The family of a former Boeing quality control manager, who authorities say committed himself after attorneys questioned him for days about his whistleblower on potential jumbo aircraft problems, is suing the company.
Boeing subjected John Barnett to a “campaign of harassment, abuse, and intimidation intended to discourage, discredit, and humiliate him until he would either give up or be discredited,” according to family attorneys in a wrongful death complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in South Carolina.
Barnett, 62, committed himself on March 9, 2024, in Charleston after spending several days answering questions from lawyers about a defamation case he brought against Boeing. He resided in Louisiana.
“Boeing had threatened to break John, and break him it did,” his family’s lawyers said in court documents.
Boeing has not yet replied to court documents.
“We are deeply saddened by John Barnett’s death and extend our condolences to his family,” the firm stated in a statement this week.
Barnett worked with Boeing for 32 years as a quality-control manager until retiring in 2017. In the years that followed, he expressed his concerns to media and became a whistleblower.
“John became concerned when he transferred to Boeing’s South Carolina plant in 2010 — quality issues, procedures that weren’t being followed, and attempts to take shortcuts,” his brother Rodney Barnett told CBS Morning News in an exclusive interview in March 2024.
Barnett claims he once spotted discarded metal shavings near flight control equipment, which may have severed the cables and caused a disaster. He also reported issues with up to a quarter of Boeing’s 787 aircraft’ oxygen systems.
Barnett expressed his concerns to his managers and others before leaving Boeing, but according to the complaint, they ignored him and subsequently harassed him.
According to the complaint, Boeing purposely provided Barnett with incorrect, unsatisfactory work ratings and less desired shifts. Barnett’s family claims the firm publicly blamed him for delays, which enraged his coworkers and blocked him from moving to another facility.
Barnett was later diagnosed with PTSD, and his mental health worsened, according to his family.
“Whether or not Boeing intended to drive John to his death or merely destroy his ability to function, it was absolutely foreseeable that PTSD and John’s unbearable depression, panic attacks, and anxiety, which would in turn lead to an elevated risk of suicide,” according to the complaint.
“Boeing may not have pulled the trigger, but Boeing’s conduct was the clear cause, and the clear foreseeable cause, of John’s death.”
Alaska Airlines blowout
In February 2024, a group of experts condemned Boeing’s safety culture, putting pressure on the aircraft maker after a Jan. 5 incident in which the door panel of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 airliner built by Boeing blew off mid-flight. The event occurred after previous safety faults were connected to Boeing’s Max series of aircraft, raising questions about the plane’s safety.
In its report following the Alaska Airlines disaster, the Federal Aviation Administration stated that a panel of government and aviation industry experts had “found a lack of awareness of safety-related metrics at all levels” of Boeing, adding that “employees had difficulty distinguishing the differences among various measuring methods, their purpose, and outcomes.”
“The failure of quality control at Boeing over the last decade is well known and well documented, as are the consequences of that failure, which include planes crashing and coming apart in the air,” lawyers write in the lawsuit filed on behalf of Barnett’s mother, Vicky Stokes, and two other family members.
The complaint does not specify the amount of damages requested by Barnett’s family, but it does seek compensation for emotional hardship and mental agony, back pay, 10 years of lost future wages, bonuses, health expenditures, and lost life insurance benefits.