Complaint. Video evidence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Answer. Docket and public comments.
Status: Consent order. $40,000 penalty.
Summary: failing to honor first fare quote for award travel on US Airways
Edelman and Steele v. Delta Airlines – price advertising violations
Complaint. Answer. Docket and public comments.
Status: Consent order.
Summary: mischaracterizing surcharges as “tax”
Digital Business Models Should Have to Follow the Law, Too
Digital Business Models Should Have to Follow the Law, Too. HBR Online. January 2, 2015.
A timeless maxim suggests that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Nowhere is that more prominent than in the current crop of digital businesses, which tend to skirt laws they find inconvenient. Though these services and their innovative business models win acclaim from consumers and investors, their approach to the law is troubling — both for its implications for civil society and in its contagious influence on other firms in turn pressured to skirt legal requirements.
Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies: Field and Experimental Evidence
Edelman, Benjamin, and Ian Larkin. “Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies: Field and Experimental Evidence.” Organization Science 26, no. 1 (January-February 2015): 78-98.
We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons with peers could cause either junior or senior employees to seek to improve reported relative performance measures via deception. In a first study, we use deceptive self-downloads on SSRN, the leading working paper repository in the social sciences, to show that employees higher in a hierarchy are more likely to engage in deception, particularly when the employee has enjoyed a high level of past success. In a second study, we confirm this finding in two scenario-based experiments. Our results suggest that longer-tenured and more successful employees face a greater loss of self-esteem from negative social comparisons and are more likely to engage in deception in response to reported performance that is lower than that of peers.