American Airlines employees have still been trying to sue over new uniforms that were adopted 10 years ago. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for American and uniform manufacturer Twin Hill on Tuesday, tossing out the case originally brought by 70 employees.
In 2016, American moved from the old blue uniforms to grey uniforms from Twin Hill. And a number of employees reported reactions. They claimed that prior similar issues with Twin Hill uniforms at Alaska Airlines put American on notice to the problem, and pilots had reported rashes and other symptons during a field test prior to rollout, but the airline pushed forward anyway.
- American contracted with Twin Hill in February 2015 to supply new uniforms for roughly 70,000 customer-facing employees including flight attendants, pilots, and above-wing airport staff.
- Complaints started before and around the September 2016 rollout, including skin, respiratory, eye, neurologic, gastrointestinal and reproductive issues.
- The flight attendants union reported 3,758 complaints out of roughly 18,000 flight attendants. NIOSH broke this down as 3,686 symptom reports, 796 reports involving medical care, 47 reports of symptoms merely by being in proximity to the uniforms.
Testing founds most chemicals unlikely to cause reactions, flagged some potential irritants, and as with most such things concentration matters (‘dose makes the poison’).
Once the uniforms rolled out and complaints escalated, American had Intertek test 123 Twin Hill garments plus legacy uniforms and off-the-rack retail items. Intertek found potential sensitizers, but that it was unlikely those unique to the Twin Hill uniforms would cause any of the reported issues, outside of normal range for already-allergic individuals to be sensitive to a given piece of clothing.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found it was possible textile chemicals contributed to skin symptoms for some employees, but testing didn’t identify a chemical responsible. The government concluded that it was unlikely to cause symptoms.
American quickly let employees resume wearing old uniforms and buy off-the-rack substitutes. They terminated their contract with Twin Hill and hired other manufacturers like Lands’ End.
And their legal claim was strong: (1) workers compensation exclusivity bars ordinary employment injury claims against the employer, (2) there was no showing that the airline acted with substantial certainty to injure employees, and (3) there wasn’t any admissible expert proof the uniforms were defective or caused reported symptoms.
Last April, a district court issued summary judgment against the employees, holding:
- Key dependent experts were inadmissible, not rising to the level of science required by the law
- And without those experts, what remained was testing and complaints that couldn’t show a causal link between uniforms and irritation.
One expert tried to infer causation from correlations between rollout and complaints, and combine that with testing that found there were irritants in the clothes. And they had no theory explaining how a given dose of a specific chemical caused the symptoms. And these were the experts for the plaintiffs!
The plaintiffs argued that circumstantial evidence of a uniform change and reported reactions should let a jury infer defect and causation, even without identifying a chemical and dose.
Federal rules lay out when when a witness gets to testify as an expert and offer opinions and not just facts to keep technical-sounding speculation away from juries. A judge has to be satisfied that:
- The person is qualified
- Their education, training and experience fits the specific question
- The opinion will help the jury
- It addresses something the jury can’t reliably figure out on its own.
- And is grounded in data and factsusing a legitimate method
Employees reported reactions. Employees were encouraged by the union to report more. But they couldn’t show a connection between the uniforms and the reactions, and federal law is fairly strict on scientific evidence. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals requires judges to act as gatekeepers to exclude junk science.
In contrast, there are still state lawsuits over uniforms such as Poole v. Twin Hill involving hundreds of American employees. A California jury awarded more than $1 million to four flight attendants in 2023, and another California jury awarded $18.6 million to five flight attendants in 2025, allocating 90% fault to Twin Hill and 10% to American.
The uniforms at issue here were replaced with new ones again in 2020.
I’ve never known quite what to make of the 2016-2017 uniform complaints. It’s something that’s happened at other airlines before. With large numbers of employees some have reactions to what they’re assigned to wear. People started hearing of complaints and noticing that they felt uncomfortable, too. The uniforms became a common culprit for myriad maladies. At the same time there were probably some core of people that were having some issues, but it’s hard to overstate how big a deal this was at the airline at the time.
Just because there were workplace injuries, though, doesn’t mean employees can prove the workplace issue caused the injuries, that those injuries were foreseeable, or that they are compensable.
