A Korean passenger suffering late-stage cancer filed as lawsuit against Delta Airlines after his luggage containing important medical records was lost.
Queens County Court in New York said that Sung-su Kim, 44, recently sued Delta for ▶ punitive damages ▶ fraud ▶ neglect of duty as his treatment process has allegedly been affected.
Kim is currently in late-stage of pancreatic and stomach cancer. He has boarded the Delta flight on Dec. 30 in 2012 from New York as he was heading to San Jose for treatment at the Stanford University Medical Center.
Before boarding his flight, Kim checked a luggage that contained various paperwork that he needed for his surgery. When he arrived in San Jose, the lock on his bag had been broken and everything inside was gone.
Kim reported the loss to Delta and stressed just how important it is for him to have his medical records for his treatment. However, Delta blamed the TSA for the loss and continued to allegedly delay compensating Kim for the lost items.
“I had no strength to pick a fight with them and even agreed to just be compensated for the lost medical records ($3,300) as I was in an urgent situation for treatment,” Kim said. “Delta kept changing their words and wasted time. They took no action until March in the following year and my surgery had to be postponed.”
Since then, Kim chose to fight Delta over the next four years. He even went to its headquarters in Atlanta to protest on his own.
“They even said something along the lines of, ‘Why do you Asians frustrate us?’ and I felt like the same thing would happen to someone else,” Kim said. “Maybe they thought everything would be over when I die since I’m late-stage cancer patient. I’ve survived miraculously and now I’m going to take legal actions against them.”
Delta has been scrutinized for a number of discriminatory cases in recent years, including rejecting to board a Korean family and kicking out a family with a 2-year-old baby off the plane. Earlier this month, a passenger caused a commotion and another flight had to opt for an emergency landing due to extreme weather conditions.
By Yeol Jang
