CHICAGO—The passenger dragged from a United Airlines plane in Chicago in an incident that sparked international outrage and turned into a public relations nightmare for the carrier, will likely sue the company, his attorney said on Thursday.
“For a long time airlines, United in particular, have bullied us,” Thomas Demetrio told reporters at a press conference in Chicago.
“Will there be a lawsuit? Yeah, probably.”
He said the law stated that passengers could not be ejected from planes with unreasonable force.
David Dao, a 69-year-old Vietnamese-American doctor, was hospitalized after Chicago aviation police dragged him from the plane as the airline sought to make space on a flight from the city’s O'Hare International Airport to Louisville, Kentucky.
Dao, who was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday night, suffered a significant concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth in the incident, and he will need to undergo reconstructive surgery, Demetrio said.
Video of Sunday’s incident taken by other passengers and showing Dao being dragged up the plane aisle and with a bloodied mouth circulated rapidly, causing public outrage that was not calmed by the airline’s initial response to the case.
