The Lawyer Who Took On Boeing | Secrets of Aviation Law

Once an aviation accident occurs, the lawyers start crawling out of the woodwork. Some like to tout their track record, but there's an open secret that few ever mention.

The reality is that 97% of the lawyers out there have a background that is non-technical.

And when litigators don't truly understand the industry, blame starts getting thrown in the wrong direction.

When you have people that are not competent in the field, they tend to point the finger at the last part of the Swiss cheese model. And typically that is the pilots.

Today I talked with Filippo Marcino, an attorney with a master's degree in airspace engineering. His deep technical knowledge has allowed him to try some of the most notable cases in aviation, including Lionair 610, the first of the Boeing 737 Max accidents. And what he told me about this case is truly unbelievable. Wait.

They did this for money? They killed 346 people for money? The judge that oversaw the criminal case in Texas called this the greatest example of corporate murder in the history of the world.

And the most shocking part is the shady backroom deals that allowed them to get away with it.

The government enters into another secret deal. They decide that they're gonna waive any claims against Boeing. Somehow, the Justice Department, against the backdrop of 346 people dying, decided that there was no need to prosecute them.

My name is Mitchell. This is the AirPod, and now let's hear a little more about Filippo.

I grew up in Italy and in the northern part of Italy. And my parents were both doctors, and they thought well of sending me to an international school where I would learn English. And uh for for one reason or the other, um, my apprehension of the English language was a little bit delayed. So in the summertimes, they would send me to England to uh stay at a boarding school to learn English. And that's something that started when I was about five years old, five or six years old. But because they both worked, they would send me across the pond, uh, or the the small pond, with uh um, you know, with just like a lanyard around my neck and just put me on an airplane and somebody picked me up on the other side. And so I started flying as a as a young kid, and I loved the airport, right? There was like the smell of uh jet fuel and uh you know the sound of the engines and the cockpits. And those were the years where you could still go in a cockpit when they were flying and seeing things. Um and so I was always very curious about it. Uh I didn't quite have an exposure to actual aviation until I picked my college, meaning I would fly a lot as a as a commercial passenger, but I never had access to people that had private planes or you know, general aviation or anything like that. Uh, but when I picked my college and I decided to go to Embry Riddle, um, I got to Embry Riddle and it was just like Disneyland for aviation. And um anything you could desire from aviation, you had access to. We had uh um nearby junkyards for general aviation uh that we would go play with in the evenings and the in the weekends and take parts. Uh, you know, we had a flight line we could go fly with. Um I started taking flying lessons. Um it just like I got immersed in the world of aviation and I've never got out of it.

That's cool. And you said that you didn't really grow up with like pilots around you or anything like that. What other than just being in the airport as a passenger, was there anything that sparked that like I want to go do this professionally?

No, so my desire to get to aerospace engineering comes from a little bit of a different place. I what I was exposed to was race cars and loved race cars. I wanted to be a race car driver, but I'm six foot two. Uh right now about 200 pounds, back then about 170. Um, but uh I was too big to actually comfortably fit in go-karts or race cars. And I did go-karting at fairly high levels for a little bit and then went into single seaters, but my physical dimensions were not those of a race car driver, which typically, at least in those years in the 90s and 2000s, was still that of a jockey, right? Um, so I knew I couldn't become a professional race car driver, but I wanted to be around race cars. And the closest thing to a race car is an airplane. And at the time uh when I was finishing high school, I realized that I wanted to be involved with racing. And uh I had the opportunity to go uh study engineering in England at Bath, which had a big program for aerospace slash racing engineering. And then I went to see Bath in November of 1997. And it was cold, it was dark, it was raining. Uh, I saw the student housing, the communal bathrooms, they were ancient, they smelled bad, the food was horrible. With all due respect to all my friends in England, they know that the food is not great, especially for a kid from Italy. Um, and it was raining. And that's the day that I was like, you know, I love the idea of studying engineering, but not here. So I got back to Italy, and a friend of mine was going to school in Arizona and had bought this book that had all the colleges listed in it. And having just seen Bath, England in the winter time with the rain and the dark, I was like, I wanted to find the most opposite thing to that that I can find. And I started, you know, started looking at colleges in Florida. It's like, where should I go? And uh, that's where I found Daytona Beach and uh Embry Riddle. I was like, oh, this sounds great. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, this is amazing. So I signed up to go to Embry Riddle without ever even having seen it. You know, the this was at the dawn of the internet, so you could see some pictures and stuff, but I didn't really know what to expect. Um and uh that's how I ended up in aerospace engineering because I thought that I was gonna get into racing and race cars uh as opposed to airplanes. And uh yeah, here I am.

Yeah, yeah. Daytona is a little different than Bath England in November.

Yes, yes, and those were still uh the the only exposure I had of Daytona was that those were the years in which MTV would go for spring break to Daytona Beach. So as a 17-year-old boy in Italy watching MTV and seeing sort of like the mental images of uh spring break in Daytona Beach, you're like, you know, that's where I want to go to call. Not Bath, England. Just a big party. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it it's uh, you know, the food in Daytona wasn't that much better than Bath. It was better, not that much better. Um, you know, but uh uh the the weather and the atmosphere and you know, Daytona was a was a good place to me.

Yeah. As you were going through the engineering journey and learning, um, you know, with the background in racing, I would say probably race car engineering is most similar to aerospace engineering when you look at all the disciplines as a whole, especially today, like modern Formula One. They hire literal aeronautical engineers to do a lot of their aero work. But what do you think is different about aeronautical engineering versus maybe some other disciplines?

Here's a curious distinction. Um, there's a lot of people that talk about aeronautical engineering versus aerospace engineering. Um, I studied aerospace engineering, uh, which I think is cooler. Uh the big difference being that, uh, or at least my understanding of the big difference, being that aerospace looks a little bit more at the um globalization of the discipline as opposed to aeronautical, which is typically just limited to legitimately like flows over wings, if you will, right? I I oversimplify it. But um the aerospace part of it uh the aerospace part of it is um fascinating because you get to look at all facets of engineering, right? So we would look at uh when I studied it, we would work from uh the structures to the aerodynamics to the flight controls um to uh you know dynamics of flight. Um I mean there there's there's so many parts of this. I never got into uh the details of propulsion, right? Um I mean I can tell you how a turbine engine works really well, but I can't get down to the nuances of uh, you know, the ratios of combustion and that kind of stuff. It gets it gets tricky and detailed at that point, uh, because I picked a different avenue when I was finishing my undergraduate and then for graduate school. Um but I found aerospace to be uh all very well encompassing and just giving you a very well-rounded understanding of engineering. Um and like you said, even in racing today, for for which I'm actually very involved with nowadays, um the vast majority of people that work in the upper echelon of engineering for Formula One or WRC or WEC, uh, even Formula E come from an aerospace engineering background because they are very well-rounded in terms of the needs of racing, right? And then racing itself, the engineering of racing is something that is so uh specific, right, and tailored to specific rules. Uh in in the aerospace industry, you always have this research for two things. One is optimization of everything and anything, be it safety, be it fuel consumption, be it weight, be it weight to uh strength to weight ratio, you're always obsessed with optimizing whatever you're doing. Um in the world of racing, you take that desire for optimization and you constrain it to artificial rules that are put in place by the governing body, right? If you're doing uh IMSA versus uh IndyCar versus Formula One, same sort of approach, different constraints. And so the engineers are working in racing are tasked with optimizing within certain boundaries. In the real world, you don't have those boundaries. Granted, you have some regulations from the FAA and that kind of stuff, but otherwise it's always the optimization finalized to itself as opposed to finalized against competition against other people. Sure. Um, so that's that's uh sort of how I saw it.

