Boeing whistleblower found dead in US
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Somewhat different circumstances I feel, Barnett was acting alone, he wasn't a 'ringleader' as such, and I don't get the feeling he was in it for the money, as an employee of Boeing of some 32 years standing, he would have known a time when engineering counted, when getting it right trumped getting it out the door.
The late Mr. Barnett had been intensely engaged in and, one would assume, devoted to the cause in the service of which he had embarked. I haven't paused to research when he first blew the whistle, or whether he asserted more than one set of company problems as time went on, because it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because just the commitment to a legal proceeding before the Department of Labor (pursuant to the applicable federal statute) would necessarily have required a substantial investment of time, effort, and most importantly, psychic energy. It would be expected that he sought a sense of his efforts being vindicated, even public recognition of same. Or at least the satisfaction of having brought the company's problems to light and seeing some change for the better in fact.
In many litigation matters, at the start of a dispute the gains a claimant expected to achieve were rationally proportionate to the situation and its facts. But as time went on, a mentality of a "quest" or "crusade" often set in. When a case yielded few gains for the claimant, or was defeated in court and no further recourse could be sought, in some instances claimants were reported not only to have been seriously disappointed, but with far more severe difficulties coping with the obvious tasks of getting on with their livelihoods or careers, and in some instances, with their lives.
What happened in the deposition that could have seriously affected Mr. Barnett? I've noted with interest that no one has said "I'd like to read the transcript complete with any exhibits that were used. Was the dep recorded on videotape? I'd like the record, please." Unless and until it becomes clear (and I'm not asserting that any particular legal standard of "clarity" applies here) that nothing seriously upsetting occurred in the deposition, I think it stands as the most likely source of a precipitating event. It appears at least plausible and perhaps likely that defense counsel raised serious lines of attack against him, by their questions and by their approach - not necessarily valid attacks, but recall, it's discovery, even only in the administrative process of DoL. If that occurred, Mr. Barnett's counsel might not have been able to assure him that negative impressions of his conduct and motives which (let's say) had been created by defense counsel on the record could be reversed or at least mitigated by their own questions the next day. I could see a witness in his place becoming despondent.
Again, this scenario is not a claim that he was seeking financial enrichment, despite the obvious fact that his DoL claim could produce a financial award. But if ever there was a universal litigation tactic, it is to wear the adverse party down. I agree there's a likelihood that the only satisfacion he sought was attaining the knowledge he had brought the company's problems to light and that these revelations had led to some positive action. If the deposition in some as yet unknown manner then appeared to crush those hopes, such an impression of lost hope, and prolonged litigation against an entrenched and (let's say) forceful adverse party, could have motivated his decision.
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Boeing went from being a highly respected company in the 60s- mid 90s to being a piss-poor firm after the MD merge, B737 Max fiasco (and all the issues it had were known beforehand), CEO bailing out with a bonus and not being held responsible, silencing people that will raise concerns about the **** business that Boeing is. B777x and B787 production are even minor problems compared to this.
They truly deserve to go bankrupt and disappear forever.
They truly deserve to go bankrupt and disappear forever.
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The unfounded speculation in this thread has already slipped into the realm of "conspiranoia." There's absolutely no good reason to think that Barnett's death would provide Boeing (or anyone else, as far as we know) a major advantage or benefit, certainly not one that would outweigh the surge in reputational damage in an already-damaging case. And we don't really believe Boeing is assassinating whistleblowers, now do we?
According to the reports by the police and coroner, so far, this tragic event looks very much like a suicide. Some of you seem to think that the local authorities were likely bribed or otherwise influenced to alter their findings. That's not impossible, of course, but it is unlikely in the extreme — so unlikely that promoting the notion without evidence is both nonsensical and reckless.
You should stop it.
According to the reports by the police and coroner, so far, this tragic event looks very much like a suicide. Some of you seem to think that the local authorities were likely bribed or otherwise influenced to alter their findings. That's not impossible, of course, but it is unlikely in the extreme — so unlikely that promoting the notion without evidence is both nonsensical and reckless.
You should stop it.
I'd like to add, cautiously, a little bit different perspective. The whistleblower's deposition was in progress, set of continue (if I recall the news reports) the next day.
First, a somewhat sanitized story about a suicide of a prinicipal witness in a case I worked on some years back. The man was not a whistleblower per se, but rather the "ringleader" of the defection of a large cadre of employees of a client, who picked up en masse and moved to a competitor in the exact same line(s) of business. A competitor who was (at that time) only about ten times larger, and who also happened to be based in a large, and distant, U.S. ally. Fact-paced litigation ensued, based on the departing employees being subject to contractual agreements barring their use of company trade secrets in the service of a competitor. The case was resolved on terms mostly favoring my firm's client, with the ringleader being ordered by the court to adhere to more stringent restrictions than the others in the cadre (and to say more would leech over into "inside baseball").
