Lozada v. Delta Airlines, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. June 17, 2014). The 69-year-old plaintiff eased the pain of a JFK-MIA flight delay by enjoying alcoholic drinks at two airport bars. The plaintiff alleged that she boarded the aircraft without incident, but Delta disagreed. According to airline personnel, the plaintiff appeared intoxicated and loudly demanded, in the gate area and on board, free drinks for the passengers as compensation for the delay. In her seat, the plaintiff repeatedly pushed the call bell and was slurring her speech. Delta personnel repeatedly instructed the plaintiff to calm down, to no avail. The cabin crew notified the captain, who instructed that they request that the airport police deplane the plaintiff. The airport police removed her from the aircraft but did not charge her with any crime.
The plaintiff sued Delta in state court, alleging negligence. After removing the case to federal court and conducting discovery, Delta moved for summary judgment. Delta contended that the plaintiff’s claim was preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act and the Federal Aviation Act and that, even if her claim were not preempted, she had failed to state a claim for negligence under New York law.
The ADA preempts state common law negligence and most other state law claims that relate to an airline’s “service.” The FAA grants an airline the right to “refuse to transport a passenger or property the carrier decides is, or might be, inimical to safety.” The plaintiff’s primary argument in opposition to Delta’s motion was that the airline was required “to demonstrate as a matter of law that the Plaintiff was intoxicated” but that it had not presented any “real proof at all of Plaintiff’s purported intoxication,” such as the result of a Breathalyzer test.
The court granted Delta’s motion. First, the court held that the ADA preempted the plaintiff’s negligence claim because the airline’s deplaning of the plaintiff related to its fundamental “service” of deciding whether to transport a passenger and that such removal was not outrageous or unreasonable, particularly given that the plaintiff herself admitted during her deposition that she may have been acting like “a brute or something.” Next, the court held that the FAA also preempted the plaintiff’s negligence claim because the plaintiff’s drunk-appearing conduct gave Delta’s personnel “reason to believe” that she was intoxicated and thus posed a safety risk. The court ruled that it was “ultimately irrelevant” whether the plaintiff “was actually intoxicated.”