The American Airlines employees in this case were asking the Seventh Circuit to reinstate their suit, arguing that causality here falls under res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself. Causality can be inferred. No specific theory on what chemical, at what dose, with scientific justification should be needed to bring this to a jury. But that’s a hard sell in federal court, and easier in places like California, New York, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
The damage here seems real. When over 3,600 people have symptoms and nearly 800 documented medical care, they’re not fibbing. American discarded a lot of uniform inventory, canceled the contract with that provider, and let crews use their own clothes. State-level lawsuits are the way to go (as Gary noted, already awarding millions.) I hope those affected get relief.
“Post hoc, propter hoc” isn’t of itself evidence of causation. Additionally, in clinical trials of new medications participating subjects report many more adverse effects when provided a list of symptoms then when simply asked how they feel and whether they’ve experienced any untoward effects….people exposed to something new are highly suggestible. Unfortunately in this case there were no “placebo” uniforms for comparison. There’s a real societal cost in dollars and two-way trust when poor evidence leads to large rewards.
@Mark F — Seems like you’re just trying to insert plausible deniability here… The federal court didn’t say the clothes were safe; it just said the chemistry is too complicated to point to one single ingredient. Claiming there was no “placebo” ignores the real-world control group: crew members wearing old or off-the-rack clothes were fine, while others got sick just by standing near the new uniforms. American didn’t throw away millions in inventory and cancel a massive contract over “imagined” symptoms; they did it because their workers were genuinely sick, and multiple state juries have agreed. The real societal cost is when an environmental hazard is ignored until workers are forced to sue for their health. (I get that this place can be View from the Right Wing at times, but we need two wings to fly.)
meh. Perhaps, 1990. But when your union tells you that your uniform is making you sick, the complaints about your uniform making you sick are bound to increase 😉
And the timing of the uniforms making the Flight Attendants sick ironically aligned with huge discontent in the new APFA contract that was voted down but put in place anyway — due to the Union’s own merger bargaining position.
“…and reproductive issues. ” Say what? How would they know the clothes caused THAT?
When I was teaching statistics it was important to keep telling the classes that, “correlation is not causation”. Sometimes there is a clear link between the two (kinds of tobacco use and specific cancers, for example). But sometimes at low levels it is just random illnesses, or the link is very weak or may be due to a third factor. In the latter, you can say rich people generally live longer than poor ones. But it’s not because they’re richer, it is because they usually are doing less stressful or dangerous work, have better access to medical care, better diets and so on.
And with chemical exposures often a lot of testing has to be done to find statistical variances from the occurrence of illnesses that can be expected in a population. And also you may need thousands of cases to rule out genetics, previous chemical contacts and other factors. There could be a link here, but offhand it sounds like it will be hard to prove this beyond any reasonable doubt. (Juries, by and large, don’t understand statistics on this level.)
@Julie — Ah, more of the typical union-bashing on here. A bad contract might upset workers, but it doesn’t cause hundreds of flight attendants to require documented medical care for bleeding rashes and breathing issues. If this was just a political stunt by the APFA, a hyper-cost-conscious airline wouldn’t have thrown millions of dollars of inventory into the trash, broken their vendor contract, and let crews wear civilian clothes. They did it because the hazard was real. Juries agreed.
@patrick — Many mass-manufactured textiles are treated with heavy chemicals, formaldehyde resins, and toxic dyes that easily absorb into the skin when you sweat or heat up. These are known endocrine disruptors and reproductive toxins. Gary literally wrote about it above; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a federal government agency, tracked and documented it. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make it not-real. Have you heard of germ theory? (Spoiler, hard to see those little guys…)
@drrichard — I respect your statistics background, but this isn’t a murder trial (it’s not “beyond a reasonable doubt”… for a civil product liability case, it’s a preponderance or “more likely than not.”)
If a restaurant serves a new dish and 800 customers end up in the emergency room with identical symptoms, you don’t need a ten-year genetic study to prove the food was the problem. Juries in state courts understand this, which is why they’ve already handed down multi-million dollar verdicts against the manufacturer. As I said before, even if the federal case isn’t proceeding, the state courts are the best route for recovery here (and are working).