Some time later we learned the ringleader had taken his own life. The word we received was that as he planned to lead the scheme to raid his employer and take an entire group to the competitor business, he had developed significant expectations of financial and other big-time status and success. And that these expectations spread to the group of employees who left the client with him. Which expectations, due to the illegality of the raid and the success in the court action against it, had not materialized, or not materialized nearly enough. This explanation was consistent with other information of a factual nature in the case record. Including deposition testimony.
It seems quite reasonable to think the whistleblower in similar fashion plausibly may have anticipated some level of reward - perhaps financial, perhaps in other forms - for his courageous exposure of Boeing's problems. Possibly in the course of the deposition, which still was in progress, the cold, harsh realities of the American legal process were brought into painfully stark relief. Lengthy and very difficult and tedious phases of the litigation process were yet to unfold, and if some rewards beyond the moral high ground had been envisioned, perhaps those hopes or expectations had crashed beyond recovery. I'm not saying this is what pushed the man to the brink and then over it - only that severely disappointed expectations relating to a major and risky personal decision could be the reason.
I hope his attorneys find a way to weave this tragic loss of a courageous seeker of truth into the claims still being litigated; just as an individual SLF who happens also to practice law, I believe Boeing holds indirect responsibility, morally at least, if not legally.
First, a somewhat sanitized story about a suicide of a prinicipal witness in a case I worked on some years back. The man was not a whistleblower per se, but rather the "ringleader" of the defection of a large cadre of employees of a client, who picked up en masse and moved to a competitor in the exact same line(s) of business. A competitor who was (at that time) only about ten times larger, and who also happened to be based in a large, and distant, U.S. ally. Fact-paced litigation ensued, based on the departing employees being subject to contractual agreements barring their use of company trade secrets in the service of a competitor. The case was resolved on terms mostly favoring my firm's client, with the ringleader being ordered by the court to adhere to more stringent restrictions than the others in the cadre (and to say more would leech over into "inside baseball").
Some time later we learned the ringleader had taken his own life. The word we received was that as he planned to lead the scheme to raid his employer and take an entire group to the competitor business, he had developed significant expectations of financial and other big-time status and success. And that these expectations spread to the group of employees who left the client with him. Which expectations, due to the illegality of the raid and the success in the court action against it, had not materialized, or not materialized nearly enough. This explanation was consistent with other information of a factual nature in the case record. Including deposition testimony.
It seems quite reasonable to think the whistleblower in similar fashion plausibly may have anticipated some level of reward - perhaps financial, perhaps in other forms - for his courageous exposure of Boeing's problems. Possibly in the course of the deposition, which still was in progress, the cold, harsh realities of the American legal process were brought into painfully stark relief. Lengthy and very difficult and tedious phases of the litigation process were yet to unfold, and if some rewards beyond the moral high ground had been envisioned, perhaps those hopes or expectations had crashed beyond recovery. I'm not saying this is what pushed the man to the brink and then over it - only that severely disappointed expectations relating to a major and risky personal decision could be the reason.
I hope his attorneys find a way to weave this tragic loss of a courageous seeker of truth into the claims still being litigated; just as an individual SLF who happens also to practice law, I believe Boeing holds indirect responsibility, morally at least, if not legally.
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And since you have referred to a "national security" actor, why stop there? National security is defined pretty widely these days. Not just that the other arm of Boeing is close to the apex of the "defense" pyramid, what about testimony harming directly or indirectly the national economy?
BTW: the accent goes the other way: é , but then nobody's perfect, especially not idle diffuse conspiracy speculators...
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What makes you believe that Boeing wouldn't?
Hypothetically the benefit would be to scare other whistle-blowers who have been retaliated against, coming forward and launching their own court cases. Also the reputational damage of a 'suicide' is far less than the publicity of a precedent being set against Boeing and the media focussing on this poor person, when he won his court case.
Hypothetically the benefit would be to scare other whistle-blowers who have been retaliated against, coming forward and launching their own court cases. Also the reputational damage of a 'suicide' is far less than the publicity of a precedent being set against Boeing and the media focussing on this poor person, when he won his court case.
When it comes to morals or conscience, they are sadly lacking.
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The Charleston County coroner preliminarily said that Barnett's death appeared to be a suicide. The coroner's office has access to way more evidence than we do at this point. The local police are conducting an investigation. There's no reason to think that it will be anything other than fair, thorough and open-minded.
