Originally Posted by
MechEngr
Did you demand that the Boeing management be held to task after the Lion Air crash. If not, what was it about the Ethiopian crash reporting changed your mind?
WR - Sure, a lone SLF/attorney writing on an internet forum would have position to "demand" something of Boeing.
And it wasn't the second accident as such - it was the rather substantial volume of reports and analyses pointing out and documenting Boeing's many misdeeds. Of course your knowledge of the flight dynamics and systems performance and connections is far superior to anything I even could try to fake. But your views on where the blame should be placed are the only views I have seen or read about which absolve Boeing. That doesn't make you incorrect, just because you appear to hold unique views absolving Boeing - but it does make it unseemly that you would try to attribute thinking to me that I never have subscribed to or even implied.
I believe your mind was convinced by the misstatements of the Ethiopian government that the pilots followed, without failure or any deviation, the instructions given them by Boeing and the FAA and you set that as your stake to which all other outrage is anchored because those instructions "didn't work."
WR - No, and yet I almost admire the audacity of trying to read things into my mind. But you're incorrect.
All that needs to happen is for Boeing to get behind the investment curve and they can follow Douglas and Lockheed into the dust. I didn't ask for a number - I asked for an outcome. How badly hurt do you want Boeing to be? I suspect it is bankruptcy. Nothing short of the death penalty for the corporation. Because of that stake you planted.
WR - Stake, what stake? Frankly your query makes little or no sense to me. Hurting Boeing was taken off the table when punitive damages were stipulated as not part of the case. The outcome I believe should result is the verdict to be rendered by a jury In a court of competent jurisdiction and subject to trial court and appellate review.
Further.... I'm not going back to dig out posts from some years ago but I do accurately recall other posters who stridently attacked Boeing insofar as it continuing as a company was concerned. I wasn't in their camp (and though not as colorfully as you, they disdained differing views too). You're incorrect; I still don't wish for bk. Again, your audacity in attributing views or opinions to somebody else is almost admirable.
What Boeing expected to happen with MCAS did happen. The day before the Lion Air crash. Nearly textbook execution of trim problem handling, almost exactly the way the failure mode team expected. Same initial flight deviations, but no one died, nor did any appear to express they felt they might. The pilots wrote it up as annoying.
WR - as far as I am aware (and as noted above), even if these facts could be taken at face value as you assert them, you are definitely in a small minority in concluding that Boeing is therefore absolved of liability.
How did the exact same plane with the exact same problem go from controllable to uncontrolled in less than 24 hours? Training and attitude.
WR - Simplistic reduction to this binary description just disregards all the investigative and analytic reports.
That no one called for grounding the fleet after Lion Air is enough to tell me that no one thought MCAS was a problem.
WR - I think the plaintiffs in the Chicago case have something to say about this.
Sure - this is the US, home to civil suits over the amount or kind of grass on a lawn. Everyone should be welcome to air any grievance they have the money to pay to pursue as long as a lot of money goes to lawyers. I don't care about that for this instance - I care about the intended result - what do the plaintiffs expect from this?
WR - That's just the point. They expect their day in court. I've already stated support for the court system in general. Hot McD coffee spill cases don't justify closing courtroom doors to plane crash victims' families. Surely you're aware of review of damages awards at both the trial court and appellate levels?
One claim "The attorneys want to call experts who would testify that the passengers likely suffered physical injuries and emotional trauma before the crash."
If they prevail on that then every bumpy flight is filled with passengers suffering emotional trauma. Where will experts come from? Are there people who have been killed in crashes who come back to testify that before the crash they were overcome by fear of dying and that this thought, not held long enough to make it to long term memory, haunted them for the rest of their lives? I guess it did. Like someone falling from a cliff has the rest of their life to avoid crashing on the rocks below.
WR - Again, I'd pay hard-earned foreign currency to observe you present these views to the actual plaintiffs, or in court on behalf of the company.
Is it too much to ask if you think they can be made whole? Or is this revenge? Or a cash grab? Is there any amount large enough that no company will ever think of this failure to imagine a crew doing all the wrong steps in the wrong order and create a system that operates correctly in spite of 100% human failure? Or it doesn't matter because you personally are aggrieved at the actions of Boeing and are looking for standing on the coattails of this decision?
WR - What are you talking about? The premise of tort law is to provide some compensation, not necessarily precise, and not to satisfy any revenge motives. And "make whole relief" as a concept of compensatory damages works where there are tangible or concrete remedies, obviously not the case in some aspects of personal injury lawsuits. As to holding a personal grievance against Boeing - yikes, no way. (Maybe naively, I'm proceeding on the basis that you're not starting an ad hominem here.) Standing, coattails?--I have idea what you're driving at, but to be safe, "no."
No point in asking for a legal opinion - you cannot make any because hypothetical, speculation, not being paid a retainer by me - about the likely effect this interpretation of a loophole in the current law will have elsewhere. This same type of loophole interpretation is what allows police to steal money and property under the pretext of Civil Asset Forfeiture and allows police to commit heinous actions and be protected by qualified immunity.
WR -There is no connection between the damages analysis and the issues extant with regard to qualified immunity and forfeiture. And the ruling by Judge Alonso isn't about a so-called "loophole."
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I'll reiterate - the PACER terms of use appear to be charge for just making the inquiry in proportion to the size of the returned result. Charged for making the search. No need to deflect about downloading. You appear to agree that it is designed to seriously harm those without legal training - the ultimate paywall. What does a law degree cost? PACER is required to collect only enough to pay for its operation - instead it looks to be a piggy bank, charging far in excess of its operating costs and preventing non-legal trained people from learning about the legal system.
WR- No, I don't agree it's designed for that. It's easy to use without incurring large costs. Court files were far less accessible prior to Pacer, and iirc they weren't available online at all. If there is over-charging occurring, it hasn't been factor in my own usage, and again, it's easy to use without running up the cost. It wasn't intended as a general search engine, but your criticisms appear to give it that role.