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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

#361

Post by vlan0 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #352
ActionHank wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it does go to trial it would be great for people behind this to be directly tried for their criminal actions as well. The reality is that a company is on trial for the actions of individuals and if there is no follow through on that it will not change anything. I doubt it goes to trial as I am 99% sure that the judge will rubber stamp the whole thing because the US is a corporate driven hellscape where peasants ar…

You really want the engineer who was last on the line of decisions to go to jail? Because that’s how this will go.

I'm sure they can try. But put yourself in the shoes of that engineer. Imagine what would go through your head. My entire MO would be CYA. Every 1on1 conversation, secretly recorded (thank you favorable NY state laws), and a paper trail a mile long. For just this reason.

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

#362

Post by bumby »

semiquaver wrote: post #315
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. Citation needed. Limited liability is at the foundation of the very concept of incorporation.

In the US, sometimes the court may “pierce the corporate veil” when actions are particularly egregious or unlawful and hold the shareholders or directors personally liable.

Rather than go into all the specifics of law (since I'm not a lawyer), I'll cite some examples where corporate executives were charged personally:

(Tax evasion):

-https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-multibillion-dollar-softw...

(Securities fraud):

- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-medical-device-company-ch...

(Identity theft and fraud):

- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-medical-device-company-ch...

(RICO - Providing encryption to avoid law enforcement):

- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/sky-global-executive-an...

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

#363

Post by sandworm101 »

alistairSH wrote: post #348
sandworm101 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Without turning this into a criminal procedures lecture, the practical difference surrounds who decides the punishment. When a judge rejects a deal they are asserting control over punishment. But a prosecutor can fight back by dropping charges, or reducing to lesser-but-included charges [insert lecture re elements] which would place a cap on the max punishment the judge could adopt. It is a back-and-forth fight between the prosecutor and the judge about who decides punishment, who represents the wishes of the people.

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

#364

Post by cjbgkagh »

tsunamifury wrote: post #352
ActionHank wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it does go to trial it would be great for people behind this to be directly tried for their criminal actions as well. The reality is that a company is on trial for the actions of individuals and if there is no follow through on that it will not change anything. I doubt it goes to trial as I am 99% sure that the judge will rubber stamp the whole thing because the US is a corporate driven hellscape where peasants ar…

You really want the engineer who was last on the line of decisions to go to jail? Because that’s how this will go.

Yes! Even as an engineer. I've quit jobs over ethics / safety concerns and I want that pushback to be the norm. When I need to convince other engineers I want to be able to point to such consequences as to why we shouldn't be dangerously cutting corners. And even if you only punish engineers it will decrease the pool of talent / cost effectiveness of workers available to the unscrupulous managers such that cutting corners could very well not be worth the cost. Money saved on cutting corners would be lost in trying to find competent engineers that were willing to cut those corners.

Of course I want the entire chain of those involved criminally punished but punishing people anywhere on that chain, even those at the bottom is a start.

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

#365

Post by jessriedel »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #357
deeth_starr_v wrote: post #298

From the article: Paul Cassell, a lawyer for victims’ family members, said he plans to ask the federal judge on the case to reject the deal and “simply set the matter for a public trial, so that all the facts surrounding the case will be aired in a fair and open forum before a jury.” Hard to disagree

This is for a criminal case. The victims don't play a prosecutorial role here and are not actually parties to this case. The appropriate venue for the victims is a civil jury trial (lawsuit), where recovery of losses is possible because the victims then become party to the case (plaintiff). The reason this lawyer is requesting this is so that the government will be forced to lay its cards on the table during trial, w…

> This is for a criminal case. The victims don't play a prosecutorial role here and are not actually parties to this case.

The desires of the victim in making formal accusations (“pressing charges”) are certainly considered by the prosecutors even if the victim is not a party to the trial. I’d image the prosecutor takes it into account in other situations too, like the terms of accepting a guilty plea. Do you have a link to something that suggests otherwise?

