And their planes made with scrap parts are still flying around.
Edit: A lot of new .world users showing up with ChatGPT responses about how this was a conspiracy, reminds me of an article i read this week.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/657978/reddit-ai-experiment-banned
I need to step in here with a major correction, John Barnett was not Whistleblowing. That’s not what the court case was about at all.
No, the court case was for the wrongful termination, which was a result of his whistleblowing.
This is an important distinction, because the whistleblowing was done. John Barnett had nothing more to offer authorities, because he had already turned over all the evidence he collected. That particular case was a done deal years ago.
John Barnett then sued Boeing over his wrongful termination, and some apparent black balling. (i.e. retaliatory rumormongering to prevent John from working in aerospace).
John lost the lawsuit. He then appealed that decision, and it wasn’t going well.
This is the situation that led to his suicide. Boeing 100% drove a man to kill himself. But no, they didn’t fucking hire some guy to go kill John Barnett, that would be fucking stupid.
The possibity will certainly frighten future whistle-blowers.
No.
What disincentivizes future whistleblowing is the prospect of never being able to work in your field ever again, because your boss, or rather his boss, talked to his counterpart at the other aerospace companies, so now no one will hire you.
You then drown in debt, and die penniless on the street, years or decades later. Depending on your luck.
Simply killing someone is messy. You might get caught. Ruining a man’s life to the point where he kills himself? That’s disturbingly easy.
Again, the lawsuit was not over John Barnett’s whistleblowing. That case had concluded a few years earlier, with Boeing being found in violation of some safety standards. They got a fine and John Barnett got fired. Except Boeing didn’t “Fire” him, they forced him to retire.
So John Barnett sues Boeing for wrongful termination, and loses. Boeing has some very expensive lawyers.
John appeals the loss, and that’s what this court case was about. He was giving testimony about how Boeing retaliated against him. And he obviously thought that he was going to lose again.
That’s is a standard disincentive across US industry.
Knowing that a company hounded their previous whistle-blowers to death (no matter the method) is and additional disincentive specific to Boeing.