Yeah. And maybe more financial constraints on that side too. You know, military, not so much. They can kind of do whatever they want money-wise, but um was there anything that was surprising to you going into it? Because I my first year of college, I went for um aerospace engineering. And I did uh I came from a background of like mechanical drafting, but we did everything on paper. My high school didn't have the budget for CAD software and all that stuff. So when I got there, everybody else already knew the software. So I was trying to teach myself the software and learn the stuff at the same time. And my initial thought was, you know, I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna design a whole airplane and it's gonna be cool. And they're like, okay, we're gonna design this screw and like countersync it by this much. I was like, this sucks. I don't want to do this final work. So is there anything to you going into it that was surprising in that way?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let me tell you, I'll tell you a quick story about the the designing, right? Of the of this, the not in the bold. Um and then I'll I'll answer your question in just a second. But so uh as I think I shared with you, I did my bachelor's and then I did my master's in aerospace engineering. And when I was finishing my master's, I was in a relationship with a woman who was a couple years older than me and had graduated from Embry Riddle and had gone to work at Cessna for a few years, and then had come back to Embry Riddle for her master's and she finished her master's about six months before I did. And she got picked up by Lockheed Martin and was working in uh Fort Worth on the F-22 Raptor fuselage, like the carbon composite fuselage. And I went out to, you know, I would see her and I would I would I would fly out every other weekend and spend a week here, a week there, kind of thing. Um spent as much time as I could around her. And um I quickly came to understand that the um the the the the actual job of being an aerospace engineer in aviation or in military operations, even worse, is um not the grandiose work that you imagine when you're studying it. Um they were spending an inordinate amount of time looking at nut symbols and you know, different laminations of carbon and carbon kevlar and all this kind of stuff, which which was cool for 10 minutes. Yeah. Not for six months. Uh so I I saw that and I was like, I don't know if I can do this. Like I I respect them enormously for having the discipline and sort of the um the single mindset of focusing on that, because every time I get on an airplane, I trust that the people that put it together and designed it had that single focus. But as a self-diagnosed uh ADHD kind of like mind, I need to be constantly engaged by things that stimulate me. And I I I just realized I could not do that. And that's how I ended up uh, you know, talking to my mentor who was like, Look, you like to argue, why don't you go to law school? So uh uh here I am. Good uh good Dr. Watcher at Embery Riddle is still there. He's the president of um of the worldwide campus of Embry Riddle and uh one of my dearest friends in the world, somebody who shaped my life in many, many different ways. But he's the one that said, Look, you know, I don't see you being fit to be an engineer sitting designing things every day because you will like lose your mind after six months. So why won't you go to law school and argue with people? Um but in terms of what surprised me, I I still remember my first couple of days at Ember Riddle. Um, there was a class uh taught by Professor Latizic, uh, who is um a brilliant mind, uh an engineer's engineer, if you will, right? One of those people that had uh, and that kind of was the beauty of Ember Riddle, is that you had all these brilliant minds that were so ingrained in the world of aviation and had had so much experience in it. Um they were all teaching there, right? And uh Dr. Ladizic was uh teaching a course that was AE-101, right? Aerospace engineering 101. And uh keep in mind for me, everything was new. The American life was new. Uh, you know, I I I didn't know about uh Walmart and I didn't know about Publix and I didn't know about Kmart. It was just, you know, I was a kid from Italy with a backpack. So there was a lot of newness there, but uh, and obviously it was first line living away from home and whatnot. Um, but I remember AE 101 and some of the basic uh things that he taught in the first few few weeks. There was one concept in particular that he taught us, and uh he said, Listen, there's gonna be times in your engineering career where somebody is gonna ask you a question, and one of the arts that you're gonna need to learn is the art of ballparking. You don't need to give people exact answers all the time, but you need to be quick in understanding what a what the ballpark is. For example, you know, what's uh what's the maximum flexing of this beam, right? Are we talking about inches? Are we talking about feet? Are we talking about 10 inches or five feet? Like ballpark it. And it's something that he taught us, I think he said it the second day, the third day, that's what I remember. Maybe it could have been in the first couple of weeks. But I carried that principle throughout everything I've done since that day. Um, if you sit me down now and you ask me, you know, what are the damages of this class action that you're doing, um, I will quickly run it through my head with his principle in mind, which is you need to be able to ballpark things.

Interesting.

Uh quick decisions, right? Yeah. And uh um, but but but things like that, those were the things that were surprising, is I was learning so much about uh basic concepts that but for somebody pointing them out, I would have never seen. And um yeah, that that was that was uh that was something that I that I distinctly remember that and and discovering Taco Bell. That was those two things. I I had a diet of Taco Bell for the first like two months that I was in the US.

Yeah, authentic Mexican cuisine, Taco Bell. Yes.

In inside the the food court of Ember Riddle, you know, in in the late 90s. I mean, I I don't know what I ate in those days, but it's uh yeah, I remember discovering Taco Bell.

We didn't have Taco Bell when I was there. They got rid of it, I guess, at that point.

Yeah, so they got rid of it the second year that I was there. So in 1990 is when they shut down uh Taco Bell.

Yeah, I I like the discussion about the passion of the people that are at Embry Riddle. I've talked about it a lot that I've been on here, and there's you know definite drawbacks to going there. Um, the cost probably being the main one for most people. But one thing I can never knock them on is the passion of the instructors and the people that are at the school.

Yeah.

Um you can go a lot of places in aviation where people just see it as their job, and same with universities. There's a lot of professors that are accept it as like this is just my career, and that's that's all it is. But I think the people at Ember Riddle are truly passionate about what they're doing there.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you there's there's a few people that I can that I can definitely remember. Um Dr. Ladisic was was one of them. Um there's another guy by the name of Professor Uh Chuck Eastlake. And Eastlake was uh taught um both preliminary design and detailed design when I got to my junior and senior year. And these were courses where you'd basically sit down and uh start with a blank sheet of paper. And as a team, uh you'd pick a concept of an aircraft uh from the team. Basically, everybody would pitch in a concept, and then you'd vote into picking one, and then the first semester you would do a preliminary design of that aircraft uh from the surfaces to the sweep of the wings to the shape of the airfoils to the power plants to you know all that kind of stuff, the weight, the balances. Um, and then in your senior year, you would do the detailed design of that same airplane. So you do all the spars and all the, you know, the riveting and you know the materials and the doors and the landing gear and like all this kind of stuff. And this was uh for me, it was 2001 through 2002. And uh we were already using Katia, which is uh the software made by Dassault, and uh we were doing a lot of three-dimensional stuff, and then we would CNC it and put it in the wind tunnel. And I actually have the model uh in uh in uh here in LA with me. I uh took it, although I was not authorized. I think the statute of limitations on the own model has passed now, but I couldn't leave it behind. Um, a lot of them are still hanging in the in the design office of uh of the Lehman building at Emberiddle. But I took mine, I couldn't leave it behind. And uh the concept that we ended up picking as a team was was my was my concept. And it was this flying wing for single passenger, kind of like an aerobatics slash recreational single pilot flying wing. And um, but anyway, going back to Professor Eastlake, uh, he taught those courses. And he was the most one of the most passionate and knowledgeable people about aviation that I've I've ever met in my life. He had uh an airplane, he would fly all the time, he worked on the F-14, he had worked on the F-4, he had worked on the F-16. Um the book that we were using for uh the wind tunnel class he had written. Um he was just, I mean, if you cut his veins open, there was a good chance that it was Jet A coming out or 100 low lead, depending on the day. Um but he was he was so he was Mr. Aviation, and he would always give us these tidbits of information, some of which I still use today when I litigate cases, and some of which are still not really well known in the world of aviation, right? Like concepts that I think a lot of engineers understand, and some pilots do, but most pilots don't. Um, definitely the general public doesn't understand. And it was just like looking back now, I understand how fortunate I was to actually run into people like that. Um, there was another fellow um that taught us uh fluid dynamics, uh Dr. Gupta. And Dr. Gupta unfortunately passed away a few years ago, but uh brilliant man, he was from India. And uh, you know, again, some of the concepts he taught me back then are things that I still know and and and utilize. And, you know, whether I am in my vest of uh judge in Europe or uh attorney here in the US or racer, uh, there are concepts of fluid dynamics that apply to you know aerodynamics that I that I still actively use. And again, I it's just one of those things where things happen by circumstance, right? I picked Ember Riddle because it was in Daytona Beach, Florida, and I had just seen what reality in England was like, right? Um, but I'm so lucky, you know, I'm so so blessed. And that's something that I think everybody that lives and breathes aviation, um, a lot of people that I've met in my journey in in life through aviation, uh, from uh uh, you know, one person that comes in particular of mind is Herb Keller, the founder of uh Southwest. Uh him and I have struck a friendship, and he he would he would share that with me, and and how lucky are we that we get to do this? It's a very few select group of people that get to do this, and everybody has a different way that they get there, but God aren't we lucky.

