The attorney of passenger forcefully removed from a United Airlines flight earlier this week, say they will file a suit for the 69 year old has a concussion and broken nose,
Already, attorneys have filed a chancery motion asking that all evidence in the case be preserved. David Dao’s attorney, Thomas Demetrio, would not provide a timeline for filing the lawsuit other than to say he had two years to do so, and “I promise you it won’t be that long.”
Dao suffered “a significant concussion as a result of disembarking that plane,” Demetrio said in a news conference in Chicago.
He also lost two front teeth, has a broken nose and incurred injuries to his sinuses, and will be “undergoing reconstructive surgery in that regard,” Demetrio said.
The attorney further said that Dao had conveyed to him that he was on a boat out of Vietnam after the 1975 fall of Saigon, and “being dragged down the aisle was more horrifying and harrowing than what he experienced in Vietnam.”
Dao “has no interest in ever seeing an airplane again” and will likely take a car home to Kentucky, the attorney said, adding that his client has “absolutely zippo” memory of the incident.
Dao’s daughter, Crystal Dao Pepper, also at the news conference, said her parents were returning home from vacation and making a connection in Chicago out of California.
She described her dad as a “wonderful father” and “loving grandfather.”
“My dad is healing right now, and that’s all I have to say,” she said.
Millions saw via traditional and social media, how Dao was aboard a Louisville, Kentucky-bound flight out of Chicago on Sunday night when Chicago aviation security officers forcefully pulled him from his seat and dragged him down the aisle of United Airlines Flight 3411.
His fellow passengers looked on, many of them filming it
the incident. United would say later it had to remove Dao to make room for four of its own dead-heading employees, who needed to get to Louisville.
Demetrio seemed to take issue with the assertion that the flight was overbooked.
“It wasn’t even a matter of overbooking. It was a matter of at the last moment, four employes had to get to Louisville so they could get to work the next day,” he said.
“We take money from people, we let them sit on the airplane, seatbelted. Are we really going to start taking them off then?
The airline offered compensation at first, but when that didn’t convince enough passengers to take a later flight, it picked Dao randomly.
In video shot by Joya and Forest Cummings, who were sitting behind him, Dao repeatedly refuses to disembark, explaining he is a physician and must work in the morning.
