Theo Leggett
Commercial correspondent, BBC News
John Barnett
This story contains details on a person who committed suicide, that some readers can find painful.
The family of a Boeing denunciator who committed suicide last year filed an unjustified death complaint against the company.
The complaint alleys that John Barnett was subjected to a harassment, abuse and humiliation campaign after raising concerns about security issues.
He claims that the conduct of society was “the clear and predictable cause” of Mr. Barnett’s death.
Boeing said he had been saddened by the death of Mr. Barnett and expressed his condolences to his family.
The former director of Boeing was found dead of what the police described as a self-inflicted ball injury in the parking lot of a Charleston hotel on March 9 of last year.
The 146 -page trial was brought by his mother, Vicky Stokes, and his brothers Rodney and Michael in the name of his succession. He was filed on Wednesday before the Southern Carolina District Court.
He attributes his death to the actions of Boeing, including what he describes as a reprisal campaign by her managers who was equivalent to a “hostile work environment”.
“Whether Boeing or not to lead John to death to death or to simply destroy his ability to function, it was absolutely predictable that Boeing’s conduct would lead to the unbearable depression of the SSPT and John … The conduct of Boeing was the clear cause, and the predictable clear cause, of John’s death,” he said.
He describes Mr. Barnett as a devoted idealist who “took his role seriously in the protection of the flying public” and “thought that he had a personal, legal and moral obligation to ensure … that each possible defect had been identified, documented and corrected”.
He describes how he would have been harassed, disparaged, humiliated and treated with contempt and contempt, while being withdrawn from the surveys he worked on and was put on black list to transfer to other quality control positions within the company.
Mr. Barnett took an early retirement from Boeing in March 2017, at a time when the complaint says that he had suffered from symptoms of depression and severe anxiety, and knew that he was going to be dismissed. The trial alleys that the company continued to put him pressure, for example by preventing friends who continued to work there from having contact with him.
Among the exhibitions presented in support of the complaint are an email, in which he said: “Boeing has completely destroyed my vision of life” and his handwritten final note, which says “I can’t do that !!”
Safety precision raised
John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years.
From 2010, he was employed as quality director in Boeing’s Factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. The installation built on 787 Dreamliner, a advanced airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.
During his stay at the factory, Mr. Barnett raised a certain number of concerns concerning management concerning the violations of security procedures, as well as on the defects of aircraft on the production line.
He then brought his concerns to the media. In 2019, he told the BBC that:
The sub-press workers had deliberately installed parts lower than aircraft on the production lines which had not succeeded in following the procedures intended to follow the components through the factory, allowing defective components to miss, he had discovered serious problems with oxygen systems on the 787, which could mean one in four out of four in the event of an emergency in the event of an emergency
Boeing denied his claims. However, a 2017 exam by the American regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), maintained some of Mr. Barnett’s concerns.
He established that the location of at least 53 “non -compliant” rooms in the factory was unknown and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take corrective measures.
On the issue of oxygen cylinders, the company said that in 2017, it “identified oxygen bottles received from the supplier who did not move properly”. But he denied that one of them was really installed on planes.
Boeing’s safety standards were subjected to a spotlight from an incident last year during which a disused door panel fell from a brand new Max 737 plane shortly after takeoff.
The incident, which occurred five years after two previous catastrophic accidents involving the maximum 737, caused a meticulous examination of the company’s quality procedures and conditions for the company’s quality in the factory.
The company appointed a new managing director last year, the veteran of the industry Kelly Ortberg, and produced a detailed action plan to respond to the concerns raised by regulators concerning the factory issues.
In response to the continuation of the trial, Boeing published a brief declaration.
“We are saddened by the death of John Barnett and expressing our condolences to his family,” he said.
Previously, however, the company has rejected the allegations formulated against it, saying to the BBC: “Boeing examined and addressed quality problems that Mr. Barnett raised before his retirement in 2017, as well as other quality problems mentioned in the complaint. Engineering analysis determined that the problems he raised did not affect the aircraft safety.”
He also drew attention to a decision taken earlier in the case of Mr. Barnett in 2020, in which the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded that the company had not violated the law on the protection of the denouncitors.
This added: “We appreciate the employees who raise their voices, and we have systems in place to encourage them to express themselves in a confidential or anonymous manner.”
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