Defending Airline Passenger Claims: Injury Suits and DOT Consumer Enforcement

Roy Goldberg, Aviation and Transportation Attorney | Clark Hill PLC

Roy Goldberg is an aviation and transportation attorney who regularly represents airlines, airport operators, and aviation service providers in defending passenger, consumer, and regulatory claims. A significant portion of his airline practice focuses on obtaining early dismissal of claims through strategic motion practice, including successful use of federal preemption doctrines, jurisdictional defenses, and Rule 12 and Rule 56 motions.

• Education & Credentials

Roy earned his J.D. from the University of Colorado in 1987 and his B.A. from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, in 1984. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Colorado, and before the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Federal, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits; the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia, the District of Maryland, and the District of Colorado; the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; and the U.S. Court of International Trade.

• Recognition & Leadership

Roy was recognized by Who’s Who Legal in the category of USA Transportation Litigation (Contentious) in 2021, and his recognitions include Best Lawyers in America© (2023, 2024) and Law360’s “Transportation Group of the Year” (2016). He is President-Elect of the Association of Transportation Law Professionals for 2026–2027 and served as President of the International Aviation Club in Washington, D.C. from 2020 to 2021.

• Professional Involvement

Roy serves as the liaison between the American Bar Association and its Air and Space Law Forum. His speaking engagements include two appearances at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Association of Transportation Law Professionals in Baltimore — a panel on the impact of the Montgomery v. Caribe Transport Supreme Court decision on the trucking, aviation, and maritime industries, and an Aviation Law Update — as well as an FAA Airport Transition Update at the ABA Forum on Air & Space Law in May 2025. His publications include “When Perceived Absolute Power Corrupts: What Tools Exist to Confront a Federal Agency Running Roughshod Over the Administrative Procedure Act?,” 93 J. Transp. L., Logistics & Pol’y 77 (2026); an ATLP Antitrust Blog update on the DOJ task force targeting red tape in the air industry (August 2025); and “Recent Cases Involved Arbitration of Aviation Disputes” (Westlaw, Summer 2020).

• Experience

His experience includes: Successfully defending an air carrier in putative class action litigation challenging the airline’s flight-cancellation and customer-service practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Successfully defending multiple airlines against actions brought by both pro se and represented plaintiffs alleging discrimination arising from carrier compliance with the federal Transportation Mask Mandate, including obtaining dismissal of federal and state statutory claims through dispositive motions. Securing dismissal of claims against an airline arising from the removal of a family from an international flight between Newark and Aruba, with the court holding that the Montreal Convention provided the exclusive remedy and barred the untimely-filed discrimination claims. Obtaining dismissal of claims against an airline accused of participating in a civil RICO enterprise based solely on providing transportation to a passenger who later alleged injuries arising from events occurring at a third-party gathering in New York City. Successfully defending an airline sued by a federally-authorized armed passenger who was permanently banned from the carrier after brandishing a firearm onboard a commercial flight during an onboard seating dispute. Negotiating a favorable resolution on behalf of an airline service provider facing discrimination claims arising from airport security-screening procedures and allegations concerning parental access through a special TSA screening checkpoint.

Through these and other matters, Roy has developed substantial experience litigating claims involving the Montreal Convention, federal aviation statutes and regulations, airline operational decisions, disability accommodation issues, discrimination allegations, consumer claims, and emerging theories of airline liability. His presentations draw directly from recent federal court decisions and practical experience defending airlines in high-stakes passenger litigation.

Gregory Speier, Partner | Reed Smith LLP

Gregory Speier is a litigation partner in Reed Smith’s New York and Princeton offices whose practice includes defending several major airlines in litigation involving failure to divert, breach of contract, premises liability, personal injury, discrimination, and false arrest, and counseling aviation clients on regulatory compliance matters, risk, and M&A opportunities. He has written on DOT’s April 2024 final rule requiring automatic refunds of airline tickets and ancillary service fees and on the Fifth Circuit’s 2024 stay of DOT’s ancillary-fee disclosure rule. His broader practice spans complex commercial, financial, product liability, telemarketing, consumer, aviation, shipping, insurance, and wrongful death disputes in federal and state courts across the country and in arbitration.

• Education & Credentials

Greg earned his J.D., cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law in 2010, where he received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award in Insurance Law, and his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Miami in 2006, where he made the Dean’s List. He is admitted to practice in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of New York and the District of New Jersey.

