The phone in Room 511, in a Holiday Inn off the highway in Charleston, South Carolina, rang and rang with no response. John Barnett’s attorneys were calling after their client failed to show up for his third day of deposition against his former employer, Boeing. It was Saturday, March 9, and the lawyers, Rob Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, were looking forward to getting his story on the record. Barnett had worked in the company’s South Carolina plant building 787 airliners from 2011 to 2017, during which time he’d witnessed numerous safety violations. After he took his complaints public, Barnett alleged, Boeing had punished him by denying him promotions and forcing him to retire early. By suing, he sought not only to redress his own mistreatment but also to push Boeing to revamp its safety culture. The need was urgent: Boeing’s reputation had been in free fall since the start of the year, starting with the blowout of a door plug on a brand-new 737 Max-9 over Oregon and continuing with a series of well-publicized mishaps, including an incident just the day before when a wheel fell off a 777 leaving San Francisco.
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