Flier, arrested after incident in air, awarded $27.5M

By Alan Levin, USA TODAY

A Texas jury has awarded $27.5 million to a woman who says Southwest Airlines flight attendants had her arrested in 2003 because they were overly aggressive in enforcing post-9/11 security. The case against Samantha Carrington, a U.S. citizen born in Iran, was dropped the day after her arrest when an FBI agent investigating the matter came to her defense. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles woman says, she is now subjected to heightened security while flying and cannot clear her name from watch lists.

Carrington's lawyer, Enrique Moreno, says the case is an example of how post-Sept. 11 security measures can unfairly target innocent people, especially those with Middle Eastern backgrounds.

"It started with profiling, perhaps a stereotype, and it escalated to something much more sinister," Moreno said Tuesday. "This particular incident has some role in that greater national discussion about balancing security with individual rights and individual dignity."

The El Paso jury reached the verdict Friday. It found that Southwest was responsible for the incident Oct. 7, 2003, and had acted with malice.

Carrington, 54, an economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles, says she did nothing more than complain about poor service on a flight from Houston to El Paso. She had taken her mother to a Houston hospital for cancer treatment and was returning home. Flight attendants, however, claimed that she began yelling on the flight and grabbed one of them.

Carrington said she felt vindicated by the verdict: "I hope that in some way my experience will prevent someone else from experiencing a similar nightmare."

Southwest denies that its flight attendants did anything wrong and intends to appeal, spokesman Ed Stewart said: "We stand by our actions."

FBI Special Agent John Shipley testified that he did not believe the flight attendants' accounts of what happened during the flight. Jurors also saw a letter written to Carrington from Southwest President Colleen Barrett calling the incident "heinous" and offering to donate $8,000 in airline tickets to the hospital where her mother had been treated.

The judgment isn't the first of its type. In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration paid $50,000 to a physician of Indian descent who was detained by air marshals.