Attorneys allege Boeing ‘threatened to break’ whistleblower John Barnett ‘and break him it did.’
A Boeing 787-10 is towed in North Charleston. (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Chuyi Chuang)
The family of deceased Boeing whistleblower John “Mitch” Barnett has filed a lawsuit blaming the company for his suicide.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina alleges that Boeing’s conduct towards Barnett “was the clear cause, and the clear foreseeable cause, of [his] death.”
Barnett, a 62-year-old Boeing quality manager, was found dead in his truck in Charleston, South Carolina, in March 2024. The cause of death was later determined to be suicide.
He had worked for Boeing for 32 years, including 17 years as a quality manager – approximately seven of which were at Boeing South Carolina.
He was suing Boeing under the provisions of the AIR21 Whistleblower Protection Program for alleged retaliation after he raised concerns about quality control issues for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner program.
John Barnett in a Netflix documentary (Photo: Netflix)
This was around the time Boeing production practices began undergoing increased scrutiny due to two fatal 737 MAX airplane crashes in 2018 and 2019.
The Federal Aviation Administration started investigations into the manufacturer’s quality control processes after a door plug flew off an Alaska 737 MAX 9 in February 2024, a month before Barnett committed suicide.
Prior to his death, Barnett had been scheduled to take a follow-up deposition regarding his 2020 whistleblower lawsuit against Boeing.
Wednesday’s 146-page legal complaint stated that Barnett had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by a mental health counselor he was seeing in February 2017.
“[Barnett] reported feelings of sadness, hopelessness, sleep disturbances with nightmares, and an overwhelming sense that something bad was going to happen,” the complaint stated. “He feared further retaliation for reporting his complaints to OSHA and the FAA. He continued to fear that people would die due to improper work on the assembly line at Boeing.
“His fears were heightened as a result of the plane crashes and accidents that he already witnessed related to the same quality issues he had identified,” the complaint continued. “He expressed feelings of survivor guilt for being unable to convince Boeing to prevent these tragedies.”
In March 2017, Barnett took an early retirement from Boeing. The complaint stated that this was “due to his employment-related stress, as a result of being subjected to a retaliatory hostile work environment.”
The complaint includes a photo of a note Barnett wrote before his death. The note included several messages including:
The complaint stated that Barnett’s note “demonstrates the retaliation, harassment, and maltreatment he experienced at the hands of Boeing [that] caused his PTSD, which, in turn, caused his suicide and untimely death.”
“Boeing had threatened to break John and break him it did,” the Barnett family’s attorneys also wrote.
It further alleged there were other instances of Boeing Whistleblowers suffering retaliation. One individual named in the complaint was a product quality manager who resigned in 2016 due to a hostile work environment when insisting FAA regulations be followed.
Barnett’s family is represented by attorneys Robert Turkewitz, Brian Knowles, David Boies, and Sigrid McCawley.
Boies is a prominent U.S. attorney known for leading the federal government’s successful prosecution of Microsoft for antitrust law violations in 2001. He has more recently represented victims in cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
McCawley is a veteran attorney who has also represented victims against Epstein.
Barnett’s family is suing Boeing for an unspecified dollar amount in damages as well as funeral and burial expenses and legal costs.
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