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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

#341

Post by Aurornis »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #307
heymijo wrote: post #207

Regarding the "Can/should a CEO or officer be held liable?" dialogue, there is already at least one precedent. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act: > The law states that if top corporate executives knowingly sign off on a false financial report, they’re subject to a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $1 million, with penalties escalating to 20 years and $5 million if their misconduct is willful. [0] Now,…

Actually in most places, technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. The corporate lawyers should have clearly warned them about this already. Additionally, any criminal lawyer should have warned Boeing people it is often around a 10 year jail term for criminal negligence. Unless the president/CEO can prove they enforced policy to mitigate…

> Actually in most places, technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job.

This isn't true as written. CEOs aren't automatically liable for crimes of the company or employees.

If a CEO intentionally facilitates or participates in those crimes: Yes, open to liability.

If an employee or department commits crimes without the knowledge of the CEO: Very different situation.

The cynical take is that CEOs are always aware of crimes or that they're encouraging the crimes to happen. I've personally seen several cases of people committing fraud and even a federal crime on the job, and in every case it was done secretly with the belief that it was going to be an undiscovered way of advancing the person's career. People try to game the advancement system at every level, including executive levels.

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

#342

Post by qingcharles »

sandworm101 wrote: post #323
watwut wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors are not supposed to drop the ball intentionally if the judge rejects the deal. They are supposed to work the case. Practically, their career would be affected by it too.

There are nuances between jurisdictions, but while a US judge can reject a plea deal they generally cannot reject a guilty plea. A judge cannot force a trial between parties that don't want one. And a trial isn't really possible where the parties agree the facts. The judge can certainly impose a sentence different than that which was agreed between the parties, but any such punishment would have to be based on the ag…

Right. And prosecutions aren't between the victim and the offender. Prosecutions are between The People and the offender. Regardless of how the offender harmed the victim, it's The State that is seeking justice in the matter.

Now, criminal prosecutions take into account the thoughts and feelings of the complainant, but they're not usually bound by them.

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

#343

Post by sudosysgen »

constantcrying wrote: post #102
sudosysgen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The responsibility doesn't come from the money, it comes from being the Chief Executive, with nearly unlimited operational authority. The money would be compensation for liability that would be inherent to their position.

Criminal liability can not be transferred. The idea would be rejected by every sane court as it is a perversion of justice and sets unimaginably bad precedent.

Criminal liability cannot be transferred, but additional liability based on having the authority to oversee and direct a crime where one should have been aware is something that already exists: see RICO. No one is saying that the employees who committed a crime should be absolved, people are saying the chief executive should be additionally liable as they are responsible and, if they didn't know, should have known by this point.

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

#344

Post by krisoft »

lupusreal wrote: post #281
krisoft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way i see it (and here I describe how I think the law should work, not how it works): If a Boeing engineer has a breakdown and robs a 7-11, the C suite of Boeing is not responsible for that. If the Boeing engineer murders people in their course of duty because of the incentive structure set up by the C suite then they are responsible for that. How do you prove that? The same way how you prove anything. Lots of di…

Under this theory I think maybe you could get the C suite for negligent homicide, but murder seems like a huge stretch for anything but a kangaroo court.

I don't think that I mentioned a specific crime in my comment.

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

#345

Post by cellis »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #267
lenerdenator wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put in place an incentive to not do these things. Corporate executives and boards do these things because they're incentivized to do so through stock price-based compensation. Great risk should come with great reward. We no longer assign risk to most executives at publicly-traded, multinational corporations, but the reward is still great. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what the risk should be, bu…

> Great risk should come with great reward. In today's culture, I often hear C-suiters talking about how much "risk" they are taking, to justify their outrageous salaries and stock holdings, but I almost never see them pay much, in the way of penalties, except for the very smallest, most "raw" companies, where they have, literally, sunk their entire net worth into the endeavor. It seems that, once a company has reach…

Boeing employs millions (mostly indirectly via downstream cottage industries) of people and I think is the leading net exporter by revenue of the US. Politicians don’t want to hurt them too badly because all those employees vote.

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

#347

Post by qingcharles »

sandworm101 wrote: post #338
anikom15 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunter Biden’s guilty plea got rejected.

No. His plea deal was rejected. That is not the same thing.

Right. Plea deals are "I'll plead guilty and save you the trial in exchange for this sentence."

Depending on the court, plea deals can be a horrible gamble by a defendant. Generally you have to enter your guilty plea first, and then the judge decides if they want to let you have that sweet, sweet sentence the prosecution offered.

I know someone who went to court having been offered a plea deal for probation and got 80 years instead when the judge rejected it and sentenced them.

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

#348

Post by alistairSH »

sandworm101 wrote: post #338
anikom15 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunter Biden’s guilty plea got rejected.

No. His plea deal was rejected. That is not the same thing.

What's the difference (in practice)?

Boeing isn't pleading guilty on its own - it's also agreed to damages.

I agree that a defendant pleading guilty on their own (and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court) would be hard to reject. That isn't what's happened here - the prosecution has, presumably, agreed to the damages, so this is a plea deal, right?

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

#349

Post by alwa »

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.

If you incentivize ignorance, then that’s what you get more of. If all I have to do to avoid responsibility is to cover my eyes and plug my ears after I chuck the figurative grenade into the operation, then then expect me to develop an enthusiastic case of “la la la I can’t hear you!” even in reaction to normal decisions, just in case.

It feels like maybe the financial industry made some reforms along these lines, right? Where they established that somebody specific in an executive position was required to sign personally guaranteeing that various financial filings were not fraudulent?

Presumably that personal risk incentivized said executive staff to want to know more rather than less, and the residual risk (of having to stand by your word) became priced into the pay packages.

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

#350

Post by bluGill »

zdw wrote: post #316
bluGill wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse. You are expected to know all the laws that apply to you.

The law being so wide ranging, complicated, and subject to interpretation based on previous decisions (in may jurisdictions) it's practically impossible to know definitively every law that applies to you, even for an expert. Now, knowing what the law is in specific, narrow areas that you're operating in, or with sufficient budget to hire experts, that's something different, and might be closer to knowable.

I fully agree with you, but that doesn't change anything about my statement. Even if you don't know what the law is you are still responsible for following it correctly.
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