1990
Where were the medical issues? A federal court said nothing could be proven to be related to the uniforms. Of course humanity gets rashes and scrapes and, if you watch enough tv, the TV ads will help you realize Psoriasis isn’t limited to flight attendants.
It’s a cute retort to call it “union bashing” when nothing could be proven to be related to the uniforms.
When a federal court says those issues can’t be proven to be related to uniforms, I tend to believe the federal court — at multiple levels.
But as ever, always rich hearing you talk about union love when you routinely brag about flying the biggest union basher out there, Delta. Put your money where your keyboard is.
@Julie — I’m not involved, but I’ll assume the ‘medical issues’ were found in emergency rooms and in the medical records of hundreds of flight attendants who suffered severe respiratory distress and bleeding rashes…The federal court didn’t declare the uniforms safe or “innocent.” State courts have different rules; juries looked at the exact same evidence, and handed down verdicts against the manufacturer. (Also, your or my personal flight history is not relevant to this case. If you must know, ironically, I’m flying with American, soon… not telling you where… but, I am looking to it…)
Flight history doesn’t matter for me, but it’s interesting to note when you consistently hop on chat boards to champion unions yet routinely also brag about mostly flying a carrier known for union bashing.
If you don’t want to be called out on it, then pick a side and put your money where your keyboard is and call out Delta for what they do to unions. Otherwise, be more careful about your posts calling others “union bashing” for no reason other than noting “the federal court found no evidence that the uniforms were related to sickness”.
Fly who you want, but lay off the name calling when you clearly do nothing in your personal life to back up your commenting.
For some people change is hard.
Or, every change should be used as an opportunity for union leverage or politics
@Julie — The court did not find “no evidence”… it found the chemistry too complex to isolate a single ingredient under specific federal rules. State courts disagreed and held the manufacturer accountable, which is the legal reality.
On your attempts at ad hominem, I think you may have me mistaken for Delta-sycophant, Mr. Dunn. Besides, have you not seen my regular advocacy for Delta’s flight attendants, baggage handlers, and maintenance technicians to join their pilots (since 1934!) and dispatchers in organizing… Moving goal posts and forcing purity tests on anyone is not the actual issue here.
@Carl — Change is inevitable. Whether it’s for the better or worse, depends.
@1990
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Clearly the Fed’s got it wrong, (Again) but the State’s will surly bring justice and a massive payment from that evil corporate uniform manufacturer who’s only business goal was to make the entire AA employee roster sick. 7 years and the evidence was inconclusive or unable to be attributed to a single (or multiple) for that matter. Don’t worry, the State’s will ensure a payout no matter what the evidence says.
@D Fray — You forgot the ‘/s’…
Product liability doesn’t require intent. No one is claiming the manufacturer literally sought to harm everyone. What matters is if they manufacture or distribute a product that is defectively designed, manufactured, or fails to warn of risks.
The federal court didn’t say the uniforms were “safe”; it ruled that under the strict federal Daubert standard (which Gary literally referenced in his post), the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses couldn’t definitively isolate which specific chemical at what exact dosage caused the reactions.
Attacking the entire state judiciary system as some lawless, evidence-free ATM approaches a ‘sovereign citizen’-level of frivolous argument. When thousands of employees develop identical, documented medical issues immediately after a rollout, state law allows common sense to prevail over corporate deniability.
Would you like a refresher on the difference between federal and state courts?
The whole point of the Federal Rules is to diminish the constitutional right to a jury trial in civil cases. Likewise the gatekeeper business. Yes, go to state court.
@1990
Right, ten years of federal litigation, expert testimony, lab testing, and appellate review… all apparently less reliable than your conclusion that it’s “corporate greed and someone should pay.”
What actually happened is much simpler, no one could identify a specific chemical, dose, or compound linking the uniforms to the claimed symptoms. Without that, there’s no causation just correlation. And the court system, especially federal ones, tend to require the former.
The industry is not some unregulated offshore experiment that ignores the fairly extensive compliance framework governing textiles, dyes, and chemical use in the U.S. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not a free for all, there are guardrails in place, maybe they should have gone after the (likely) offshore fabric manufacturer.
