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Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

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Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#141

Post by COGlory »

chakintosh wrote: post #137
BartjeD wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For spilling a hot coffee cup you get $ 2.7 million worth of punitive damages. But for killing more than 200 people and trying to hide the evidence, we'll charge you 200 million and call it a day. That's less per person than the price of a hot-coffee spill.

> For spilling a hot coffee cup you get $ 2.7 million worth of punitive damages. What's the context here?

Not OP, but I'm guessing this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Rest...

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#142

Post by keiferski »

rlpb wrote: post #133
keiferski wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they are different things, but culturally I do think they are treated interchangeably. The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again the key word phrase here is “by…

> I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again, by missing out the distinction in this sentence, you're using the implied (valid) case to limit civil liability to make it sound like the same should apply for criminal liability. You're failing to explain why arguments for this in the civil liability case should also app…

Because I think it would still result in a culture that is hostile to entrepreneurship not dissimilar to how bankruptcy is treated in other countries.

And just to be clear here, I’m arguing against the idea that company operators should be by-default guilty if the company they operate commits a crime. Because that is what a lot of commenters here are arguing for. Not that they should be not be liable for crimes they personally, knowingly, commit.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#143

Post by roenxi »

constantcrying wrote: post #75
davedx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard > What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

You can not punish someone for a crime they didn't commit and had no knowledge of. That is ridiculous and a perversion of justice.

And the level of risk the CEO/C Suite would have to take on would be insane. Who would want to be in charge of an aerospace company if there was a real risk that you'd get charged with murder if you don't have an almost psychic insight into the technical decisions of your company?

There'd be a filtering effect where the best and brightest avoid industries where we need them to be. That standard would likely reduce the quality of the leadership and bias it further towards people who are delusional about safety.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#144

Post by [deleted] »

pmontra wrote: post #139
constantcrying wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

This is simplistic, but it's a start for a discussion: you look at the organizational chart, start from the bottom where the people working on the product are, punish all the line from there up to the board (all the C*). Then people will start asking questions about what they are told to do, because they know that if they do something wrong they're going to jail or have to pay the fines themselves, not a bank account…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#145

Post by doctor_eval »

robertlagrant wrote: post #128
doctor_eval wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were two crashes. The CEO most certainly should have known about the problems after the first one. It’s the CEO’s job to ensure that sufficient measures are in place to prevent failure. They should not be punished for accidents; they should be punished if the accidents were reasonably predictable. Which was most certainly the case when they decided to the redundant AoA sensor an optional extra.

> There were two crashes. The CEO most certainly should have known about the problems after the first one. Possibly, but not if it were a one-off. Are the airlines that chose to keep flying Boeing 737 MAX not equally (or more) responsible?

After the first accident, Boeing was said to be blaming the pilots, in private, despite knowing about MCAS but not revealing it. They deliberately misrepresented the design (and in particular they minimised the severity of the failure modes) of MCAS to the FAA during the certification process. There are transcripts of the test pilots discussing this stuff. Boeing also heavily lobbied the FAA not to ground the Max 8 despite other jurisdictions grounding the aircraft.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Boeing knew what was going on, and if the CEO didn’t know then he wasn’t doing his job.

There really is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#146

Post by pmontra »

constantcrying wrote: post #98
sudosysgen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is immense precedent to punish a person for a crime they were responsible for and that they should have known was happening.

The software issues definitely were not something the CEO should have known about.

The CEO has the responsibility to make the company work well. If a company build products that injure or kill people, the CEO should be in trouble too. Instead of looking the other way and still get big paychecks and bonuses, improve design, testing, all company processes and make the company build products that work.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#147

Post by thoronton »

constantcrying wrote: post #97
squigz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me the real perversion of justice is executives constantly avoiding consequences for their actions

It is not illegal to be a bad CEO. CEOs, surprisingly are protected by the law as well.

If you are such a bad CEO that over 200 People die because of your bad management, then that should definitely be illegal. For what do they get the millions if not for taking responsibility?

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#148

Post by jltsiren »

constantcrying wrote: post #75
davedx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard > What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

You can not punish someone for a crime they didn't commit and had no knowledge of. That is ridiculous and a perversion of justice.

In the legal culture I'm familiar with, the CEO and the board of directors can be held liable for everything the company does. If they are not aware of the crime but they should have been, it can be seen as gross negligence.

As far as I understand, the legal theory is that the CEO and the directors are organs of the company rather than natural persons when acting in their roles. Therefore some of the usual legal protections do not apply. Assigning liability like that is an inherent part of the social trade-off that allows limited liability companies to exist.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#149

Post by adwn »

rob74 wrote: post #129
davedx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard > What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

Well, ultimately responsible are the shareholders who demand ever higher profits, and the top management has to deliver that, even if it hurts the company long term; or, to generalize even more, capitalism.

> ultimately responsible are the shareholders who demand ever higher profits, and the top management has to deliver that

That's not how this works. The shareholders don't have direct authority over the decisions made by the company's chief officers. They can demand "higher profits" all day long, but that doesn't absolve the board of directors or management from their responsibility, and it doesn't give them a blank check to behave unethically or even criminally.

> or, to generalize even more, capitalism.

Ugh, that is such a knee-jerk, fallacious take. Short-sightedness and misalignment of incentives are traits that are hardly specific to capitalism.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#150

Post by swarnie »

zarzavat wrote: post #126
VBprogrammer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were two crashes. After the first crash Boeing were quite happy to pin the blame on the Lion Air pilots. At that point the C suite were definitely involved in every decision.

Exactly this. The first crash was negligent design of a technical system. The second crash was murder. The regulators are also culpable since the design of the system was in the public domain before the second crash and they did nothing about it.

> The second crash was murder.

No civilised justice system in the world is getting to murder from these facts.

Manslaughter via negligence if you're feeling really lucky

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