An elderly Puna woman is suing Hawaiian Airlines and a Puna company that contracts baggage handling and wheelchair service, alleging she was taken for a rough ride by a porter at Hilo International Airport.
The civil suit, which seeks unspecified damages plus costs and expenses, was filed Sept. 9 in Hilo Circuit Court by attorney Brooks Bancroft on behalf of Dale Pratt. The filing names the airline, Big Island Guys Inc., doing business as Hawaii Porter Service, and the porter, identified in the filing as “Ivan Doe,” plus other Doe defendants.
The suit alleges that on Sept. 15, 2014, Pratt, then 76, was de-boarding a Hawaiian Airlines flight in Hilo upon her return from a mainland trip and requested wheelchair assistance from the airplane to the terminal and “Ivan Doe” — whose identity has not yet been ascertained, but whose first name is alleged to be Ivan and who, according to the suit, was known at the airport as “Ivan the Terrible” — was assigned to assist her. Pratt said the porter told her she needed to hold her carry-on luggage alongside the wheelchair and wheel the luggage as she was escorted from the Jetway to the terminal.
Pratt told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald Thursday she angered “Ivan the Terrible” when she told him when she didn’t think she could wheel her luggage alongside the chair.
“He just threw the luggage into my lap and swung me around really hard and pushed me hard into one of those speed bumps in the Jetway,” Pratt said. “I tried to crawl out and I asked him to stop and he just hit the next speed bump even harder and said, ‘Well, how do you like that one?’”
Pratt said a woman porter took over pushing her wheelchair, and a supervisor approached them and asked what happened.
“She told (the supervisor) ‘Ivan is having a really bad day,’” Pratt said.
Pratt said her own day was worse, suffering a permanent lower-back injury which prevents her from activities she previously enjoyed, such as gardening and raising malamute dogs.
“The bottom six vertebrae, I’m all bone-on-bone. And my whole life changed and it’s been really bad,” she said. “My whole life has changed. I can’t do any of the stuff I’ve done before. I can’t raise dogs, because you have to bend over for puppies and you have to be able to lift the dog food.”
Pratt said doctors told her because of her age, she was not a good candidate for surgery, but receives an injection into her lower back every four months.
“I’m not getting better, but I do get relief from these injections, every four months for the rest of my life, whatever that is,” she said. “When this happened to me, it was the most horrible thing that ever happened to me, and I’ve been all over, everywhere.”
Bancroft said the porter’s alleged conduct “was clearly unacceptable in general.”
“The fact that it happened to a 76-year-old woman in a wheelchair who depended on that employee for assistance makes it even more outrageous,” Bancroft said. “It was a little hard to believe in the beginning and it’s so unfortunate that it happened.”
Asked what he and Pratt are seeking, Bancroft said, “First and foremost, we want to make sure that someone’s held accountable for what happened to my client. But just as importantly, we also want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. So in addition to some form of financial compensation, something, whether that means a change in policies in terms of hiring or training or something further, I guess we’ll have to determine during the legal proceedings.”
A Hawaiian Airlines spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, and a Thursday call to Big Island Guys wasn’t returned by press time Friday.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.