Yeah, very cool. So you you mentioned that you had an advisor that kind of suggested law school might be a good path for you, and um not to disappoint the people that have listened to 20 minutes of uh aerospace engineering talk, but time to get into the law stuff. Okay. Um what was it maybe about your background in aviation and in aerospace engineering that shaped the way that you practice law now? Pilots know how much their equipment matters. When I was doing aerial survey work, a good headset was the difference between all day comfort and an all-night headache. The light speed Zulu 3 is a favorite among pilots for a reason. Premium AR, all day comfort, and built to last. With plush ear seals, durable Kevlar cables, and an industry-leading seven-year warranty, it's Lightspeed's most enduring headset yet. Purchase your Zulu 3 using the affiliate link in the description. Now back to Filippo.

So I don't want to sound arrogant. Um so I'll be careful with what I say. But um the reality is that 97% of the lawyers out there, uh, independent of their skill level as lawyers, because there's some truly masterful people that work in the in the industry of law. Um, there's also some really bad people, right? Um, if you see a lawyer on a billboard, typically not good. Um, but uh but there's people that are masters of the craft. Um and independent of their level of performance as lawyers, uh, 97% of them have a background that is non-technical. So they come at this from uh having studied literature or business or you know, something that is not aerospace engineering. Of the 3 slash 5% of people that have a technical background, the vast majority of them end up in a field that is highly technical, like, for example, intellectual property law, right? Patents and that kind of stuff, patent litigation. There's very few trial attorneys that end up doing what I do, which is typically complex civil litigation that have the technical background. And what that does is it gives people like myself that have a technical background an advantage when it comes to understanding what happened. So I can sit down and talk to an accident reconstructionist about a vehicle rollover where I see damage on the car and I understand the dynamics of the rolling over and the damage to the metals and why a weld failed or why, you know, bonding on a composite delaminated, without anybody having to explain to me what those words mean and how do I get there. The attorney that doesn't have the technical background has no idea what he's looking at, even though maybe he understands generally the subject matter of, say, a vehicle rollover. When it comes time to going through the process of litigation, so, for example, taking the deposition of an expert or preparing the case for trial, they will always be at a disadvantage compared to myself, because somebody needs to sit down and give them the insight that I earned through 10 years of uh engineering schooling and time in aviation and time you know working with within that field. So that that's the big advantage, is that I, as some of my colleagues also have that have my same background, have a leg up when it comes to understanding certain things. And you just can't shake that because I I have it and they don't.

And I guess just to clarify, like you don't only take or practice in aviation law, right? There's other other avenues that it's still that your background's still beneficial for.

Correct. So I I um uh you know, the term aviation law, most people will understand it as uh dealing with the purchase and sale of aircraft and you know commercial aspects around aircraft. That's not obviously not what I do. What I do do is I I focus on cases where there is a very technical component uh that pertains to either somebody getting very hurt uh or killed uh or you know, defrauded or evacuated. Uh that that's the kind of stuff that I go after. So for example, the 737 MAX crash in Indonesia, it's a case that I litigated. Uh the Delta 89 fuel spill over Los Angeles, uh, case that I litigated. Uh I just filed about a week ago a very large class action in uh in uh the Central District of California arising from the um GKN aerospace tank in Garden Grove that contained methyl methacrylate that was leaking. Um again, all things are very technical that have an engineering aspect to them. Um we've done multiple uh uh car crashes where the chassis of the car has failed uh in a in a car collision. Uh we've done a crash cushion analyses where somebody has gotten injured because a crash cushion didn't perform as it was supposed to. So again, it's a very broad spectrum of cases we do, all focused around helping people that have either been hurt or killed or in another different way, you know, damaged.

Sure. Um, just because of the nature of the program and my audience, I guess we'll mainly focus on the aviation stuff that you have worked on. And I want to get kind of a broad understanding of just practicing those kind of cases, and then we can dive deeper into the specific ones that you've worked on. Um but uh in aviation incidents, you hear a lot about the Swiss cheese model and how that accidents are never just one single point of failure. It's a series of things that stack up that all lead to the crash. So, how do incidents or crashes with multiple causal factors get treated from a legal standpoint?

You know, that's a very good question. Um it there's an intersection between two things, um, the facts of the accident and the liability of those at play. Um the Swiss cheese model is uh is a great model of failure analysis, um, but it doesn't necessarily translate into legal liability because you don't get to analyze which one of the Swiss cheese models, uh the Swiss cheese holes rather, is the one that started it first and caused the other ones to sort of occur. Um in the world of litigation, once you have somebody that has been injured or killed, or in other ways damaged by somebody else, um, you have to figure out what led to the possibility of having the Swiss cheese model in the first place. So you look at it almost um, you almost reverse engineer that to see who should have stopped this and at what point. Um, and it's often, you know, and and this is hyper frustrating. You and I sort of talked about this the first time that we met each other, but it's hyper frustrating when you have people that are not competent in the field, they tend to point the finger at the last part of the Swiss cheese model. And typically that is the pilots. Now, I'm not saying that pilots are never wrong, right? There's plenty of circumstances where pilots will raise their hands and say, I messed up, man. I made a mistake. I'm a human being, I made a mistake. So be it. Um sometimes pilots do make mistakes, some pilots sometimes make bonehead mistakes, and pilots will tell you, yes, there's pilots that do that. It's never them, but they'll tell you who they know that does that. Um but uh when a lawyer looks at these cases, if they don't understand the subject matter well, and again, there's unfortunately few of those, they will point the finger to the pilot. And that's nonsense. Um, because oftentimes the pilots are put in a circumstance where a bunch of things before that have failed, and in two and a half seconds, maybe 10 seconds, maybe two minutes, they're asked to undo something that was five years in the making or 25 years in the making, or whatever time there was between a failure in a design process, manufacturing process, maintenance process, you know, parts and suppliers, uh, you know, chain of inventory. And then the pilot has, you know, 45 seconds to troubleshoot an issue, and they're like, ah, it was the pilot that made the mistake, you know. Um so that that's that's something that that that is hyper frustrating when you see news reports about some big accident or something else, and you know, Joe Blow, the lawyer, goes on and says, like, you know, I do personal injury and I have, you know, uh obtained millions of dollars and it's the pilots. I'm like, shut up, man. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Is it possible in that process if you know there is determined to be an engineering failure and a training failure? And there's multiple, you know, I don't know if you really assign a percentage of blame, but if you could do that, for instance, and there's multiple ways, is it possible to just go after those for the percentage that they contributed to the accident?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we we typically do that. Um in a in a case in which you have multiple uh multiple contributing factors to to the accident, um, you you absolutely go after everybody. And you know, it it if they're responsible, they're responsible. Uh I'll give you a quick example. Uh I did a case that resulted in um a man getting very, very injured and then unfortunately passing away. Um at the time he was in his mid-twenties, his uh girlfriend was pregnant, was also in the car. Thankfully she was okay. Um but uh there was a tire delamination. They were driving uh across country, they were actually moving to Los Angeles, and um there's a tire that delaminated. And when the tire delaminated, it pulled the car in the direction of the delamination, right? It creates a tremendous amount of drag when a tire just opens up. And uh the car ended up in the median and it caught with the other wheel. Uh, this was an SUV that had built, that was built uh at the end of the 90s, early 2000s. It caught one wheel and it flipped over. And it landed on the A-pillar, and the A-pillar gave way completely as opposed to holding up some of the impact, and the roof came down and broke my client's neck. So he survived for about a year and then unfortunately passed away from the injuries. Um, but in that circumstance, sure, the accident starts with a delamination of the tire, which should have not happened. And we had to hunt down the tire manufacturer. But then there was also the fact that the roof collapsed and the roof should have not collapsed. So we ended up settling the case before trial, but both the tire manufacturer and the car manufacturer had to come to the table in a proportionate amount to contribute to making the family of this guy whole. Um, so it this happens in a multitude of cases. Sometimes there will be a single company that takes the front of it, right? Will say, like, no, no, no, we'll take the responsibility, and then we will go out and and pick on the other guys. Um and you know, that this is uh public information, but that's what happened in the Boeing litigation that I was involved in.

Sure.

