Five million dollars in damages, court costs and attorneys’ fees. This is what a mother is demanding who filed a complaint against Qatar Airways in the United States, after her three-year-old daughter was placed in palliative care last April. The reason? Violent dairy allergy triggered when flight attendant gave him a Kit Kat chocolate bar, reports The Independant.
The mother, however, claims to have informed the flight attendants on this flight from Washington-Dulles to Doha that her daughter could not consume it. Placed under the supervision of the hostess, the child received a snack while his mother was in the toilet, according to the complaint filed on October 31.
Shortly after, she suffered an anaphylactic shock, forcing the thirty-year-old mother to give her an injection of EpiPen, an adrenaline auto-injector pen. The crew did nothing to help, the affidavit said. Worse, the hostess, confronted by the mother, would have “mocked and minimized” the incident.
“A very serious, potentially life-threatening situation”
“You would think they would take action by requesting medical support on the ground or making an announcement to find a doctor on board, but they were blasé, very indifferent,” commented Abram Bohrer, the mother’s lawyer. “This is a very serious, potentially life-threatening situation.”
Upon landing, the little girl’s condition worsened. So much so that she was hospitalized and placed in intensive care for two days, before her condition stabilized. She “suffered great pain, agony and moral distress” and will likely continue to suffer the consequences of this allergy, explained the mother, who came from North Carolina, in the complaint.
Qatar Airways has not yet made a comment, but the family is hoping for a trial.
