Legend Airlines existed for 8 months. The $133M lawsuit over its Love Field demise lives on
A lawsuit over the late Legend Airlines turns 10 this year — and to mark the occasion, a federal appeals court has vacated a judge's 2-year-old ruling that awarded more than $133 million to the financiers behind the short-lived carrier and its Dallas Love Field terminal.
Monday's ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of the airline that once tried to take on Southwest Airlines and American Airlines by offering lobster-and-champagne service at peanuts-and-soda prices. Legend operated for less than a year in 2000. Litigation surrounding its demise will seemingly last forever.
Federal Claims Judge Margaret Sweeney ruled in 2016 that when President George W. Bush formally amended the Wright Amendment on Oct. 13, 2006, reducing the number of Love Field's gates from 32 to 20, the feds took Legend's by-then-empty terminal on Lemmon Avenue and rendered it worthless — an inverse condemnation, in legalese.
Sweeney ordered the U.S. government to pay the investors $133 million, plus interest "compounded annually from October 13, 2006, the date of the taking."
Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2018/05/08/legend-airlines-existed-8-months-133m-lawsuit-love-field-demise-lives