Um, but yeah, so so the the answer is yes, you you do that. Uh obviously, you know, when uh going back to the pilots, when there is a pilot that makes a mistake, it's it's oftentimes then tied back to the aircraft owner or the aircraft operator. Um but uh yeah, so we in our profession, uh we do try and analyze the Swiss cheese model, uh, going back to the Swiss cheese model to see who needs to be held accountable uh for, you know, and in what percentages.

When the regulatory environment comes into that chain of events, um, and the accident I was thinking of when I was writing down this question is um the DCA crash with the American Regional Jet and the Army Blackhawk that had the mid-air collision over DCA. Um and I think there's gonna be a lot of scrutiny over you know approved helicopter routes and what's allowed at the regulatory level when there's not a organization or an individual to go after and it's more systematic like that. What's an approach to because at the end of the day, like yes, your job is to help make your clients whole, but also we want a better system in general, right? Like you don't want to get millions of dollars for your Boeing victims and then Boeing just keep doing the same thing. You want them to fix the thing that caused the the issue to begin with. But when it's on a larger governmental scale, how is that addressed?

You know, um it's a very good question. Uh it it's it's one of the limitations of the legal system, right? Um the the biggest limitation of the legal system that I ever faced is when I have a client that looks at me and says, how is it possible that the life of my child uh and this has happened unfortunately to me a couple of times uh in representing people that had lost children, but how is it possible that the life of my child is translated in dollars and sets? And you know, I have two daughters, and I can't even fathom the thought process of turning their existence in my life in dollars and sets. It's offensive even thinking about it. And I tell you this because that unfortunately is how the system that I play in is designed to be, right? So the civil system can't restore somebody's life or grow back somebody's leg or give them the ability to walk again. Uh it it it doesn't work that way, right? The only thing it can do is try and compensate you in the only way that it can, which is monetarily. And that is the inherent limitation of our civil system. You built in there is this understanding that if somebody does something wrong that could have been avoided and avoided at some sort of cost, and they chose not to do that for an economic gain, enough of these lawsuits, enough of these compensatory systems will make it so that they change their mind because economically it doesn't make sense for them to no longer take care of it, right? Some people will give you, as an example, the Ford Pinto and the exploding gas tax. Um but on a regulatory aspect, uh, we don't get to legislate, right? So the legislature and the regulators are left to do what they're left to do. And unfortunately, these days, and this has been going on for on for quite some time, there is a lot of pressure sort of being put on the current administration, and whatever your political views are, I find that pressure to not be necessarily fair because the attack on the legislature started with the lobbying, right? And that has been going on for multiple administrations, some Democratic, some Republican, some more loved, some less loved, but that has been going on for quite some time. And the legislature and the government are the ones that are tasked with making the changes to that kind of stuff. So unfortunately, when you see these issues, all you can do is throw up your hand and say, like the DCA crash, that's not right. The system needs to change. Something needs to be done there. But we, as in the world of law, we don't have that power. The legislature is the part that has power. We can lobby, but we don't have the tools to make that change ourselves.

When you're talking about sometimes pilots are the the cause. You know, there's uh people make mistakes, stuff happens. How do you draw that line between genuine human error and negligence at the pilot level?

Uh that that is something that is very case-specific, right? And you look at it when you start seeing things like people not following what they know that they should be following. Uh, the greatest example of this is failure to check checklists, right? Why if you start thinking that you're too good for a checklist, or you're too good for CRM, right? Cockpit resource management, or you're too good to communicate with ATC, or you don't need to follow the protocols because you've done the protocols so many times that you don't need to do them anymore, um, that's where negligence kicks in. The flying too aggressively, the uh, you know, the not respecting uh the safeties and procedures that are in place, the not reading your instruments and just saying, like, no, no, no, I don't need the instruments. I can, I can look outside. Um there's numerous cases where you see actually. Accidents that occur because somebody became laxadaisical about the things that are put in place to keep pilots and passengers safe. That is where I draw the line. So you know, i i if if you make a mistake because you thought that your landing gear was down and it wasn't, and you weren't able to recognize that it wasn't down because of full saturation, whatever the case may be, I can understand that.

Right? It's a mistake. Whatever.

But if you don't recognize that it's down because you didn't run through your checklist and because you were lazy about that, uh, or because you were too tired because you didn't sleep the night before and you didn't tell anybody, or you took sleeping pills too late and you didn't self-report, that's negligence, right? On the power on the part of a pilot. And there's an there's a notion that with great with great power comes great responsibility. Pilots are afforded an incredible amount of deference under emergency circumstances. They can perform arrests, they can deplane people, they can refuse to take off, they have incredible deference to them. That's given to them because they're in that position where they're functionally responsible for the hundreds of people sometimes aboard their aircraft. Um, they have to respect the system. And I think that that's exactly where the negligence comes in, when they are not respecting the system. And there's a we all know if we've been in aviation for some time, we can all think of that one example, two examples, where somebody did not follow the protocols that are in place to keep you safe. And three-quarters of the accidents that are blamed on pilots, uh, like legitimately blamed on pilots. I'm not talking about lawyers blaming pilots. I'm talking about actual, you know, the fault of the pilot are traceable back to laxidaisical's approaches to safety. I didn't de-ic. I waited too long after de-icing, I didn't check, you know, my oil, I didn't look at my gauges. That's that's negligent.

How do those pilots slip through the system? Uh, because you see those kind of accidents from you know student pilots basically all the way through the airlines, and fortunately, I think much less so at the airlines these days, but it still happens. So, how do how do they make it that far where they're in control of those airplanes that have the hundreds of people on board?

Um I'll tell you how. Um it's the same thing.

It's the same thought process that pilots have when they look at lawyers and they're like, How did this guy become a lawyer? Right? How did this dude on the billboard that's obstentious and arrogant and ignorant get his bar card? Uh sometimes you see that of doctors. You're like, How did this guy, you know, who gave this guy a scalpel? Right? Uh there is uh some doctors in Los Angeles that perform plastic surgeries, and you're like, who told you you could do that? Like, you know? Uh so that's true of every profession. And I think one of the issues that we have today is that we pump out pilots um by standardizing education. So you end up having a situation where pilots will go through, you know, 45 hours or 50 hours to get their private, and then they go and they do their instrument, and then they go and they do their CFI, and then they get put in the right seat of an airplane and to build hours. In none of this process, there's a measure of what people typically call airmanship. Now, if I told you earlier, I'm six foot two, about 200 and a couple of pounds now. Uh my second daughter was recently born, so still pregnancy weight. Um, it's what I tell people. Um, but uh what when you when you look at me and you say, hey, I'm gonna put you on a horse and make you go as fast as the horse can go, not a jockey, right? I I couldn't do the job. Uh if you put me in a ballerina outfit and you're like, hey, go be a ballerina, can't do it. Uh not my forte. Unfortunately, though, when you're looking at the qualifications of somebody who's getting sucked into an airline, there's no filter to check for airmanship. So there's no filter that says this person who has the same exact qualifications on paper as Mr. X doesn't have the same airmanship. And I think that that is the same thing that happens in the world of law, right? Same thing that happens in the world of medicine. Uh, there's plenty of doctors who went to med school because their parents uh wanted them to go. Uh hi, mom and dad. Glad I avoided that. Um but that that's where the issue comes from. You don't have this weighing of the airmanship. And unfortunately, some get caught, thankfully, in the sim sessions, some get caught in the training sessions, some get reported by their colleagues, which I think is something that works very well in aviation. Uh, wish there was more of it. There was more willingness of pilots to say that pilot should not be flying today or ever. Um, but that's how they make it through. It's just that unfortunately, airlines have so much personnel right now, uh, and private jet operators too. I mean, like Flexjet has over a thousand pilots. Uh, they, you know, unless you sit down and you curate this very, very well. Um, which again, I I use Flexjet as an example. I know for a fact that they do curate the pilots extremely well, but the more people you have flowing into a system, the less you can curate it, and there's no measure for airmanship. And that airmanship then becomes, I think, the distinguishing factor when you have an incident, right? Um, it can end with 300 people dead, or it can end with, you know, a landing that's successful. Uh that difference ends up being the airmanship of the pilot. And again, no measure for it.

Yeah. There's an old joke that's what do you call the person who graduated last in their class in medical school? Call him doctor.