• Recognition & Leadership

The Legal 500 US has ranked Greg as a Next Generation Partner for Transport: Aviation and Air Travel: Litigation and Regulation each year from 2021 through 2026, and Legal 500 USA has described him as “a skilled litigator” in Dispute Resolution. He was selected to the New Jersey Super Lawyers Rising Stars list for Aviation and Aerospace from 2018 through 2022. Greg recently served on Reed Smith’s Executive Committee.

• Professional Involvement

Greg is a member of Reed Smith’s Retail and Consumer Goods practice. He writes regularly on aviation regulatory developments for the firm’s Legal Flight Deck and Viewpoints blogs, including posts on DOT’s final automatic-refund rule, the Fifth Circuit’s stay of the ancillary-fee disclosure rule, DOT’s proposed ban on family seating fees, FAA reauthorization legislation, and FAA developments in Advanced Air Mobility and drone operations. He presented in Reed Smith’s February 2026 virtual conference session on navigating risk, litigation, and compliance across industries.

• Experience

Greg has successfully defended several major airlines in matters including failure to divert, breach of contract, premises liability, personal injury, discrimination, and false arrest, and he counsels aviation clients on regulatory compliance, risk, and M&A opportunities, including emerging topics such as Advanced Air Mobility and drones. He has handled product liability cases for some of the world’s leading aviation manufacturers in their most challenging and high-value matters, achieving several summary judgment dismissals in cases alleging wrongful death and catastrophic injury. Beyond aviation, Greg litigates complex contractual disputes, including a “bet-the-company” breach of contract case for a major retailer involving declaratory and injunctive relief. His telemarketing and consumer work includes defending clients in a nine-figure lawsuit alleging violations of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, along with matters under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act. He also guides consumer goods, food and beverage, and retail clients on trade, logistics, class action, and advertising and labeling disputes, and counsels clients on contract risk transfer, insurance and indemnification provisions, and M&A strategy.

SESSION 1 – Airline Passenger Injury Claims: Winning Early Dismissal and Summary Judgment Strategies for Airlines | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This dynamic one-hour program examines proven strategies for obtaining dismissal, judgment on the pleadings, and summary judgment in passenger injury and discrimination litigation against airlines. Drawing from recent federal decisions and real-world litigation experience, the program focuses on how airlines can successfully leverage the Montreal Convention, Airline Deregulation Act (ADA), federal preemption doctrines, pleading deficiencies, causation principles, and Rule 12 and Rule 56 practice to terminate litigation before costly discovery or trial.

Attendees will gain practical insights into identifying threshold defenses, framing preemption arguments, attacking deficient pleadings, and using procedural tools to narrow or eliminate claims at the earliest stages of litigation. The presentation will feature recent case studies demonstrating how airlines have successfully defeated claims ranging from discrimination allegations and disability accommodation disputes to mask-mandate litigation, international carriage claims, and creative tort and RICO theories.

This session will provide attendees with a current roadmap for defeating passenger claims through effective use of federal preemption doctrines, procedural defenses, and strategic motion practice, while highlighting recent decisions that are reshaping airline litigation nationwide.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Refunds, Rollbacks & Runways: What Still Binds Airlines After the DOT Reversal | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session maps the current, fragmented state of DOT airline consumer-protection enforcement after two years of whiplash. We begin with the two Biden-era pillars — the April 2024 automatic refund rule (14 CFR Part 260), backstopped by its statutory codification at 49 U.S.C. § 42305 under Section 503 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, and the companion ancillary-fee transparency rule — and trace how each fared through 2025–2026. The refund regime largely survives and, because its core obligations (the 7-business-day and 20-day refund deadlines, refund-on-request, and notification duties) are locked in by statute, cannot be undone by APA litigation or a change in administration; only discrete pieces, such as the flight-renumbering trigger, sit under a temporary enforcement pause. The ancillary-fee rule met the opposite fate: vacated en banc by the Fifth Circuit in February 2026 and formally repealed by DOT in July 2026, returning the industry to the 2011 disclosure baseline. Against that backdrop, we examine the Trump DOT’s broader deregulatory pivot — the withdrawn cash-compensation rulemaking, the “Refund III” reconsideration of what counts as a cancellation, and OACP’s shift from aggressive penalties to a warning-first compliance model, including the Southwest and Frontier penalty rollbacks. Attendees will leave able to distinguish what is statutorily mandatory from what is regulatory, paused, or gone, and equipped with a practical framework for auditing airline compliance systems and advising clients on refund processing, fee-disclosure exposure, and the realities of the current enforcement environment.