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Jury awards Southwest passenger $27.5 million Tammy Fonce-Olivas El Paso Times Tuesday, April 11, 2006 A California woman of Iranian descent arrested in El Paso three years ago after Southwest Airlines employees accused her of assaulting a flight attendant and interfering with a flight should receive $27.5 million in damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, an El Paso jury decided. El Paso lawyer Enrique Moreno said the verdict showed that jurors agreed that his client, Samantha Carrington, was wrongfully arrested on Oct. 7, 2003, when a flight to Houston from Los Angeles made a scheduled stop in El Paso. "In the evidence it came out that one of the flight attendants stated that Ms. Carrington reminded her of a terrorist, and in our views she was the victim of profiling stereotypes and discrimination," Moreno said. The verdict was issued late Friday in County Court-at-Law No. 5. The airline plans to appeal the verdict, Beth Harbin, a Southwest spokeswoman in Dallas, said Monday.
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