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

#366

Post by jgeada »

tzs wrote: post #333
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,…

"Knowing" and "willful" can be a bit confusing. Generally in statutes you do something "knowingly" if you have knowledge of it. If you know the report is false when you sign it you have "knowingly" signed off on a false report. "Willful" means that you knew that you were doing something that the law forbids. If you knew the reports was false but did not know that the law forbids doing that then it would not be willfu…

I've always found those distinctions in legal code to have the (possibly deliberate) side effect of encouraging deliberate ignorance. It is not wilful or knowing if they make no effort to know or understand what the implications of their decisions were. I strongly believe this to be a wrong approach that does nothing to change MBA approach to decision making: It is all about a buck now and the less they know about consequences later the better (for them personally, not for the rest of us)

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

#367

Post by Joel_Mckay »

bumby wrote: post #362
semiquaver wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. Citation needed. Limited liability is at the foundation of the very concept of incorporation.

In the US, sometimes the court may “pierce the corporate veil” when actions are particularly egregious or unlawful and hold the shareholders or directors personally liable. Rather than go into all the specifics of law (since I'm not a lawyer), I'll cite some examples where corporate executives were charged personally: (Tax evasion): - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-multibillion-dollar-softw... (Securities fraud):…

[flagged]

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

#368

Post by pdabbadabba »

jgeada wrote: post #366
tzs wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Knowing" and "willful" can be a bit confusing. Generally in statutes you do something "knowingly" if you have knowledge of it. If you know the report is false when you sign it you have "knowingly" signed off on a false report. "Willful" means that you knew that you were doing something that the law forbids. If you knew the reports was false but did not know that the law forbids doing that then it would not be willfu…

I've always found those distinctions in legal code to have the (possibly deliberate) side effect of encouraging deliberate ignorance. It is not wilful or knowing if they make no effort to know or understand what the implications of their decisions were. I strongly believe this to be a wrong approach that does nothing to change MBA approach to decision making: It is all about a buck now and the less they know about co…

The law tries to address this. If a defendant is aware that there is a significant risk of [X], but deliberately avoided information that might confirm [X], then knowledge that [X] can often be imported to them under the "willful blindness" doctrine. Though, as you can imagine, it can be difficult to apply this in practice since it is difficult to articulate the level of suspicion a defendant must have had in order to have been "willfully blind" rather than just ignorant.

https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/faculty_scholarship/803/

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

#369

Post by Joel_Mckay »

philipov wrote: post #326
semiquaver wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. Citation needed. Limited liability is at the foundation of the very concept of incorporation.

Limited liability only protects the shareholders. It exists because shareholders have no control over the corporation. It does not protect agents of the corporation, such as management, because they do have control of the corporation.

This is true up to a point for shareholders, as for civil liability it is not guaranteed protection in some places.

For example, if you hold shares of a firm that makes something locally illegal in another jurisdiction. =3

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

#370

Post by zokier »

bombcar wrote: post #325
dralley wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying this but it borders on conspiracy talk. The Air Force leadership has been pissed off at Boeing for well over a decade. Every project they've been given has turned into a clusterfuck even moreso than average. They fortunately had the foresight to not give them any cost-plus contracts, so at least it's Boeing eating most of the cost overruns rather than the Air Force, but the point remains that Boein…

The military isn't the problem, it's that the military has no other options. Who else are they going to buy planes to bomb different-colored countries with? SpaceX? Airbus? It is to laugh. When you get a company that is too big to fail, it rests directly on the government for not identifying and solving the issue earlier.

Boeing hasn't won any major military aircraft deals in recent decades.

The latest big bomber purchase, B-21, went to Northrop Grumman, as did the not so recent B-2. Fighters have been going to Lockheed (F-22 and F-35).

The biggest recent win for Boeing was KC-46 tanker airplane, which is just modified 767. I suppose there is also the handful of F-15EXes that are vestige from their McDonnell Douglas merger.

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