Really Bad Lawyering, Guys

A troubling discovery last September on a Boston-bound plane received an unexpected response from American Airlines in a legal filing.

In an effort to not be held financially liable in a civil lawsuit in Texas, attorneys for American Airlines appeared to blame a 9-year-old girl for allowing herself to be secretly recorded by a flight attendant's phone in an airplane bathroom.

In a filing this week, the airline's attorneys say the harm to the child was caused by her “own fault and negligence,” and by her “use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

American is throwing their insurance company's attorneys under the bus for this and claim this was an "error". Maybe so, but cripes, didn't anything think this through? Sure, blaming the plaintiff is an old strategy, but when it's a kid who was recorded by a perfert, who the hell thought that was a good idea? Did nobody foresee that the first thing the plaintiff's lawyers was going to do was print it out, highlight it, and send it to a reporter (or post it online)?

I can just hear the phone call from American Airlines/the insurer to the law firm: "Are you people really this fucking stupid?"

Some lawyer(s) going to be shown the door so the insurance company doesn't dump that law firm. If they haven't already.