Court sides with airline over complaint site
A Montreal passenger-rights advocate says he will appeal a Quebec Superior Court order to take down the contact information of United Airlines senior management from a customer complaint site following a company lawsuit alleging harassment from disgruntled flyers.
Judge Louis Crête wrote that Jeremy Cooperstock’s Untied. com website caused “unjustifiable damages” to several United Airlines Inc. employees who were contacted by angry passengers after finding the names, phone numbers and emails posted on the site.
Cooperstock, a McGill University engineering professor, claimed the airline was attempting to muzzle customer complaints by demanding the removal of publicly available information from his site.
“The limited cease-and-desist remedy applied for by United does not infringe on Cooperstock’s freedom of expression,” wrote Crête in his ruling, published Tuesday.
In his plea, Cooperstock indicated that the removing of the names and contact information as requested by United would force him to shut down his website, though he now says that he will keep it running, pending appeal.
“My intent is to keep the site operating, continuing to serve as a resource for the travelling public in exercising their rights against the airline that has the worst record of all major North American carriers in terms of mistreatment of its passengers and employees,” Cooperstock said in an email Wednesday.
Crête ordered the names and contact information of a United lawyer, Jessica Rossman, and manager Scott O’Leary be removed from Untied.com. As of Wednesday morning, however, they were still listed on Cooperstock’s site.
The judge ordered Cooperstock not to post the names and contact information of any non-customer service employee on Untied.com, with the exception of two vicepresidents, Brett Hart and Sandra Pineau-Boddison.
United was also ordered to inform Cooperstock if Hart or Pineau-Boddison were replaced in these positions.
The airline giant sued Cooperstock in 2012, alleging that his website resulted in the harassment of employees who were not in a position to directly help customers.
In June 2014, the Quebec Superior Court ruled against his motion for an early dismissal of the case.
The 20-year feud began when Cooperstock had a negative experience with customer service after a United flight in 1996 and posted his complaint along with those he received from other passengers on his student website at the University of Toronto, where he studying at the time. United then filed a complaint with the university, accusing the site of copyright infringement for using the company logo.
In 1997 Cooperstock set up Untied.com, which was designed to resemble the United website and over the years has posted more than 25,000 customer and employee complaints.
Cooperstock and the United employees last appeared in court in April, where Rossman testified she received seven calls and emails in a single day, including one “extremely aggressive” call in 2012 comparing her to Hitler and was referred to the Houston police and eventually the F.B.I.
“Clearly that is harassment!” wrote Crête.
Cooperstock claimed that since the people mentioned on his webpage were senior counsel, they would be in a better position to evaluate the legal consequences of the complaints.
Crête also ruled that United may claim its legal costs for the proceedings, not including lawyer fees.