American Airlines drops law firm that said a 9-year-old girl should have seen camera on toilet seat

American Airlines dropped its law firm, Wilson Elser, after the firm argued in a court filing that a 9-year-old girl was partly to blame for not noticing a hidden camera taped to a lavatory toilet seat aboard one of its flights, according to Fox 7 Austin. The airline replaced Wilson Elser with Kelly Hart & Hallman, a Fort Worth-based firm with a long history of representing American, Fox 7 Austin and the Washington Post reported.

The girl was a victim of former American Airlines flight attendant Estes Carter Thompson III, who was criminally charged with secretly recording minors in an airplane lavatory. Thompson allegedly taped an iPhone to the toilet seat and told girls the seat was broken to get them to use that particular lavatory, according to the Washington Post's reporting. He was fired by American and pleaded not guilty to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse. The FBI found videos of the 9-year-old on his phone, which prompted her family to sue the airline in Texas state court in Austin.

The filing that triggered the split

Wilson Elser's court filing argued that the girl's harm could be attributed to her own "fault and negligence" for using the lavatory, "which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device," according to Fox 7 Austin's account of the filing. The argument drew swift public criticism, and American moved to distance itself from the firm rather than defend the filing's framing.

A second lawsuit, a different court

The Austin case is not the only one tied to Thompson's alleged conduct. A separate 14-year-old victim is pursuing a federal lawsuit against American in North Carolina over the same flight attendant. Attorney Paul Llewellyn, who represents both families, said he hoped the airline would "take some measure of responsibility." Running two suits in two jurisdictions over the same employee's alleged conduct raises the stakes on any single filing — a legal argument criticized in one case is now on the record for the other as well.

The allegations against the flight attendant

Thompson was fired by American after the allegations surfaced and pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse. According to the Washington Post's reporting, investigators say he taped an iPhone to a lavatory toilet seat and told girls the seat was broken, directing them to that specific lavatory so he could record them. The FBI's discovery of videos of the 9-year-old on his phone is what prompted her family's lawsuit against the airline in Texas state court in Austin.

What it signals

A corporate client publicly firing its own outside counsel over a legal argument is rare — litigation strategy is usually worked out privately, win or lose. American's move suggests the reputational cost of the "should have seen it" framing outweighed whatever legal advantage the firm thought the argument offered, especially with a second suit still pending in a different jurisdiction. It leaves open the harder underlying question the lawsuits are actually about: what an airline knew, or should have known, about a flight attendant with access to passengers' children in an enclosed lavatory.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Fox 7 Austin and the Washington Post. It restores a story originally published on this site in May 2024; figures are as reported at the time.