Dr. David Dao suffered this ordeal when airport security officers forced him, upon orders from United Airlines, to leave its Kentucky-bound plane on April 9. The flight was overbooked. (Photo : Inside Edition/YouTube)
David Dao, the doctor who incurred injuries and got hospitalized after being forcibly disembarked from a United Airlines flight, accepted a settlement offer from the airline company, announced his lawyer Thomas Demetrio in a press conference in Chicago on April 27, reported Xinhua.
The Chicago personal injury lawyer said that the amount of the settlement with United would not be revealed. The two parties agreed not to disclose it.
Initially mistaken as Chinese by some news outlets in China, Dao, who is of Vietnamese descent, experienced concussion, broke his nose, and lost teeth, according to Demetrio in a different news conference held on April 13.
On April 9, Dao, a lung specialist, and his wife Teresa, a pediatrician, boarded United’s Flight 3411 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
They would be flying from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky.
The two doctors, both 69, learned that the airline picked them for bumping to give way to four Republic Airline crew members, according to The Independent.
Their flight was overbooked.
In one video shown by Inside Edition, Dao was seen talking apparently to a United personnel on the phone about his situation.
“I am a physician. I have to work tomorrow at 8 o’ clock,” he said.
When he continued to refuse, aviation policemen took the matters into their own hands: they dragged him off.
The viral videos of the brutal incident--the bespectacled doctor could be seen talking at one point with bloodied mouth--sparked outrage, particularly in the U.S. and in China.
In an opinion piece published by CNN, the network’s legal analyst and columnist Danny Cevallos said that “United probably paid well north of a million dollars.”
The settlement with United would likely consist of “a number that Dao felt comfortable accepting,” added Cevallos, a personal injury and criminal defense lawyer.
Dao’s daughter speaks out
Crystal Dao-Pepper, one of Dr. Dao’s five children, attended the April 13 news conference in Chicago and thanked the people who supported his father during that “very difficult time."
“On behalf of my dad and my entire family, we would like to express our gratitude for the huge outpouring of prayers, love and concern that we have received from all over the world these past few days.”
Pepper likewise thanked the doctors, nurses and other medical personnel who attended to his father’s needs.
When she and her family learned about what happened and saw the video, they felt “horrified and shocked and sickened.”
“What happened to my dad should’ve never happened to any human being regardless of the circumstance,” said the 33-year-old mom from Barrington, Illinois.
“We hope that in the future nothing like this happens again.”
Epic mistake
United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz said that what happened to Dao was “a mistake of epic proportions,” according to The Independent.
For his “mission” to bring changes to the company, Munoz added that all United customers would be rendered “with the highest level of service and the deepest sense of respect.”
Reports revealed that the Dao couple, who are now grandparents, has five children: Tim, 34; twin daughters Christine and Crystal, 33; Ben, 31; and Angela, 27.
Tim works as a cardiologist in Plano, Texas; Christine, as a physician in Durham, North Carolina.
Ben and Angela, an alumna of the University of Kentucky, both completed medical courses.
Dao said to Demetrio that he sailed away from Vietnam on a boat during the Fall of Saigon in 1975, reported Fox News Insider.
Demetrio said his client told him that he “was terrified” that time, but compared to what he underwent on that plane, the latter “was more horrifying and harrowing.”
