The lawsuit alleges Delta employees wrongly suspected a father of trafficking his 13-year-old daughter during a 2019 flight.
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An Arkansas woman is suing Delta Air Lines and its subsidiary Endeavor Air for $2.35 million after her father was accused of human trafficking her when she was a minor on a 2019 flight, according to a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
USA TODAY reached out to Delta Air Lines and the family’s lawyers.
The lawsuit states that the plaintiff, Madison Cupp, was flying from Atlanta to Newport News, Virginia, with her parents and her maternal grandparents in December 2019, when their plane hit turbulence.
“Cupp, then thirteen years old, was scared by the turbulence and began crying. Her father, Nicholas Cupp, was sitting beside her and comforted her,” the lawsuit states, noting that the “Plaintiff was not harmed or abused in any way by his actions.”
The lawsuit said a flight attendant “wrongly and recklessly concluded that Nicholas Cupp was human trafficking his own daughter” and reported he had been touching her “inappropriately.” The report was passed along to Delta’s station manager in Newport News, who alerted police “without even making the slightest effort to determine the truth of the matter.”
Armed law enforcement officers were waiting for the family at the airport upon arrival and “physically separated Plaintiff from her parents without warning,” detained the dad for questioning, and “interrogated” both of them before determining “there was no probable cause to charge or arrest Nicholas Cupp,” the lawsuit said.
The Cupps have accused Delta and Endeavor of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, causing harm to Madison, and false imprisonment. The lawsuit said Madison suffered stomach pain, vomiting and severe emotional distress after the incident, including the “fear of interacting with her father in public should another false accusation be made.”
A previous lawsuit filed by her dad spent several years winding its way through courts before Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled this spring that claims could proceed because the airlines were not immune from prosecution.
Madison filed a separate case this past December, asking for a trial by jury. Delta recently filed a motion to dismiss it on June 3.
This story was updated to refresh headlines.