Suggesting the system “failed” and the states will “fix it” really just reads as dissatisfaction with the outcome, not a flaw in the process. After a decade, if causation could have been proven, it would have been, you just don’t like the outcome. As to your offer, no thank you, your are the last person I would go to for legal advice or interpretation, In my capacity, I’ve spent some time in both courts, I think I have a pretty good idea how they work. Have a good day and you keep being you.
@jack the ladd — “Yes, go to state court.” Exactly.
@D Fray — Happy to help out on this one… federal vs. state courts… let’s do this…
First, an example: Imagine… buying a brand-new car. The day you drive it off the lot, the brakes fail and you crash. The manufacturer panics, recalls the cars, and crushes them in a scrapyard before they can be fully dissected in a lab.
Under strict federal rules, you might lose because you can’t prove whether it was a faulty bolt, a software glitch, or a torn line. But a state court jury is allowed to look at fact the car was brand new, the brakes failed, and thousands of identical models had the exact same failure.
So, that isn’t “dissatisfaction with the outcome”; it is two different court systems applying two different standards of evidence. American Airlines didn’t spend millions to panic-bin that entire uniform inventory because of “correlation.” They did it because of the reality that the uniforms were harming their employees.
And, I didn’t say, “corporate greed and someone should pay.” But, if true, that sounds right!
Question – is there something special treatment that has to be done with these uniforms that’s causing this? Does the clothing manufacturer have to use special materials or chemicals so the uniforms are fire retardant or something? I’m trying to understand if there is a difference between the uniforms produced for AA vs clothing produced for the general public.
What are the odds that this correlation is just some random event unrelated to the change in uniforms? All medical studies and most of life operates on correlations, not billiard ball causality. Hume says all causality is just observed correlation. But the Federal courts operate in the Alice’s world and this is on purporse.
@1990: The old uniforms can’t serve as a placebo as they are an entity well known to those wearing them. A placebo has to be indistinguishable to the new uniform, yet with a well known safety record. In this case it might be a wool or cotton uniform made to look and feel like the new fabric. And a study in American Journal of Emergency Medicine found 40-50% of patients presenting to an ED had anxiety out of proportion to any physical illness. Kaiser has found that 15-40% of patients presenting to an ED are well (symptoms without identifiable illness or illness not in need of urgent care). Certainly some workers did have a physical reaction to the new uniforms, as Gary outlines. There will be a small percentage of people who react to any fabric, food or chemical. Yet we don’t commonly see people suffering their first allergic reaction to labelled peanut butter (1 – 2%) suing the manufacturer. This is also true for nickel in jewelry which has a 10-20% risk of allergic reaction. There are chemicals with either a known higher risk of immune reaction or similar risk with a higher morbidity/mortality that are generally outlawed or require special handling.
Not every adverse occurance merits cash, and awarding cash in those cases costs all consumers and convinces the public that companies must have acted irresponsibly or intentionally put people at significant risk. As far as the Federal case described herein, I’ve served as an expert witness and I’ve never seen a case where the plaintiff’s attorney goes to trial despite being unable to find an expert to directly ascribe the outcome to the action/product in question. The Federal court got this one right and the states wrong, IMO.
@Evan — Good questions. I don’t think FAA or OSHA requires anything specific on crew uniforms. So, just FTC and CPSC rules apply. Most airlines order stain-resistant, wrinkle-free, oil-repellent, flame-retardant, etc. Some manufacturers apparently use “chemical soup” to make that happen (formaldehyde, PFAS, etc.) Because the federal government completely leaves it to the open market, flight attendant unions now have to explicitly negotiate their own independent fabric-testing protections directly into their contracts. There probably should be better federal oversight on this.
@jack the ladd — The odds of thousands of healthy employees simultaneously developing the exact same rare, severe symptoms the second they put on a new uniform being a “random correlation” are statistically astronomical. Federal courts do seem to operate in a fantasy world, here. They demand that a plaintiff perfectly isolate the single, specific molecule in a lab before they’ll even consider causation. Ironically, here at least, state courts are more realistic.