Yeah.

Uh yeah, exactly.

My dad once told me, he's like, um, when you go in for surgery and you know, you're in the OR and stuff, and you look over, your surgeon is coming in. Does it ever cross your mind like what were they doing when they were teaching like, you know, anatomy? Was he the guy or the girl at the front of the class that was listening and understood it? Or was it the bonehead dude at the back that, you know, was still coming off being drunk the night before and can't quite remember those details? Um, you just don't know. And it's the same thing when you get on an airplane, right?

Yeah. I I think you're right that uh aviation is pretty good about pilots calling out other pilots. I wish more pilots would be willing to call out their operators. I hear a lot of stories, especially low-time pilots that just are trying to get any job they can get and they're scared of losing the job they have, and they're not willing to call out these operators that push planes beyond legal standings for one, but also safety standings.

Um Yeah, and the the the other big problem is, uh and I don't think anybody in aviation would hide behind it, but the other big problem is profits, right? And it's um Boeing is the quintessential example of it. Um I, you know, I grew up watching the uh, you know, the 757, the 767, the 777, the development of the 787. Um I mean, everybody wanted to be affiliated with Boeing. It was an engineer's company. And then in the course of studying the case of the 737 Max, you know, you come to realize that there was a switch at one point where Boeing went from being an engineering company that made great airplanes to a company that made profits around airplanes. And that's when, you know, that's when things start failing and falling apart. And um it's this uh ultimate research of safeguarding the profits for the shareholders um that's uh you know, that then it happens in airlines too. And and I think i i if you want my two cents, although you haven't asked for them, um the the one thing that is that that's lacking, I think, in in aviation is there should be some very serious criminal repercussions for anybody who's involved in consciously putting profits over safety. Um you you you should not do that, you can't do that. If you're an airline, if you're a parts supplier, if you are an aircraft manufacturer, uh you you should feel blessed if you get to work in this industry. And it's your privilege to work in this industry. It's not your God-given right. And if you violate the trust of the people that trust you in this industry, then you should be punished for it. And I don't mean just sued, I mean, you know, criminally punished.

Yeah. Yeah, let's dive into that a little more. Um, you were involved in the Lionair 610 litigation. And like you said, Boeing used to be this highly respected and highly regarded manufacturer across the world. Um and now mainly because of this one incident, and then there's uh obviously a second after, but um it was it's a meme now, where any aviation incident you see online, any video of anything, somebody says, Oh, it's a Boeing, or of course it was a Boeing. Um so what uh maybe give some background on the actual crash, what happened, what's the the background of it, and then we can start talking about the litigation piece.

Sure, absolutely. Um look, the the Lionair crash was particular because it was the first one of the two uh 737 MAX MCAST-derived crashes. Um the particular um the particularity of the 737 flying air crash is that the pilots aboard the aircraft had no idea the MCAST system was aboard the airplane. Um there was one reference to it in the index of their flight book, uh of their flight manual, um, but they weren't trained on it. Nobody was aware of it. Um and for about 10 minutes they fought what is tantamount to having a ghost in the aircraft that's trying to kill you. Obviously, I spent an inordinate amount of time litigating this case. Um, I've been very, very involved with it. Um I was involved even in the criminal aspect that uh unfortunately went also went sideways um when the US government uh as as I see it uh failed uh the the victims of the aircraft. Um but uh if you put yourself in the shoes of the people that were aboard that airplane, starting with the pilots, and you're fighting something that you can't see and you're constantly being pushed down towards the ground and you can't figure out how to disengage it, um the level of fear and terror that you must live through in those ten but closer to eleven minutes uh is is incredible. And I saw my clients, which were the survivors of their son who got killed in that accident, uh, son and the twin sister. Uh so my my clients would repeatedly tell me how they the first thing they would think about every day, and the last thing they would think about, and what they would think most about throughout the day was the last 10 minutes of life of their son. And it it's just it's an amount of loss and damage that's done to these people that have shanged them for forever. Like it did to the other 345 families of passengers, because 346 people died between the two accidents. And um yeah, and they're both accidents were derived from the from the presence of the MCAS. Obviously, the Ethiopia accident, they knew about the MCAS system because it had been published after the Lionel crash, but the uh disengaging of the system was completely mishandled by the Ethiopian pilots. Um I don't think that I would fault them because it's easy to be sitting in an office and saying, like, I would have done things differently, but the crash occurred also with some combination of the unsophistication of the pilots of Ethiopia in that time. Um but the Lionair crash uh was just abysmal to look at. I mean, we had the the the crash data, we had the flight data that we looked at, and you could see the inputs, you could see the struggles, you it's it's very palpable. Um and, you know, a perfectly good airplane just because of software that was secretly installed on it, killed 188 people by crashing into the ground, and there was nothing wrong with the airplane.

Nothing.

And just a code of software. So that's uh that's my background on the 737 Max.

Can you give just a layman's explanation of what MCAS is and why it was on the aircraft?

Absolutely. So the MCAS is the maneuvering characteristics segmentation system, and it was a system that was installed as with with some other bells and whistles uh secretly on the aircraft to make sure that the type rating that was being used from Boeing 737 pilots in the prior generation uh could be used on the new generations of the 737 Max. Functionally, it was a marketing tool to make sure that the airlines that already had uh, in some instances, tens of thousands of pilots abilitated to fly the 737 could also purchase and use the upgraded version of the 737 that gave better cabin comfort, better range, better performance, um, just an overall better airplane without costing uh the airline a substantial amount of money for the type rating. Um and for you know, those that are not familiar with it that are watching your show, the type rating is functionally an abilitation to flight that exact model of aircraft. Um if you graduate to a newer aircraft, uh as long as the changes are not drastic, instead of doing a new type rating, you can do a simple refresher course. Uh if instead the changes are drastic enough to warrant a new type rating, then the airline has to pay for the pilots to go through type rating. And the cost to an airline can be anywhere between say $75,000 and $150,000 per pilot. So when you add it up to 10,000 pilots, those become hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially billions of dollars. And uh airlines start having a concern about buying new aircraft from a particular aircraft manufacturer when those kinds of costs get injected into it. It it's it levels the playing field with other manufacturers, like the Airbus, if you have to start considering that stuff. If you don't have the type rating to consider, then the Boeing 737 new generation, right, the MAX, um, was a much more attractive option because you don't need to do that. So functionally a marketing tool.

After the accident occurred, um I saw a lot of information that went out about the pilot's, I guess, incorrect response to it. And what I've come to understand after the fact is Boeing had launched a de facto smear campaign against the pilots to try to shift the blame onto their actions as opposed to the MCAS system itself. Is that correct?

Yeah, I think that by and large, that's correct. There are many instances that I can talk to you about that pertain to cases where large corporations quickly uh with their crisis team pick a fall guy. And if the fall guy or the fall gal is dead, even better because they can't fight back, and just suddenly, you know, it gets blamed on them. Um thankfully, through the litigation process, you actually get to the bottom of it uh most times. In the 737 Max case, I think it became very quickly evident that what had actually occurred, which was you know a massive campaign of deception and you know a manipulation of the system. Keep in mind that just to put things in perspective, when the second crash occurred uh in Ethiopia, the book uh or the order book for the 737 Max was in the 5,000 to 6,000 aircraft unit range. Now, those aircraft, let's just round it up to $100 million, uh, cost about $100 million each. So at 5,000 aircraft, you're talking about a half a trillion dollars worth of business volume going through a company. And if you do some back of the napkin kind of math, you'll see that the profit to a company like Boeing over the course of the lifespan of an aircraft frame is about 10% of that $100 million because they sell parts and maintenance and you know, whatever. Um, so on half a trillion dollars, you're looking at $50 billion worth of pure profit, not business volume, pure profit. Um, and a stock price that went from $150 to $400, everybody getting multi-million dollar bonuses. Um, that was a motivating factor. And and then you stop it and you're like, wait, they did this for money, they killed 346 people for money, and you talk to some of the victims, and you talk to parents that lost their kids. There's one man that I met at a criminal hearing in Dallas, in Fort Worth, uh, where the criminal case was going on against both, and he lost his wife, his two kids, and his mother-in-law in that same accident. And he looked at me and said, I woke up one morning and everybody that I loved was gone. And then you look over and you're like, wait, Calhoun did this so he could have tens of millions of dollars, a villa in Mexico, a private jet flying his family around. He was at the helm of the ship, and this man in Kenya woke up and his two kids, his wife, and his mother-in-law, all taken from him. And it it's it's abysmal. It's something that as a human being you should look at and say, like, listen, I I I'm happy for other people to go out and make millions of dollars.

