American Airlines made headlines this week for blaming a 9-year-old for negligence after she was secretly filmed by a flight attendant in an airplane bathroom. Now the company is saying that that line of argument, made by its lawyers in a court filing, is “not representative” of its position and will be corrected.
“Our outside legal counsel retained with our insurance company made an error in this filing,” the airline said in a statement on Wednesday. “The included defense is not representative of our airline and we have directed it be amended this morning. We do not believe this child is at fault and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously.”
Estes Carter Thompson III, an American Airlines flight attendant, was arrested in January for allegedly trying to record a 14-year-old girl while she used the bathroom on a flight in September. When law enforcement agents searched his phone, they found other videos of children using the bathroom and artificial intelligence-generated images of child sexual abuse, federal prosecutors said.
American Airlines said at the time that Thompson was no longer employed by the company and that it was cooperating with law enforcement.
The family of the 14-year-old sued the airline in December. The 9-year-old girl’s family also filed a civil lawsuit in February, saying that they were notified by the FBI that it had found videos and photos of the girl, from a flight that the family took in January 2023, on Thompson’s phone.
In response to the second lawsuit, lawyers for the company said in a filing on Tuesday that any damages to the girl were caused by her “own fault and negligence” as she used a bathroom that she “knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.” That defense, which was widely covered by the media, was met with public outrage.
The attorney representing the family, Paul Llewellyn, called the airline’s legal strategy “depraved” and “shocking,” saying in a statement that the airline’s claim that it was an error “is simply not credible.”
Thompson this week pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse depicting a prepubescent minor.
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