@Mark F — Comparing a mandatory corporate uniform rollout to someone eating labeled peanut butter is a glaring false equivalence. If a tiny percentage of people react to normal fabric, that’s an allergy. When thousands of previously healthy employees simultaneously develop objective, documented physical injuries, including chemical burns, bleeding rashes, and vocal cord issues, that is a defective product, which is what those state courts determined.
The federal court didn’t toss the case because there were no experts; under Daubert, the experts couldn’t isolate the exact single molecule responsible out of a proprietary cocktail. State courts simply recognize that demanding a “smoking-gun” molecule in a complex “chemical soup” is an impossible evidentiary bar that shields negligent manufacturers from basic accountability.
@Mark F — Comparing a mandatory corporate uniform rollout to someone eating labeled peanut butter is a glaring false equivalence. If a tiny percentage of people react to normal fabric, that’s an allergy. When thousands of previously healthy employees simultaneously develop objective, documented physical injuries, including chemical burns, bleeding rashes, and vocal cord issues, that is a defective product, which is what those state courts determined.
The federal court didn’t toss the case because there were no experts; under Daubert, the experts couldn’t isolate the exact single molecule responsible out of a proprietary mix. State courts simply recognize that demanding a “smoking-gun” molecule in a complex “chemical soup” is an impossible evidentiary bar that shields negligent manufacturers from basic accountability.
(had to re-post, because I used one of Gary’s auto-mod words. It’s the one like a rooster.)
(Gary, feel free to remove the second one, if you wish. I mean, I get it, but, like why are words WITH ‘c*ck’ auto-modded? Like, c*ockpit, or c*ocktail?)
@1990: None of the five components of the Daubert Standard require that a single molecule be identified as the cause of the injury. Many adverse reactions are indeed caused by a combination of molecules (e.g. a hapten plus a protein), one or more of which may be unknown.
And where was the union before the new uniforms were rolled out? Didn’t it fail in it’s fiduciary resposibility to it’s members? Again, not all bad outcomes are a tort.
Court got it right. Why in the world should the plaintiff win without even stating a plausible mechanism by which the harm could have happened? Far too many lawsuits about bad happened, blame whoever has the deep pockets. This feels a lot like the big case about silicone breast implants–in the end, the science said the supposed “victims” showed a lower level of the claimed maladies than the population at large.
@Mark F — Sure, Daubert doesn’t literally say “find a single molecule.” (Like I’ve been saying, the federal court has a stricter standard; state court is the way to go here for the plaintiffs.) As for the union, they didn’t fail their members. Nobody was testing standard corporate clothes in a toxicology lab before 2016. Now, I guess, maybe they should. That’s why I’ve said there should be better protections.
@Loren — Apples and oranges. Implants are long-term medical device where symptoms usually appear years later, so unrelated illnesses do cloud the picture. Here, thousands of healthy people got identical, severe skin and breathing issues the exact week they put on a brand-new uniform, and those symptoms cleared up when they took them off.
@Loren
Don’t waste your time. the smartest gadfly on “every” thread and topic(has Google and AI) has held court, and you are deemed wrong and incompetent. Pay up!
@D Fray — As @Mike P likes to say: “I accept your surrender.” And as you say, “Have a good day and you keep being you.”
1990 thinks they are the moderator of everyone’s comments.
Nice ‘wipe’… @TP
@TP
If not the moderator, at a minimum, he believes himself to be the supreme authority and knowledge repository for “every” topic or thread on the VFTW board, no matter what the topic may be. Don’t believe me? Just ask him.
@D Fray — More attention? Yum!
Story I heard… factory that made uniforms was in Bangladesh or somewhere like that. A new hire was asked to spray some chemicals or pesticide on the pallet of new uniforms. Normally there’s a cellophane wrap over the batch of uniforms on the pallet ready to ship, but sprayed on prior before shipping. For some reason it got lost in translation with the new hire to spray on the wrap only and not directly on the uniforms. New hire sprayed directly on the uniforms. The uniforms directly on top and around were contaminated with the chemicals. Uniforms underneath weren’t as affected. Hence some crewmembers weren’t complaining as their uniforms weren’t as affected if it was underneath, and others adversely affected.