The current claim is that the passenger was a doctor and had appointments he had to make the next day. So I can't say that this was unreasonably escalated at al

The current claim is that the passenger was a doctor and had appointments he had to make the next day. So I can't say that this was unreasonably escalated at all. Actually, scratch that - the profession does not matter. Flying is an expensive form of travel and most people travelling do have a schedule to meet. Military can get very severely punished, businesspeople can lose critical deals, tourists can't get on connecting flights or get fired for being late back from vacation, and so on. United just handled it completely wrong - instead of raising the offer as long as necessary, their staff decided that it would be simpler and cheaper to forcibly remove someone from the flight. It went wrong and now they must face the consequences.