Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Corrupt from top to bottom

The Fifth Circuit Court today dismissed the lawsuit by the families of the 346 victims of two Boeing 737-Max crashes, caused by Boeing’s admitted malfeasance and corruption, preventing those families from blocking a sweetheart deal between Boeing and the Justice Department that largely lets Boeing off the hook.

The court’s decision was vile in its own way, as noted by one of their lawyers:

In today’s ruling, the Circuit said that the families’ victims rights challenges to these agreements came too late to allow any remedy. But earlier, in 2023, the Circuit had said that the families’ challenges were “premature.” The fact that the families now will seemingly never receive any remedy is a cruel judicial bait-and-switch, revealing how much work remains to be done to create truly enforcable crime victims’ rights in the criminal justice system. [emphasis mine]

In other words, this court’s rulings over time essentially made it impossible for these victims to ever claim their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA).

The background: In 2018 and 2019 two of Boeing’s new 737-Max planes crashed, due to Boeing’s own design. The investigation into the crashes revealed that Boeing knew about these design flaws, lied about it to federal authorities, while doing nothing to fix the identified problems (behavior to which it has admitted). In 2021 Boeing pleaded guilty to malfeasance and corruption charges, and was given three years to clean up its act or face criminal prosecution.

When after three years Justice found Boeing had instead lied again while doing little to fix things, Justice first proceeded with prosecution, only to suddenly back off and make a plea deal that would have Boeing pay and/or invest up to $1.1 billion, about half of which would go to victims’ families.

To understand the opposition by the families to this deal, you need to read what the Justice Department determined about Boeing’s behavior.

A Justice Department investigation uncovered the fact that Boeing had lied to the FAA about the safety of the aircraft—lies that led directly and proximately to the crashes killing 346 passengers and crew. On January 7, 2021, the Justice Department filed a criminal information with a one-count conspiracy charge against Boeing, alleging that “From at least in or around November 2016 through at least in or around December 2018, in the Northern District of Texas and elsewhere, the Defendant, The Boeing Company, knowingly and willfully, and with the intent to defraud, conspired and agreed together with others to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, defeating, and interfering with, by dishonest means, the lawful function of a United States government agency.”

The families didn’t simply want money, they wanted justice. They wanted Boeing and its management to be prosecuted for their part in allowing 346 people to die unnecessarily.

At this moment, it appears they won’t get it, because of a similar malfeasance at the Fifth Circuit, which now seems as corrupt and as dishonest as Boeing.