If you deserve it, you should absolutely make it. Not like this, man. Yeah. Not like this.

We talked a little bit before um we actually recorded the episode. But when you go into a large organization like that, uh at the base of it, there's there's individuals, humans working in it, engineers, you know, designers, all this stuff. And I think you and I both agree that there's not one person, one engineer that would willingly sign off on a system. They know could potentially threaten somebody's life. So in an organization like that, where there's thousands and thousands and thousands of employees, where does that buck stop and where is that decision made? Because if again, if an engineer, you put it in front of their desk and said you have a single point of failure that could kill everybody on the aircraft, like put it in the airplane. I don't I don't personally know anybody that would do that. So how did that end up there?

Um so I I have to give you a politically correct answer to this, because I have access to information that is protected. Um because in the discovery process of the litigation against Boeing, there's information that was passed to us that was governed by a protective order that the court put in place. So I I need to be careful because some of the answers that I can give you may reveal some of the information that's in those documents, and I cannot do that. Um in fact, I've been ordered not to do that. Uh the in a general sense, um, I can tell you that you're right about the engineers. And I think by and large, you're also right about test pilots and people that are sort of surrounding this. But you've got to consider that decision makers have what would what they have in their mind, and this is sort of what's wrong with Boeing now, and maybe it's what's wrong from from the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, right? They they they they cratered Boeing after they did that. Um is that the C-suite has one thing in mind, which is the share price and the shareholders. Um they could not care less if they sold widget. It just so happens for them that they sell airplanes. These are not airplane people, these are not uh engineers, these are bean counters. With all due respect to the bean counters out there, there are good people. Um but they're bean counters and they are people that are only focused on shares in share price. Um when your goal is to make a good product, the product will sell. But the good product costs money and it will not maximize your profits. That is where that's that's where the decision is made. Is the people that want to maximize profit irrespective of what that means. Um, and unfortunately, it's the reality that you see in a lot of corporations nowadays. Uh you know, i i that there are there are some corporations that are in the world of aerospace that are led by people that adore aviation. They will tell you about airplanes, they will tell you about uh, you know, airmanship and tell you um about the fascination of flight. And then you have corporations in aerospace that are led by people that have no idea what you know what it means to fly an airplane, except that they have their Gulf Stream 650 to go from one place to the other. Um that's the difference.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When a company like that, these big multinational, because Boeing does everything now, right? Like they make parts for the Orion capsule or the whole Orion capsule, I'm not sure. They make defense parts. You know, they're the contractor for the F-18 now. And uh, you know, they don't only make 737s and 767s and 87s. Do you think that dilutes their ability to make good passenger aircraft when they're they have their hands in so many different things across the world?

It it's a good question. I I don't know the answer to that. I'm not close enough to Boeing to actually be able to discern that. Um, I can tell you that from my personal opinion on it, which is that if Boeing could make blenders and make money, they make blenders and make money. Um, but I don't know if them making military equipment and space equipment and whatnot uh dilutes the efforts of the uh commercial air side. Um I think that too often they've seen the commercial air side as a piggy bank. Um I, you know, I I don't know enough about their uh military side to be able to actually give you some insight on it. I can tell you that the only thing that I could think about that's worse than endangering the public on the 737s and you know the 787s and whatnot would be endangering the men and women that that legitimately put their life on the line every day to keep this country safe. Um would I put it past them? No. I don't know if they actually do do that or not. Um but but in terms of of spreading thin resources, I I don't have an answer for that.

And then uh when it comes to the 737 Max, what's the public's what what does the public still misunderstand about maybe that incident and where the aircraft is today?

So I think the aircraft today has been um so you know riddled in repair measures uh that absent you know door plugs blowing out. Um I think by and large it's a safe airplane now. Uh it's sad because of the consequences that came from this. Um again, I don't fault Boeing for the people that work at Boeing. I fault the C-suite of Boeing. They took a good name, they tarnished it, they they destroyed its reputation. Um they they did so much harm to it, uh, and they did it for the for their greed. And it's something that's unforgivable. Uh, you know, Calhoun got to walk away with almost a hundred million dollars uh golden parachute, and I I think every dime of that should be given back. I think he should be shamed everywhere he goes. I think uh with him, all his lieutenants, if you will. I have a genuine hate for those people because they took a good name and they just they're like, let's just see how much blood we can squeeze out of this. Um so when it comes to the to the public, I think uh that they should they should feel safe aboard the airplane. Uh, there's a lot of good pilots, there's a lot of good uh airlines that put a lot of work into getting the 737 Max where it should have been from the get-go. Uh and I think what people maybe don't understand uh is how much pain uh the C-suite of Boeing caused to the world. Um, because I I got to see it and I got to live it and I got to experience it. I got to be at a lot of the criminal hearings, uh, meet a lot of the other families that had lost loved ones. And it it's just it's difficult to even appreciate uh the amount of pain that these people have caused until you until you go there. So that those are the two things that I think the general public maybe doesn't know.

Do you think Boeing's a company that's too big to fail? Do you think an incident like that might just complete say um Bombardier or um Embrier had an incident that killed the same number of people in the same circumstances came up? Do you think they'd be able to survive like Boeing did?

No, absolutely not. I think uh the the the judge that oversaw Judge O'Connor the that oversaw the criminal case in Texas called this the greatest example of corporate murder in the history of the world. And Judge O'Connor was put in a position, mind you, I have huge admiration for him as a judge. He's a brilliant man. I don't necessarily see eye to eye with him about everything, but every decision that I've ever seen him make is commensurate with an honest man that has very good principles. So I don't want you to take anything that I'm about to say as negative towards Judge O'Connor because uh, again, I got to appear in front of him, I got to address the court, I read all of his rulings, and I think he's a genuinely good person. Um where things got sideways with the Boeing criminal case was the Justice Department. The Justice Department first filed a criminal case against Boeing, into which it did not recognize the victims of the crash as victims of the crime. I want you to understand that. The Justice Department shopped around where to file this case. They filed it in Texas, thinking that nobody in Texas was going to care much. Unfortunately for them, they found Judge O'Connor. Uh, and they filed it saying the victims aboard the airplane that died and their families are not victims of the crime. And the crime that they were charged with was lying to the FAA. We then fought spearheaded by a former federal court judge, Paul Cassell, who's now a professor of law in Utah, one of the most wonderful people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and then becoming my friend. Um, he spearheaded the initiative to get the victims of the crash to be recognized as victims of the crime. Through extensive litigation, including going to the Court of Appeals, he was able to do that. The victims were now supposed to be consulted by the government as victims, right? So if you are a victim of a crime, you get to talk to the prosecutor. You don't get to really influence a prosecution of a criminal case, but you get to partake in it, right? You're a victim. Government is there to support you and to defend you. So the Justice Department then enters into a secret agreement that they tell us about at the last minute that's called a deferred prosecution agreement, the DPA. And the deferred prosecution agreement says, hey, Boeing, you get to get away with this scot-free. No consequences to you at all, except you pay a small fine, hundreds of millions of dollars. But in the scheme of things, remember the half a trillion dollars and fifty billion dollars, peanuts. You get to pay a few hundred million dollars in fine. And if you keep your nose clean for three years, nothing happens to you. As part of that DPA that Boeing agreed to with the Justice Department, Boeing uh admitted to a bunch of things so that at the end of the three years, those admissions and anything tied to those admissions would be thrown out. So they admitted to lying, they admitted to it being criminal, everything else. Unfortunately for them, during this three years, the Alaska door plug incident occurs. So the Justice Department, keep in mind that DPA was passed against all of our wishes, right? And I say all of our wishes because I was one of the people representing the victims with the government.

They ignored the victims.

