Quote:
Originally Posted by Silent Bob
If they can find her during take off, why couldn't they find her before hand?
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You hit the nail on the head Bob. Seems to me like you are arguing the case on behalf of the OP.
I think I had misread your post when I concluded you were saying that people would have to disprove illegality. Sorry.
In a civil suit, the Plaintiff does have the burden of proof. If the police find themselves illegally in someones home, the Plaintiff's job is very easy. To prove something in this case like if they took money, the first question is did they have the opportunity the answer is of course yes. Next did they have the motive, again putting someones money in your pocket to enrich yourself is always a motive. But the case does not end there. It depends on whether the Judge will believe the Plaintiff. Where it is a question of whose word the judge will take, it depends on what is believable. Is the Plaintiff a known criminal with a record? Police officers flouting the law by making an illegal search> That goes against them. If the amount of money is ridiculously high given who the occupants of the house were, the Judge may not believe them. But what if they say the wife had her jewelery in a cabinet wher the police searched and the jewelery went missing? Would a policeman have a motive to put it in his pocket? Well he would. Questions of fact like this are answered by the Court when the witnesses give their evidence in Court. The judge looks as who the people are and whether it is reasonable to expect that they would have had what they say they lost.
In this case, the FA or gate attendent was clearly wrong to take away the bag and I have no doubt that a Judge will find that she did take it away. The OP says there was a tag number. If that number was fictitious, Continental could pull that number up on its computers and tell her so. The fact that they hire lawyers to ask her for receipt tells me that they know that the bag was taken away but suspect as we do that she is inflating he losses. Again to prove her case in Court it depends in part on what is reasonable for her to have been travelling with. A lady going to a function will be expected to have some jewelry with her. If she says she had a diamond necklace worth $5,000, a Court will readily believe her. If however she says she had jewelery worth $50,000 a Court will want to be convinced of her means and that she is a person likely to have been travelling with that.
It depends too on the demeanour of witnesses in cases of who says what. The OP will give her evidence and the FA will no doubt be brought to court by the airline to say she did not take any jewelery out of the bag. The OP's lawyer will ask her just what you asked as I quoted you above. The Judge's job will be to determine who is lying
In this case the FA put herself in the wrong (just like the police who enter a home illegally) by taking away the bag. When flight is about to leave there are gate attendants at the door before the door is closed. They take hand luggage that cant fit and put in in the hold and give the passenger a tag for it. This has to be what happened. There can be any number of reasons why the bag could not fit. Another passenger may have moved it aside to fit his own bag. The FA took the bag to the gate attendant. They opened it to see a name. They found the name. Instead of immediately returning the bag to the passenger, they put it in the hold with the checked luggage and gave it a tag. The FA told her about it after the door was closed and gave her the tag number.
An entirely believable scenario.
My own experience is that airlines will try to avoid this kind of litigation. Even if the OP proves only $500 in lost jewellery, the airline's reputation will suffer immensely, if passengers get word that Continental has FAs who steal jewelery from hand luggage