Legal News

Flying the . . . Rather Hostile Skies?

By Ashby Jones

Workplace discrimination cases get settled all the time. So we think it’s safe to say it takes a rare result or strange set of facts to get us to sit up and take notice of one.

But this story from the Seattle Times certainly did the trick. Four words for you, LB Readers: Pornography in Airplane Cockpits.

According to the story, United Airlines recently settled a sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former pilot who grounded herself after repeatedly finding pornography hidden in the cockpits of domestic airline flights.

Details of the settlement with former Capt. Lisa Stout have not been divulged. But according to the Seattle Times, the lawsuit was resolved earlier this month, just weeks before it was set to go to trial in a Seattle federal court.

The facts of the case, at least those alleged by Stout, are certainly, uh, provocative. Stout, a United 737 captain based out of Seattle, allegedly found pornographic photos of women on more than 20 flights in 2004 and 2005. Her lawsuit claimed that United didn’t do enough to catch those who had put up the pictures and the company retaliated against her after she reported it.

According to the story, the photos were mostly found in hidden spots in the cockpit, such as under a cap on a safety device or taped to the lid of the unused ashtray. (It strikes us as a little disconcerting that some airline pilot might be bored enough while at the helm of a commercial flight to look for tiny hiding places for pornography. Isn’t there enough to do? Like, say, monitor those 15,000 little switches, lights and dials?)

According to her lawsuit, Stout developed a “severe condition” that required her to take medication and, ultimately, ground herself in August 2005. United countered that Stout could not have been offended by the sexually explicit photos because she once worked in a retail store that sold pornographic magazines, she sometimes sketched nudes as an artist and she had attended art shows displaying photos of nude women.

Stout’s attorney, Victoria Vreeland, said a nondisclosure agreement executed with the settlement prevented her from talking about it. United’s attorneys did not return telephone messages. An airline spokeswoman in Chicago, Megan McCarthy, said the airline would not comment.

Oh, why can’t more airline pilots be like Sully or this guy, Denny Flanagan?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 23, 2009 (boomark / email).