So during these three years, the Alaska Door plug incident happened. And it's a violation of the DPA. So now the Justice Department can convict Boeing by going to trial because Boeing has already admitted to everything they've done. If this was you, if this was I, if this was any other of you listeners of your podcast, that would have been tantamount to us being in jail, right? You don't get out of that. You've admitted to it. How are you gonna get you you can't backpedal? So the government enters into another secret deal that they tell us about at the last minute, which is now called the non-prosecution agreement, NPA, where they decide that they're gonna waive any claims against Boeing because they don't think they're gonna survive trial. They're not gonna win a trial, which is nonsense because you know, my 11-year-old German Shepherd could try this case and win it because they've admitted to it, right? It it a blind man says. And they put the judge in a position, Judge O'Connor, where he cannot force the government to prosecute. If the government who's prosecuting says, we have decided that you can't do anything about it and we're not going to prosecute Boeing, what can the judge do? So we tried to come up with some concepts to put to the judge. Unfortunately, the judge issued a ruling where he said, Look, I don't have the power to force him to prosecute. We've recently appealed it and tried to get the Court of Appeals to look at this in the Fifth Circuit, and the Court of Appeals just last week shut it down. Um, so functionally, Boeing got away scot-free. And is it is it too big to fail? Uh, I don't know if it's too big to fail, but somehow the Justice Department against the backdrop not of a million dollars being stolen or ten million dollars being stolen, or of one person dying, but the backdrop of 346 people dying. And you know, 346 families being destroyed, decided that there was no need to prosecute them. And if you go out there and you kill one person, you better believe that they'll prosecute you. So why is there a distinction between Boeing and his corporate officers not being criminally prosecuted when 346 people have died? And, you know, you and I. Justice should be blind. Lady Justice in in every statue you ever see is blind. She doesn't get to see who is on the scale of justice. You don't get to see uh it is it is it a big corporation or is it Joe Blow? Just like it shouldn't see the race, just like it shouldn't see the gender. Um but unfortunately it happened, and it's it it's uh it's another failure of the justice system by those that have other interests, unfortunately. Terrible.

It is. On to something a little less heavy. Uh so Delta 89, another case that you uh litigated, and this one probably a little more obscure for people that aren't super into this kind of stuff. I was actually in LA when this happened, so it was all over the news right there. But could you just give a quick overview of the Delta 89 incident?

Sure. Um, so Triple 7 takes off uh Delta Airlines Flight 89, um, takes off from LAX bound to China. Um in the climb out, it uh uh sustains a um engine problem, um a uh intermediate pressure turbine blade breaks, ends up being ingested from the rest of the uh engine. Um it uh uh the pilot declares an emergency, uh, decides to return back to LAX. There's communication with ATC as to whether the pilot wanted to hold and burn fuel uh or dunk fuel, and the pilot says no. So ATC vectors them to come back to LAX. Uh and unbeknownst to ATC, uh in the cockpit, somebody turns on the fuel jettison. And then nobody shuts it down until the aircraft is about 1100 feet from the ground on final, ready to land. Um when the aircraft descends below 4,500 feet, that uh jet fuel coming out of the uh nozzles is no longer uh sort of fully atomizing before reaching the ground. So it starts raining jet fuel on about 38,000 homes. Uh and then the plane lands and everybody uh is safe. Um the as I said, the fuel jettison was switched off when the plane was about 1,100 feet above the ground. Um amongst this, uh, the flight path, the aircraft flew over three schools uh during recess hours. So there was a bunch of kids that were covered in jet fuel. And we ended up representing the 38,000 homeowners that had their houses covered in jet fuel.

This one is one that I wanted to touch on because I I almost want to dispel a myth that kind of exists in aviation. And you know, sometimes it's a myth, sometimes it's not. But I think a lot of pilots believe that if you're experiencing an emergency, the rules and regulations no longer apply to you, and you can just do whatever you need to to get back on the ground. Can can you talk about why that's not always the case?

Yeah, so look, it's it's the case that if you're a pilot and you have a true emergency, you are authorized to uh divert from standard operating procedures to safeguard the passengers and the aircraft. That does not mean that just by virtue of declaring an emergency, you can do anything you want. Um there's different degrees of emergencies, right? There is time-sensitive emergencies like a f, you know, like fire on the aircraft. Um, and then there's non-time-sensitive emergencies, uh, where the goal is to gain time and you know, think through things and do checklists and act properly. The distinction is so down to what the actual emergency is that it's impossible to give a rule of thumb for everything. But you there is liability that's associated with a pilot who's doing something that's completely unnecessary and they don't get away with it just because they declare it an emergency. In this case, dumping fuel was completely unnecessary. That's at least what we contended. Um, because an aircraft, even a heavy loaded aircraft that takes off from a runway, it's always going to be able to land on the same runway, especially if the runway is dry within the distance of the runway where it takes off from. Um so it the the fuel jettison part of this was completely unnecessary. The defense said that, well, it lightened the aircraft for landing and avoided a catastrophe. Nonsense. Uh the airplane was perfectly capable of landing at maximum takeoff weight. Everybody who loves aviation has seen videos online of rejected takeoff tests that Boeing and Airbus and everybody else does. Uh, the planes are perfectly fine. Um, they're designed to do that. But uh yeah.

So what was so significant about this case and the fuel falling? Because uh, as I understand it, you know, it's like nobody's house caught on fire, nobody's child at recess caught on fire. Yes. Yeah. What was so significant about this case where it made it to the point of um, I guess, Delta in this instance actually having to pay out uh some of the victims?

Well, I mean, it pay it did more than just pay out some of the victims. I mean, we entered into a settlement that covers the 38,000 homes and it's worth about $80 million, plus uh there's a very big component of um non-economical recovery. Um the the the issue was this. Um when you when you own a property, uh that uh I'll tell you about Southern California because that's where we're at. But when you own a property in California and you go to sell it, you have to disclose to prospective buyers anything that has happened that could affect the value or the desirability of a property. Now, if I was to tell you that uh you're looking for a house and there's two houses in the same neighborhood, they're identical, uh, same neighbors, uh, you know, same school district, same distance to uh grocery stores, closeness to the freeway, pool, whatever you want, like identical houses. And one buyer discloses to you that the house was doused in jet fuel because people are encouraged to disclose everything that's ever happened because you don't know what subjectively somebody says may affect the desirability of the property. But somebody tells you, look, my property was covered in jet fuel in this Delta 89 incident. And the other person says, nothing, because the cows was not covered in jet fuel. At the same price, which one are you going to buy? And the answer is the one that's not impacted by jet fuel. It's the same thing when somebody goes to buy a car and they're like, well, this one is a clean Carfax and this one is a dirty Carfax. Same miles, same everything. You will buy the non-dirty Carfax one because you have a perception of it being better. Now, the uh you're right, nobody's house caught on fire, but 38,000 homes were in fact covered by jet fuel. And this is not a small amount of fuel that's poured in a corner of the yard when somebody's mowing the grass with a lawnmower. This is a mist and a rainfall that's covered everything in the property. So it's a very memorable thing that people in that area still talk about. So keep in mind they're also under the flight path. So up until that point, everybody in the flight path knew about airplanes and sounds, but nobody thought that they would dump stuff on you. So uh that change in value uh is is what the complaint was based on. It was this perception that, look, you've you've caused us damage because you've covered us in jet fuel, and now we obviously need to tell people. The other side of the coin is also that people were inconvenienced by this, they had to uh you know clean their properties and you know there was some other stuff that happened that inconvenienced people, and and for that they got compensation too. But to Delta's credit, they worked really hard with us to try and find a um a solution that made sense. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort. Um but uh when push came to shove after a lot of fighting, uh they stepped up and did the right thing. And um it's uh you know, it's kudos to them uh because despite um, you know, despite the incident happening, um, there was no maliciousness. Uh nobody at Delta was ever malicious about something. Nobody at Delta put profits over safety, right? Uh, we got to find out that this was a bona fide mistake. Uh again, uh, should it have happened? No. Um and they did the right thing. They stepped up and they, they, they worked with us and they put together a settlement that uh, again, after years of litigation, but but it was the right thing to do.

Yeah. In an instance like that where it's pretty clear that the crew made an honest mistake, um, you know, the pilots, especially airline pilots, are protected a bit by their unions. I imagine most of the airlines are willing to step in and fight for their pilots and their crews as well. How does that kind of get dealt with uh from your perspective of like, you know, you're not personally naming pilots in that suit when it's clear that they made the mistake, right? It's still there.

