Opper v. Delta Airlines Inc

Filing 22

ORDER signed by Chief Judge William C Griesbach on 5-22-15 denying 16 Motion for Leave to File; denying 16 Motion for Reconsideration. (cc: all counsel) (Griesbach, William)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
CARLA OPPER,
Plaintiff,
v.

Case No. 14-C-962

DELTA AIR LINES, INC.,
Defendant.

DECISION AND ORDER

Plaintiff has moved to reconsider this Court’s dismissal of its putative class action against
Delta Airlines based on Delta’s allegedly misleading “best price” guarantee. In its ruling, this Court
described the guarantee as follows: “THE BEST DELTA FARES ON THE WEB — OR YOUR
MONEY BACK If you find a fare that is at least $10 lower on another website for the exact same
Delta itinerary, then we'd like to make it right.” (ECF No. 8-1.) Given the fact that the guarantee
was explicitly comparative, I concluded that it did not matter how Delta computed its fares, so long
as the fares it offered on its own website were the same or better than fares a customer could find
on competing websites.
In seeking reconsideration, the Plaintiff repeats her argument that the guarantee was much
simpler than the phrase quoted above. In fact, she wants to amend the complaint to make clear that
she never read any disclaimers or any fine print, or even the basic substance of the guarantee.
Instead, she asserts that all she saw on Delta’s website were the words “best fare guarantee,” and
from those three modest words she jumped to the conclusion that Delta was warranting that the fares

it offered on flights with connections would be the same price as the fares offered to customers who
purchased individual legs of the same flight.
The phrase “best fare guarantee” is better understood as the promotional name Delta gave
to the guarantee rather than the guarantee itself. Without more than those three words, no consumer
would have any clear idea what the guarantee meant, and so the interested consumer would naturally
gravitate to the substance of the guarantee before acting. For example, many companies offer a
“satisfaction guarantee,” but that is not itself the guarantee but merely a description of a guarantee
that undoubtedly has some conditions attached to it. Without at least a few details such a guarantee
is meaningless.
Even if “best fare guarantee” were itself the guarantee, a consumer seeing that phrase would
certainly not reasonably believe that “best fare” would mean something so specific as a claim that
prices for all itineraries would be calculated exactly the same way. Instead, “best” is inherently a
comparative term (“good, better, best”) and the consumer would understand the claim to be that
Delta’s website had better prices than any other company’s website, for the same itinerary. (Which,
not surprisingly, is how Delta described the guarantee.) It is common for businesses to offer the
“best prices in town,” and the like, but a reasonable consumer understands that as a comparative
guarantee rather than a statement about the internal method the business uses to calculate the prices
it offers.

(If “best” meant something about the company’s internal pricing decisions, then

theoretically Delta could never earn a profit, because any price higher than break-even would not
be the “best” price.) The point is that even if somehow the “best fare guarantee” were itself the
guarantee, rather than merely a description of the guarantee, it could not reasonably be interpreted
in the fashion Plaintiff asserts.
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Accordingly, the motion for reconsideration and the motion to amend are DENIED.

SO ORDERED this 22nd day of May, 2015.
/s William C. Griesbach
William C. Griesbach, Chief Judge
United States District Court

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