The family of longtime Boeing employee John Barnett has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the aircraft company after he died by suicide. At the time of his death, he had been questioned for days concerning a whistleblower lawsuit against Boeing.
Barnett, who worked as a Boeing quality control manager for more than 30 years before retiring in 2017, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 9, 2024, the Charleston County Coroner's Office said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE at the time. Barnett lived in Louisiana but was in South Carolina for legal proceedings in connection to the whistleblower lawsuit, according to the BBC and Time.
His family filed a wrongful death and abuse of process lawsuit on Wednesday, March 19, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina's Charleston Division, per court documents seen by PEOPLE on Thursday, March 20.
They accuse Boeing's upper management of pressuring employees "to ignore and conceal defects and to not properly document aircraft build records," according to the filing.
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Barnett's family adds, through their attorneys, that failure to follow standards from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the "dangerous...
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