Yeah, we never we never named the pilots. We took the deposition uh of the there were four pilots. Uh there was uh uh captain, uh first officer, relief captain, relief first officer. So we deposed them, and but we've never we never named them, uh we never went after uh themselves and never, you know. I think Delta would have stepped up obviously and defended them, but we had no interest in doing that. And and that goes back to sort of what I told you at the beginning, which is if you don't understand what happened here, you would, you know, a typical attorney may name the pilot. Um I'm I'm glad that we stepped in and and actually only named Delta for a multitude of insurance reasons too, but you could have tarnished people's reputation and and and that's not that that was not the goal. The goal was to make our clients whole and figure out a solution to their problems, uh, but not destroy the pilots' lives. These are all, you know, they were all competent pilots. Um, you know, there was uh a system failure inside, but again, bona fide accident or incident.

Going on to uh an incident where the pilots have been named recently. Um so UPS 2976, uh for those that aren't familiar, is the MD-11 leaving out of uh is it Louisville or it's in Kentucky. Um leave and the engine, left engine, number one engine, separated from the pylon, separated from the wing on rotation, and ended up crashing into uh, I believe, another UPS facility on the far side of the fence there. Um horrific accident. Anyone who's seen the videos and the photos from it, just horrible to look at, horrible to read the transcript from the cockpit voice recorder. Um the lawyer who took this case is seemingly going after everyone involved and has named the uh pilot's estates in this lawsuit, and you seem to have taken exception with that method. Can you talk about why that's not a a great idea?

Yeah, so i I I I listened to the interviews of these two colleagues of mine that file this case, and their understanding of aviation is zero. And I take exception to what they've done because it is rooted in ignorance and rooted in greed. And they've gone after pilots who could have not done anything. I don't think there's a single pilot out there that's ever spent time, regardless of whether they flew a 172 or an F-18, who would look at what happened and say the pilots had any responsibility whatsoever. Uh you know, in in my own team, I have a couple of pilots that we consult with on a regular basis. I have a uh an aerospace engineer that's a full retainer with us, uh, works on, you know, exclusively for us now. I've discussed this with numerous pilots and engineers, uh, also people that don't work with me. And and everybody is of the same exact idea, which is that the pilots didn't do anything wrong. And the idea that you go out and you name everybody and everything just because you have a law license and you're out scrounging for money shows that you do not understand what happened. And that is not only sad for the fact that they're naming an estate of a pilot that passed away in a horrible way in an incident that they had no responsibility in, but it's also really sad for the clients of these attorneys, that they're being handled by complete boneheads that don't understand the subject matter. And the inability of a lawyer to understand the subject matter means that when they're actually presented with facts, they're not going to be able to discern them. Right? You see how good somebody is from the get-go, from how are they naming, who are they naming, how does their complaint read, what do they talk about? Um and these guys have no idea what they're doing. And it's just it, it's uh it's just wrong all the way around. Uh they these are lawyers who who don't understand aerospace, don't understand aviation, and I it it pisses me off to the core that they named people that passed away who could have not done anything about it. And you asked them why. Uh and they said, well, you know, they should have known, they should have been doing this, you should have been doing that, which is absolute nonsense. Um and those are the lawyers that I despise. I truly despise because they give people like me a bad reputation. You know, that's it the it's just really not right.

I've seen a lot of comments online about the lawsuit in particular saying, you know, this is just lawsuit 101, you name everyone you can, and basically just shotgun spread it and see what sticks. Why is that not the case?

Because uh I mean, look, it is it is a lawyering 101, it may be lawyering 101 when you're doing a rear-ender, but not when you're talking about a pylon on an aircraft engine coming undone and it impacting a third, a second engine out of three engines and flight dynamics, and I mean, look, the i if you if you tell me that this is lawyering 101, you don't belong in this league, right? It's you don't get to practice naming people when you're dealing with cases that are this complex and this sophisticated. You look, there's a difference between somebody going to a podiatrist because they've got an ingrown toenail and brain surgery. This kind of stuff is tantamount to brain surgery because there's so much going on in the incident itself that you need to understand what the what the nuances and what the um details actually mean. If you were dealing with ingrown toenails, go at it. Name everybody. But but not but not when it comes to an aircraft accident like this. Um I don't know how on earth they were able to sign up 15 people, but I honestly believe that they bamboozled 15 families into believing that they were competent to do this case when they're clearly not. And you can tell that they're not competent because of how they named everybody. And anybody who says this is Lowering 101, and you do a shotgun approach, and the shotgun approach includes dragging the estate of dead pilots through the mud. And this estate is people uh these are the wives and kids of people that perish in an aircraft accident. They kissed goodbye to their father uh on on a morning and never saw them again. Their lives are forever changed, and you have the balls to tell me that you're gonna drag them through court just to see if it sticks. That is the greed that I was talking about. It's incompetence and greed. And they shouldn't they should not be practicing law this way. And it's uh I hope that there's a judge somewhere that punishes them for this. Uh I I you know I I hope that UPS uh appoints or pays for the defense of these families and these estates, because it's a travesty of justice to be, to, to be witnessing this. It's just not right. They have no fault. Listen, if you could articulate to me how they have fault in an intelligent manner, I will retract everything that I've said. But there's not a single pilot out there that can make an intelligent argument as to why those pilots bear any responsibility whatsoever in the crash.

And yeah, and I'll leave it at that because otherwise I'm gonna say things that that are not PG-13.

What's one thing that pilots should understand about aviation law?

I think the one thing I would tell pilots generally is that no matter what occurs in an incident, right? And I see aviation law as being incident-related, not transaction related. So no matter what happens in an incident, um the best outcome is not what is uh advocated by the insurance companies. The best outcome is always going to be to tell the truth, tell the truth as quickly as possible to as many people as possible. Um too often, insurance adjusters for insurance carriers who are the bad guy in the room typically try and prevent their insurance from paying out settlements or judgments, and they're willing to do things that typically an airline or pilots or mechanics are not willing to do. You need to understand that the insurance companies are not your friends. Uh they are there to indemnify you, but they're that they would happily trade you in to save a few bucks. So, my advice to any pilot who's involved in an incident is to do what they know and they feel right to do. If they had a fault in it, to talk about it, if they know of something that were wrong, to talk about it, to be open, to be honest, to be honest with the NTSB, to be honest with the FAA, and absolutely not to listen to the insurance companies, because the insurance companies, again, insurance adjusters are notoriously not interested in the truth. They're not interested in the well-being of the airline, they're not interested in the well-being of the pilot, they're not interested in the well-being of the uh aerospace industry as a whole. They're interested in saving dollars and cents. Um, and they will give you advice that is inherently wrong uh for everybody but themselves. So the one thing I'll tell you is 100% if you're involved in an incident of any magnitude, be honest, be transparent, admit to what you've done wrong, if anything. And um yeah, that that's the biggest advice I can give pilots.

Right.

And then final thing, advice for anyone who might aspire to be an aviation attorney or or do a similar form of law practice to what you're doing.

Don't do it. Run. Um, look, I mean, if anybody actually ever wanted to get into the field that I'm in, and I don't know, you know, I told you I don't know how I ended up in it, I but but by circumstances. Um I think look for people in the space that are willing to talk to you, to mentor you, um, to give you insight. Uh learn your craft, eat it, drink it, sleep it. Um, you know, uh I still watch uh YouTube videos every night of of airplanes. Uh my three-year-old daughter sits down on TV and she's like, Can we watch airplane spotting? Uh so we watch airplanes taking on and off. And um but uh yeah, it's just no know your craft. Just, you know, love what you do, love the industry you're in. Because uh, you know that's the only way you become competent enough to argue on behalf of the industry. And then where can people find you? Uh if they like me, they can uh uh find me online. Uh I I'm on Instagram uh and LinkedIn, and our website is fairly easy to remember as xlawx.com. Uh we also own the domain name x.law, but that's coming live soon. Uh if they don't like me, then please don't find me.

Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to hear more from aviation professionals just like Filippo, you can subscribe to the AirPod on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. Want to let you know that I'll be going on a little bit of a summer break. I'll be back on the week leading up to Oshkosh, July 15th, and I'll see you right back here on the AirPod.