Cashless In-Flight Sales Discrimination Case : Dismissed
This past Friday, the 19th of August, the Superior Court of New Jersey, in Newark, heard a motion to dismiss Rosen vs. Continental Airlines, an unusual civil suit … among a sea of unusual airline and travel industry related civil suits.
The basis of the suit brought against Continental Airlines (now United Airlines) by Attorney Michael Rosen, and his attorney Nathan Kittner, was that airlines were discriminating against travelers by only offering cashless in-flight sales. The details of Mr. Rosen’s complaint against Continental Airlines were written about on Friday on Flying With Fish here – Are Cashless Only In-flight Airline Sales Discrimination?
United Airlines has now confirmed that Judge Cobham, who heard the motion, has granted Continental Airlines’ motion to dismiss the case, filed by the law firm of LeClairRyan.
As Mr. Rosen, who filed the lawsuit against Continental Airlines, is an attorney, it will be interesting to see if he presses the issue and files an appeal or attempts to move his complaint to a higher court.
This case has brought up some concern regarding travelers who simply do not have credit cards or bankcards and this concern may have been valid a few years ago. As prepaid debit cards have rapidly replaced travellers cheques and foreign currency for travelers, and plastic now dominates paper for providing identification verification at check-in kiosks, purchasing mass transit tickets, providing security deposits at hotels, etc, the argument that travelers do not have access to a credit card or debit card is diminishing. Travelers must go to the bank for travellers cheques whereas a prepaid debit card may be purchased at the corner store and topped up at the grocery store.
Happy Flying!
@flyingwithfish
this will go higher. you can not say US money is not valid for payment. it says on any note “this note is legal tender for ALL debts, public and private”. airlines may not like it but they have to take cash. Now they can say exact change or no coins as been shown in the past. will be fun to watch!
@deltaGoldflyer: You should read the comments in the previous thread about this. People have thought this was illegal since 2009, but it is in fact not illegal. The US government only requires that transactions are performed in Dollars, but doesn’t control what form the transaction takes place (cash or credit).
The Euro is another legal tender currency, but we in the US don’t have to accept it because our laws require Dollar transactions. Following your logic, we would have to take all legal tender currencies.
I posted an easy to read link in the previous thread that I won’t repost again because you should really do the research before ranting.
@FM – we will see. Nice personal attack btw – have a nice day if you can!
@deltaGoldflyer: No offense intended, but if you took it as a personal attack, then I publicly apologize.
Thanks for coming back to the thread with your thoughts.
Dude, Whats with your “tags” ?
Chris,
You caught my SEO experiment, eh? :0) Tried it on two posts to see if it changed the search terms in which the posts pop up for something else I’m working on.
Happy Flying!
-Fish
Love it! Let me know how it works out. Enjoy the Hurricane
CM
This is an interesting post about prepaid cards and using card plated money for travelling.