanded a refund. He left before the refund on his jersey was complete, because the manager was calling in an emergency.
He went walking the moving walkways repeatedly, against the flow of passengers, and laid down on the walkway handrail. Then he tried opening doors to jet bridges. He eventually exited near Gate A4. It took 8 minutes for police to get his correct exit location.
During that time, he made it onto the runway, and removed his pants and underwear. It was below freezing outside, and he left on his jersey and socks. He reached the deicing area near Runway 34L, and ran toward an Airbus A220-100 that had begun taxiing.
The pilot stopped their engines upon seeing him. He climed into the engine cowling while the engine was still running. He was pulled out, lifesaving efforts began but were unsuccessful.
The lawsuit happened now because the Utah Governmental Immunity Act requires suits to be filed within a year, even though Utah Code § 78B-2-304 otherwise provides two years for wrongful death claims.
- The duty to intervene argument is pretty weak here. Airport security and retail employments aren’t mental health clinicians.
- Even if a jury wants to say the airport should have had better door monitoring, a passenger running onto the apron and entering an aircraft engine are the cause of the tragedy and supersede any negligent failure in monitoring breaches.
- They’re arguing that the pilot should have been notified more quickly by air traffic control (though it happened in a matter of minutes) but the family is suing the city which exercises no control over ATC.
Do we really need to tell someone they shouldn’t go through an emergency exit onto the airfield, strp naked, and crawl into an aricraft engine? And are we really saying it’s someone else’s fault when there are consequences for doing so?
It’s like the instructions that say not to iron clothes while wearing them.
In 1984 a California man was tossing his toddler up and down in his living room. The kid loved it, and the father went higher and higher. Until the kid’s head hit the ceiling fan. Which was on. And the man sued the ceiling fan manufacturer for failing to warn him that this might be dangerous. This wasn’t the only man to sue over failure to warn after a ceiling fan injury.
So I can almost understand warnings like “this motorcycle contains no edible parts” and cartons of eggs that warn “this product may contain eggs” (or jars of peanut butter that flag, “may contain nuts or nut products”).
I have to think though that bureaucrats who insist that butane lighters warn “flame may cause fire” or people who need to be told “this electric drill is not intended for dental use” tell us that something is wrong with our society. Shouldn’t we really have some individual responsibility?
Then again, when a U.S. Senator, former Governor and candidate for President of the United States actually does iron his shirts while wearing them what chance to the rest of us have?
The narrative arc of societal decline will be complete when the city settles and taxpayers are forced to pony up.
(HT: Joe R)
This is little different from the continued demands that AI foundation models be “safeguarded” against not yet anticipated “misuse”. I suppose some idiot will figure out how to open an aircraft door mid-flight be swept away and his “survivors” will sue the airline for gross negligence –“there was no announcement about NOT opening the door while flying.”
Until people filing these types of lawsuits are held financially accountable then this stupidity won’t stop.
Hopefully a judge will throw out of the courtroom whatever hungry attorney brought this suit. (And I’m saying that with a son who was a criminal defense attorney for 12 years and is now a judge.) People have a right to sue, but there isn’t much you can do in such a sad situation. A better question might be to ask why we don’t have affordable coverage available for everyone with a serious mental illness (and every other serious health condition too, for that matter). I have no idea what kind of help this person got, but obviously it wasn’t enough. Sorry for the family though; they are hurting, but demanding money doesn’t help things.
Gary, a great article.
One small thing, however. The former politician that you refer to did famously mention that he irons his own shirts, but never said that he does so while wearing them. I believe what you are referring to was a SNL parody of the incident
These skits, whole funny and well crafted, have been conflated into publics take of real world events (like Tina Fey’s parody of Sarah Palin now has people believing that she actually said that she “can see Russia” from her back yard.
The irony here is your comment , in a back handed manner has you confirming by your comments the growing propensity of mixing fact with fiction,then expecting society, or in the case your example, the courts, to sort this all out, usually at the expense of common sense.
And on top of it, he ruined a perfectly good engine. /s
Someone methed up.
Fortunately, after purchasing a sports jersey from the Utah Jazz store near Gate A3, to celebrate New Year’s Day at the Salt Lake City airport, this passenger learned from reading popular passenger travel blogs that to avoid painful thermal burns, you should never iron your clothes like a new jersey while you are wearing them. Unfortunately, before his next flight, this passenger decided to exit the airport through an emergency exit and run across the tarmac before climbing into the wing-mounted engine of an occupied commercial aircraft at the SLC airport deicing pad. At around 10:10 a.m., first responders removed this passenger from the engine intake cowling. He was declared dead on the scene and missed his flight to Denver.
Binders full of women… LOL.