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Do you think the C-suite knows what's happening on their shop floor or engineering offices, if so, they are no better than a serial killer. The Max8 comes to mind, someone knew how dangerous it was to have a single point of failure able to overwhelm a pilots input.
When it comes to morals or conscience, they are sadly lacking.
When it comes to morals or conscience, they are sadly lacking.
Sheesh, folks, get a grip.
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The Charleston County coroner preliminarily said that Barnett's death appeared to be a suicide. The coroner's office has access to way more evidence than we do at this point. The local police are conducting an investigation. There's no reason to think that it will be anything other than fair, thorough and open-minded.
...that might come over a bit conspiracy theory, not intended to just pointing out the fallacies in the two arguments.
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To avoid any doubt, I'm definitely not asserting any degree of certainty about whether or not Mr. Barnett took his own life. Rather just trying to stay within my lane as SLF/attorney and commenting on the employment law, and general litigation, aspects.
Projecting outcomes of the legal case Mr. Barnett was pressing in the administrative law process of the U.S. Department of Labor is largely and maybe completely speculative without actual knowledge of what his Complaint - the legal filing actually made - asserts the company did as acts of retaliation. The Complaint (or other type of filing, if AIR21 cases have different terminology) might be accessible online but without more details, especially a case number, the DoL website for ALJ proceedings is pretty user-unfriendly. (If anyone has the complaint itself, feel free to post or DM.)
The best source I've found for what facts Mr. Barnett's claim probably asserts is an April 21 2019 New York Times article with the headline, "Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet." The article, generally, recaps many specific instances of employee concerns about 787 production, especially in a context of the company giving production rates higher priority than quality concerns. The article contains, in the pursuit of describing an overall set of problems in the plant, the quality concerns of several employees, some of whom filed whistleblower claims - presumably about the production issues themselves - and some of them also filed employment law claims.
Rather than trying to summarize the article's contents pertaining to Mr. Barnett, I'm posting a link to the article. As retaliation claims generally go under federal anti-discrimination statutes, the actions allegedly taken by the company, first, probably do evince retaliatory intent, but second, are far from the typically overt and severe actions (and stretch out over several years). In the aviation-related whistleblower arena, however, the legal and factual standards may be different - I don't know. And the employment ended with his retirement, rather than by a termination though - again without the DoL complaint he filed, whether the timing of the retirement was coerced isn't evident. Perhaps others are aware.
The NYT article link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/b...-problems.html
Projecting outcomes of the legal case Mr. Barnett was pressing in the administrative law process of the U.S. Department of Labor is largely and maybe completely speculative without actual knowledge of what his Complaint - the legal filing actually made - asserts the company did as acts of retaliation. The Complaint (or other type of filing, if AIR21 cases have different terminology) might be accessible online but without more details, especially a case number, the DoL website for ALJ proceedings is pretty user-unfriendly. (If anyone has the complaint itself, feel free to post or DM.)
The best source I've found for what facts Mr. Barnett's claim probably asserts is an April 21 2019 New York Times article with the headline, "Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet." The article, generally, recaps many specific instances of employee concerns about 787 production, especially in a context of the company giving production rates higher priority than quality concerns. The article contains, in the pursuit of describing an overall set of problems in the plant, the quality concerns of several employees, some of whom filed whistleblower claims - presumably about the production issues themselves - and some of them also filed employment law claims.
Rather than trying to summarize the article's contents pertaining to Mr. Barnett, I'm posting a link to the article. As retaliation claims generally go under federal anti-discrimination statutes, the actions allegedly taken by the company, first, probably do evince retaliatory intent, but second, are far from the typically overt and severe actions (and stretch out over several years). In the aviation-related whistleblower arena, however, the legal and factual standards may be different - I don't know. And the employment ended with his retirement, rather than by a termination though - again without the DoL complaint he filed, whether the timing of the retirement was coerced isn't evident. Perhaps others are aware.
The NYT article link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/b...-problems.html
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Actually, some of Barnett's friends claim that he said that. It may be true, but it's not established. And whether it's true or not, it isn't, in and of itself, evidence relating to the cause and manner of his death.
The Charleston County coroner preliminarily said that Barnett's death appeared to be a suicide. The coroner's office has access to way more evidence than we do at this point. The local police are conducting an investigation. There's no reason to think that it will be anything other than fair, thorough and open-minded.
The Charleston County coroner preliminarily said that Barnett's death appeared to be a suicide. The coroner's office has access to way more evidence than we do at this point. The local police are conducting an investigation. There's no reason to think that it will be anything other than fair, thorough and open-minded.
Some other people were "suicided". That's how it works.
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