[ldbooth]

Crowdstrike stock dropped 5% or so on news of Delta hiring outside counsel to pursue damages.

If this is truly CrowdStrikes own fault, aren't there countless other global airlines that had major losses during the outage and will pile on to the damage claims?

[Kirby64]

Damages typically need to somewhat related to actually damages occurred. If airlines were more tolerant of the crowdstrike issues then less damage occurred and less can be gotten from a lawsuit.

Just because Delta may have been more susceptible doesn’t mean Crowdstrike is any less liable.

Comparable example (not quite, but similar): if your house floods because a pipe burst during a freeze and you’re out of town, and pours water in for days, and your neighbor is home and shuts off their water immediately… insurance is gonna pay you a lot more money to repair everything than they’ll pay your neighbor. You have more damages, even if there is potentially something that could have been done to mitigate it (be there and shut off the water).

Now in my hypothetical if they could show you were negligent and didn’t bother turning the water off and let it flood, then insurance would be off the hook. Likewise, if CS can show delta was negligent in some way… damages may potentially be reduced. That’s what the lawyers will be battling out for years I assume.

[joezydeco]

Likewise, if CS can show delta was negligent in some way… damages may potentially be reduced.

That's where this is headed because there's already anecdata out there that Delta didn't learn any lessons from SWA's meltdown during the 2022 holiday season. UA and AA developed contingency plans and backups, Delta did not.