Delta Air Lines is going after the wages of a former flight attendant who sued the Atlanta-based carrier over the way it handled a serious and distressing complaint about a pilot who was accused of sexually assaulting her at the end of a drunken night out between flights.
In 2018, Sara Caruso says a Delta First Officer sexually assaulted her in a layover hotel in Dallas, Texas, after a night of drinking. The pilot admitted to engaging in various sexual acts with Caruso but maintained that everything that occurred was consensual and that the pair did not have physical intercourse.
The allegations only came to light when Caruso failed a breathalyzer test at the airport after the hotel phoned Delta with concerns about her behavior after she was spotted on security cameras running around the hotel corridors in just her underwear.
Caruso was nearly four times over Delta’s alcohol limit and double the federal maximum. She was told to hand in her employee badge and was flown back to her home base in Boston later the same day.
In her initial statement about what happened, Caruso made no mention of being sexually assaulted, but that night, she went to a local hospital and completed a sexual assault kit.
The next day, Caruso called her boss at Delta and raised concerns that she had been drugged and assaulted. She didn’t mention that the pilot was the assailant, and before she could file a police report, she was ordered into a residential alcohol rehabilitation program.
Delta allowed Caruso to keep her job, but she says that the airline’s response to her complaint about the pilot effectively amounted to constructive dismissal.
Caruso asked the airline to ensure that she never flew with the pilot again, but Delta told her that this accommodation wasn’t possible as the carrier’s IT system was incapable of blocking a flight attendant from working with a specific pilot.
Instead, Delta suggested Caruso bid for trips that were operated by aircraft that the pilot wasn’t trained to fly. Caruso again demanded that Delta grant her requested accommodations, or she would be forced to resign. Delta requested an extension to the deadline laid down by Caruso’s attorney but she refused and resigned.
Caruso filed a lawsuit against Delta, accusing the airline of constructive dismissal and failing to conduct an adequate investigation into her allegations. A Massachusetts district court dismissed her lawsuit in 2022, and earlier this year, Caruso had her appeal thrown out.
Delta is now seeking access to Caruso’s wages in her new job to recover more than $6,000 in legal costs that she has so far failed to pay back to the airline.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the airline had originally sought to make Caruso pay Delta nearly $25,000, although an appeals court reduced the amount that she would have to pay to Delta by around $19,000.
In the last quarter, Delta reported an operating revenue of $15.7 billion and an operating income of $1.6 billion.
Despite having been ordered to pay Delta’s costs more than two years ago, Caruso has yet to settle her debt with her ex-employer. The airline has now successfully filed for a Writ of Garnishment, which will allow Delta to tap directly into Caruso’s wages to recover its legal costs.
