Case to Indonesia?
I'd agree, Muilenburg's responses to inquiries about the company's legal manuever to try to move the Lion Air case(s) to Indonesia sounded like well-rehearsed segments from the obvious Damage Control/Speak Little script-playbook with which he had been coached and drilled.
Beyond that, it isn't up to Boeing, or any defendant in any type of lawsuit. It's a complicated procedural motion, one the judge decides based on a set of some six or eight factors (one reason it's complex is that how much weight to give to any one factor, or factors, can be disputed in a given lawsuit). For the officially inclined, it's a motion based on the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens.
The things that struck here as surprising were, first, the evidence about Boeing's design affairs, and its interactions with FAA (especially), is in the U.S. Hard to argue that this evidence would be equally accesible in discovery in the other forum (Indonesia) - even if we assume for the sake of talking about it, that the discovery process works the same there, which I seriously doubt. And without lurching into the pedantic, these motions often admit liability, short-circuiting the importance of discovery. I don't....quite see....Boeing admitting....liability in this matter......yet. (And if the plaintiffs seek discovery from and by the officials who worked on the JATR panel, which was conducted under U.S. federal agency processes....if I were the judge I'd tell Boeing to withdraw their motion as frivolous.)
So second, seems like a typical defense attorney stall manuever.
As a kicker, Sen. Blumenthal's efforts to get the Boeing CEO to say something unkind and derogagory about the Indonesia court system was comic relief, though tragicomic in essence.