I still don't get why they couldn't just come out and say that. Was incompetence and unprofessionalism really a better look then a understandable engineering ch

I still don't get why they couldn't just come out and say that. Was incompetence and unprofessionalism really a better look then a understandable engineering challenge? Or was this another case of "being honest and doing the right thing would have created legal liability so we opted not to do it"?