But even as Axelrad's flaws were laid bare, Delta emerged almost unscathed. O'Hara announced to the jury that "everybody got off that aircraft in an appropriate manner," despite the fact that at least five passengers claimed to have been injured. Sally Barker was set to be Axelrad's star witness -- proof that she wasn't some lone nut case. O'Hara, however, was able to persuade Judge Williams to prohibit Barker from telling the jury about her injuries or her lawsuit. Williams agreed with the defense that Barker's story was irrelevant since she was allegedly pushed down the chute by a different flight attendant than was Axelrad. "I basically was able to say, "I'm Sally Barker, and I was on that flight,' and that's all," Barker says. "They would not let me tell the truth. I could not tell them that I was hurt."
Williams also kept the jury from hearing the tape recording of the bomb threat or any details about the 23-minute time lapse. And Hager was prevented from submitting to the jurors Harcourt's report contradicting chief flight attendant Gardiner's claim that he didn't know about the bomb threat.
Colby Katz
The fall to the runway, Axelrad says, destroyed her quality of life. The prescription pills help ease the pain.
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Axelrad and her attorney complain that the Delta cover-up was essentially kept from the jury. "They didn't get to hear the tape, they didn't get to hear how many other people were hurt, they didn't get to see anything good about me," Axelrad says. "They didn't get to hear about any of it."
The jury took less than an hour, on November 8, to rule against Axelrad. But she still has a chance. Hager, during the trial, filed a motion requesting that the judge punish Delta for concealing facts during discovery in what the plaintiff alleges amounted to fraud. "Delta intentionally and contumaciously refused to provide ordered discovery, and improperly and unlawfully concealed critical information from the plaintiff," Hager alleged in the detailed, 71-page motion.
In his response, O'Hara claims Hager simply failed to try the case properly and is now mounting a "smoke-and-mirrors campaign" to keep it alive. "The allegations in that motion are not true," he says. "And those same arguments were universally rejected by the court. The plaintiff was given all of that information a year, two years, before this case was tried. The information they claim they were not given, they were given. They got the FBI information themselves; they got it before we did."
Williams, however, has yet to rule on the motion and could still levy as-yet-unspecified sanctions against Delta, including fines. The judge has also yet to rule on Hager's request for a new trial, which she filed November 19. In it, the lawyer argues that much of the testimony was prejudicial to her client and that Barker should have been allowed to testify at greater length.
Though the odds against Axelrad may be growing longer, she's confident she will get another day in court. "Why couldn't they have helped me in the first place?" Axelrad asks of Delta. "Why? I didn't do anything to them. I was just their passenger. The whole system was messed up from the very beginning to the very end. We are going to get a retrial. We have to."
