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" I wonder if Boeing doesn't want to admit that for some legal reason, maybe they don't have a lot of documentation they say they should have. " This would be
by DannyBee 3y ago
" I wonder if Boeing doesn't want to admit that for some legal reason, maybe they don't have a lot of documentation they say they should have. "
This would be a bad legal strategy. Playing this through as a lawyer:
1. You will be asked to produce it in a lawsuit
2. It will come out it does not exist but should.
3. You will be absolutely and totally excoriated in the lawsuit, in the court of public opinion, and by your regulators.
4. You will prolong the news cycle of your malicious belligerence, and it may even spike higher when it comes out the docs don't exist but should.
5. You will be forced to settle the lawsuit at very high cost, and because you were totally belligerent, you will be regulated much harder, which has a higher-than-the-lawsuit cost most likely
Meanwhile, admitting you are missing shit you should not be, because the contractors played games (or even if it is just you):
1. You will be forced to settle the lawsuit at high cost
2. You will be less excoriated because you owned up to your failure, and because you look more like a bumbling company instead of belligerent and malicious.
3. You will probably be regulated more, but probably less than you did in the first scenario because of #2
The net expected value of the first strategy is much lower than the second.
They can't prevent themselves from losing or being excoriated, they can only try to make it have less cost.
- willvarfar 3y agowhich of the two scenarios captures the most value for lawyers involved?
- otterley 3y agoSpeaking as a lawyer, we’re not incentivized to advise a course of action whose primary purpose would be to line our own pockets. Doing so would cause us to lose trust in our clients and could possibly subject us to disciplinary action. We are expected to act in our clients’ best interest, not our own. I’m obviously not Boeing’s attorney, but given the industry they’re in and the amount of scrutiny they’re under, they don’t need their lawyers to fabricate situations that drive up their billables. They’re quite busy enough already.
- willvarfar 3y agoThere must be someone somewhere that is incentivised to take course they are taking. If it's not the lawyers, who is it and what is their incentive?
- masklinn 3y agoExecutives still trying to find out if there’s a convenient scapegoat they missed?
- Log_out_ 3y agoPlaying for time to restore faked documentation after the fact?
- petesergeant 3y agoThat feels like it would lead to jail time, which is an even worse option
- whatshisface 3y agoI am not aware of a single time that's ever happened.
- belter 3y agoIt did not happen when they lied about the 737 Max problem even after a first crash, causing another hundred deaths, the CEO retired with a bonus of 60 million dollars, the current Boeing CEO was already part of the Board then, and will happen now because of some ... papirology? "Boeing admits knowing of 737 Max problem" - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48174797 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48174797 "...Boeing has admitted that it knew about a problem with its 737 Max jets a year before the aircraft was involved in two fatal accidents, but took no action..."
- petesergeant 3y ago> papirology Faking paperwork after the fact is unambiguous mens rea and “inadvertently made an alarm feature optional instead of standard” is not.
- belter 3y agoIf you watched the Netflix documentary you will know the conduct was much worst than that. After the first accident, and before the second accident, the Boeing CEO went on CNBC saying the airplane was safe when they were already aware of the problem. To me it looks like cause for manslaughter charges at a minimum, but maybe that is why I am not a lawyer...
- bambax 3y agoThis sounds like a case of Schrödinger's documentation: it may or may not exist. I think Boeing is still looking for it and doesn't want to admit they don't have it until they're absolutely, positively certain they don't. Time is running out, and the situation doesn't make them look good, but it seems they're not ready to abandon hope just yet.
- bArray 3y ago> This sounds like a case of Schrödinger's documentation: it may or may not exist. I think Boeing is still looking for it and doesn't want to admit they don't have it until they're absolutely, positively certain they don't. I can imagine that for each plane could exist millions of documents, hidden away on different servers. Best-case scenario they could claim that a subcontractor was order to create it and lost it. From experience I saw a company where people would have single copies of documents stored on hard drives, personal cloud drives, memory sticks, etc. They were always able to find what they needed, but there were a few close calls. This is where being under so much pressure to produce the documentation, somebody ends up magic-ing it into existence. I wonder if they even have a chain of custody that would highlight that forms, etc, were retroactively created?
- trogdor 3y agoI am an investigative reporter, and I take the same approach toward public records. If it ever existed in digital form, there is almost always a stray copy somewhere — regardless of the agency’s records retention schedule. The challenge is figuring out where it is.
- marcosdumay 3y agoJust to point out that, despite the natural state of documentation being a superposition of "exists" and "doesn't exist", for that specific one there is a relative short (hundreds of pages) manual that says in no misleading terms exactly where the documents must be.
- sidewndr46 3y agoJust speaking from my experience here: I worked for a company that was comparable in role to Boeing. I was prohibited from retaining any documentation about my work that was not court ordered. Files, notes, emails, scribbles on a napkin all of it had to be destroyed.
- DannyBee 3y agoHaving a friend who has represented whistleblowers, etc, yes, this happens. Sometimes for good reason (you are on a classified project, etc). Sometimes for bad reason (we don't want anyone to be able to prove anything). The latter is something bad lawyers suggest. It basically never works to get the company off the hook. I'm not going to say "never never", but most of the time it leads to a situation where it's easy to convince a jury you are malicious and evil. Even without a jury, i will simply put your peers who don't do that on the stand and make you look like you have a non-standard policy of hiding things. Or i'll find the human who asked why. Because in any company of any size, people eventually ask each other why they are being asked to do this, and someone will say the wrong thing ("You know why we do this"). Most of them will not lie for the company because they don't buy it either. etc This sort of hiding strategy goes wrong in many many ways, and only goes "right" in a remarkably small set of circumstances.
- sobkas 3y agoBut when you are malicious and evil, stopping outsiders from learning to what level, is actually useful. Because there is ambiguity in "they destroyed evidence, so they had something to hide" vs "they have documentation proving they are two Hitlers in a trenchcoat"
- marcosdumay 3y agoStep 3 on your first scenario takes years to happen. More than enough for rich people to cash out their gains and move away.
- DannyBee 3y agoSure, that's fair. I would say 'that is an unethical but 'reasonable' strategy for a rich CEO or whatever as an individual' (where reasonable here is 'probably would work' not 'morally sound'). It is an unreasonable one for the company as the company.