Ruled against them in what type of case?
This was discussed extensively before and after the case was filed in February 2006. The MAA pilots and flight attendants filed separate law suits against ALPA and AFA, respectively, as well as US Airways and America West. The claims included Racketeering and breach of the unions' duties of fair representation. Both plaintiff groups used the same attorney.
In the case of the flight attendants, there was a lot of back-and-forth very early on. The initial group of FA's who had contact with the attorney basically dropped out and another group took over. There were reports of committee people not being able to get along with the committee chair and for a while there was a revolving door of committee members. There were also reports of the attorney buying expensive gifts for the committee chair and this did not set right with a number of FA's who were involved.
When the attorney first filed the lawsuit, there were a number of FA's named as plaintiffs who had not signed representation agreements with the attorney and who did not want to be involved in the lawsuit (some of them because they did not like or did not trust the committee chair) and some of those people wrote letters to the judge saying they didn't hire the attorney and didn't want to be involved. The judge called the attorney into court and ordered him to determine who was in and who was out, and he had to amend the law suit.
Later, the attorney dropped US Airways and America West from the law suit. There was some question as to whether he told the plaintiffs he was doing so.
There after, union attorneys brought a motion to dismiss based on statutes of limitations. The plaintiffs lost that and the attorney filed an appeal on behalf of those people who were cought up on their monthly payments.
Now, it seems, that the flight attendants lost their appeal but apparently were not told so by their attorney or the committee.