The fate of a couple who were kicked off a flight due to allegedly wreaking of body odour has been revealed in court documents.
American airline passengers Yehuda Yosef Adler, his wife Jamie and their young daughter were thrown off a flight when staff said passengers had complained about the family having “body odour.”
The couple filed a civil suit against American Airlines “for discrimination that relates to the Adlers’ race, religion, ancestry, country of origin, and ethnic characteristics, for denial of freedom and equality, for embarrassment, humiliation, for disparaging treatment, for defamation, for negligence and for intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
But court documents now reveal the case has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning they will not be able to refile or pursue a further case against the airline, reports the Mirror.
At the time, Mr Adler told WPLG Local 10 News: “All of a sudden, as soon as they took us off, they closed the gate and then they said, ‘Sorry, sir, some people complained you had body odour and we’re not letting you back on.”
The case was officially dismissed 60 days after it was first put forward, and court documents reveal the case had been dismissed with prejudice, meaning they will not be able to refile or pursue a further case against the airline.
When the incident happened, they were told that several other customers had complained about their smell, and as a result, they were deplaned, told their luggage would be removed which they say never happened, given a hotel room and food vouchers and sent on their way.
The couple booked a flight for the following day, but before leaving they stopped passersby on the day it happened to ask them if they smelled, as well as airport staff, but nobody would give them a straight answer.
The family are Orthodox Jews, and Mr Adler believes the deplaning was a result of their religious background and not their alleged body odour, as his wife told WPLG Local News 10 that they had bathed earlier in the day before their flight.
A video released after the incident depicts the heated father going off about the airline employees, stating: “There’s a religious reason for some reason that they’re kicking me off the plane. We don’t have odour, OK? Nobody here has odour.”
In a statement from American Airlines, however, the company argued that it had not made its decision to deplane the Adlers because of their religion.
