'Blood Money': One Woman’s Fight for Justice
The avoidable tragedies of the two 737 MAX crashes killing 346 have a special meaning for me personally and professionally: As a father who lost a daughter due in large part due to airline willful misconduct and as a U.S. lawyer who in the 1980s devoted full time to establishing and enforcing crime victim rights.
Prior to the 1980s and going back to the time of King Henry 2nd in the English Middle Ages, a legal fiction was established whereby a criminal act was deemed to be an offense against the king’s peace and later against public order, not against the actual victim. Crime victims could still sue in civil tort law for money but had no roll in prosecution of criminal offenders, except as a witness or piece of evidence. The reform I advocated which was largely adopted was to allow crime victims basic due process rights of notice and opportunity to be heard at every significant stage of the criminal justice process. This included bail hearings, charging decisions, sentencing hearings after conviction and parole hearings after incarceration. See Paul S. Hudson, The Crime Victim and the Criminal Justice System: Time for a Change, 11 Pepperdine Law Review, Issue 5 (1984), https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/pir/vol11/iss5/5
However, unlike violations of due process rights of accused criminal defendants that can result in reversal of convictions there has not been any meaningful penalty for violations of crime victim due process rights.
The present deferred prosecution agreement of Boeing that allows its officers, employees and board members to escape any accountability or penalty for willful misconduct in hiding a defective flight control system from the FAA, pilots and passengers, presents a test case to remedy this weakness. The judge in this case now has the option to reconsider the Boeing plea bargain. He can reject it entirely or demand that its terms be stiffened after listening to the victim families, their counsel and perhaps others representing public safety interests.
That reconsideration could include disclosure of higher up wrongdoing, claw back of bonuses and free Boeing stock received, appointment a DOJ monitor to prevent repetition of willful or grossly negligent safety violations over the next 10 years, firing of board members, officers and managers involved in the wrongdoing, and formal admonishment and referral to bar disciplinary committees of prosecutors involved in excluding crime victim from any notice or opportunity to be heard in the negotiation and presentation of the now challenged deferred prosecution agreement.
These measures would provide justice by punishing those largely responsible for these avoidable deaths, deter future aircraft safety misconduct by Boeing, and help protect air travelers, Boeing shareholders, innocent employees and the international reputation of the US commercial aviation and its safety regulator the FAA.
The US not just Boeing has been so badly damaged by the Boeing decisions of choosing individual and corporate financial gain over required safety with fraudulent representations and concealment of known catastrophic defects that it requires strong measures to rehabilitate the US aviation safety reputation.
This reputation is now tarnished to the point that other national aviation safety agencies will no longer accept the safety certifications of the FAA without independent reviews. Safety First is not just a corporate slogan. It is an essential requirement for commercial airliners as airlines will not buy and the public will not fly on aircraft viewed as unsafe. The US in my opinion is now in imminent danger of losing its leadership in commercial aviation together with millions of jobs to the EU and China if it fails to take decisive action.
Paul Hudson
President, FlyersRights.org
Member, FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (1993-present)
Counsel, NYS Crime Victims Board (1977-87)
President, Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie (1989-93)
READ ABOUT: BLOOD MONEY: ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE AGAINST CORPORATE AMERICA
