CHICAGO — A federal judge will allow a group of United Airlines fliers to move ahead with a portion of their class action lawsuit, accusing the carrier of wrongly refusing to refund airfares to passengers whose itineraries crashed amid early COVID-era flight cancellations.
Eight months after dismissing portions of that class action, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin has rejected United's motion to ground the rest of the lawsuit and won't strike the remaining class allegations.
Named plaintiffs Jacob Rudolph, Mark Hansen and Jason Buffer sued United, alleging the airline’s Conditions of Carriage entitled passengers to refunds for canceled flights and not just credits for future travel. But in February, Judge Durkin said involuntary cancellations — when the carrier grounds a flight — can be attributed to unforeseen consequences, a schedule change or irregular operations. Under the contract, cancellations from unforeseen events — known in legal terminology as a force majeure event — result in passengers being given travel credits, but not a refund. Under the other two conditions, passengers can request a refund when they are not rebooked within a set timeframe.
Steve Berman
| hbsslaw.com
Durkin said United sufficiently argued a connection between coronavirus response and its cancellations. He dismissed Rudolph’s complaint, noting the passenger initiated the cancellation, as well as a portion of Hansen’s, stating a trip to Costa Rica in late March 2019 is something “no reasonable air carrier would agree to” complete under the contemporaneous coronavirus circumstances.
However, Hansen’s other flights, as well as Buffer’s itinerary, constituted a question of “whether the cancellations at issue occurred because of economic considerations, or were due to restrictions and warnings related to the pandemic” that “can only be answered with discovery.”
In an opinion issued Oct. 5, Durkin referenced a Feb. 16 status hearing at which Rudolph and Hansen declined to amend their complaint. United filed a motion to strike the surviving allegations on March 12. As the plaintiffs haven’t yet formally requested class certification, Durkin limited his analysis to whether the allegations could plausibly establish a class.
Durkin first rejected the plaintiffs’ position that United waived any objections to the class allegations because it didn’t raise that issue when moving to dismiss the complaint. However, he went on to reject United’s three arguments supporting the motion to strike.
First, United said the proposed class is overly broad, in large part because it isn’t limited to passengers affected by involuntary cancellations, nor does it delineate between involuntary cancellations attributed to schedule changes or irregular operations and those based on a force majeure event. Although Durkin agreed the class definition is broad, it isn’t “so unmanageable as it would be appropriate to strike the allegations" at this stage in the proceedings.
Second, United argued the allegations don’t have enough in common, taking issues with the plaintiffs’ list of factual and common legal questions. Durkin said resolving that issue on a motion to strike is premature and noted “United fails to present any specific evidence — as opposed to mere speculation — that there is no commonality among the class allegations.” He also said commonality is better determined after discovery.
Third, United said the complaint can’t demonstrate any common questions would take precedence over issues of individual class members. The airline pointed to Durkin’s own analysis form his February opinion as proof the claims ultimately hinge in individual circumstances, but Durkin wrote that strategy is similarly limited by coming early in the litigation process and he “remains unconvinced that the complaint is so defective as to warrant striking the class action claims at the pleading stage.”
Durkin denied the motion to strike without prejudice, as United could revisit the issues after the plaintiffs move for certification.
The plaintiffs are represented by Steve W. Berman, Daniel J. Kurowski and Whitney K. Siehl, of the Chicago firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
United has been represented by Patricia Brown Holmes and Sondra A. Hemeryck, of Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP, of Chicago.