You have to get the leadership by the balls. The CEO isn't going to change a company's culture alone, but she has leverage and connections. If they know they face prison if the company plays foul in a major way, they will put pressure on their deputies to change culture.
Also, fines that go up to say 10% of global revenue. That ensures that even activist shareholders take note and do not pressure the CEO to cut corners.
The C-level people have already failed catastrophically, they need replacing wholesale. This is done frequently as other corporate actions like M&A's or bankruptcies. There are specialists whose entire career is dedicated to being temporary CEO's. They are out there. They should be used at Boeing.
>If they know they face prison if the company plays foul in a major way, they will put pressure on their deputies to change culture.
It is completely ridiculous to criminally prosecute leadership for crimes which happened without their knowing/consent/acknowledgment. It would be a perversion of justice to jail someone because many levels down someone else committed a crime. The best corporate culture does not prevent criminality.
Well what are the ridiculously high salaries for if they don't even take responsibility. I mean parents are liable for their children, so why should a CEO not be made responsible for the culture of the corporation underneath them?
Because that would be a perversion of justice. You can not pay someone to take on criminal liability for crimes they didn't commit and could not have any knowledge of. Just imagine what precedent this would set if it was allowed. If courts would accept that criminal liability can be transferred in exchange of cash, how would the justice system look like?
"Culture" is completely ephemeral and having a court of law determine that the CEO "caused" some change in culture which then caused criminal behavior is ridiculous. This obviously can not be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt".
>I mean parents are liable for their children
Parents do not take on the crimes of their children. They are criminally liable for not overseeing their children's action and/or for not preventing their actions, which is something totally different.
The responsibility doesn't come from the money, it comes from being the Chief Executive, with nearly unlimited operational authority. The money would be compensation for liability that would be inherent to their position.
Criminal liability can not be transferred. The idea would be rejected by every sane court as it is a perversion of justice and sets unimaginably bad precedent.
Criminal liability cannot be transferred, but additional liability based on having the authority to oversee and direct a crime where one should have been aware is something that already exists: see RICO. No one is saying that the employees who committed a crime should be absolved, people are saying the chief executive should be additionally liable as they are responsible and, if they didn't know, should have known by this point.
So you are saying that in a case like Boeing's the CEO was completely unaware of the shitshow at their company and couldn't have taken appropriate actions?
A dysfunctional company with bad management is not a crime. Putting a CEO in jail because he is bad, not because any crime had been committed, is an even worse idea.
The specific case here about criminally negligent software design errors almost certainly never came up to the CEO. If there is evidence otherwise and the CEO was aware of the problem and decided that the risks were acceptable then he obviously should go to jail. This was not the case here as far as I am aware.
Knowing of the issue is the important thing here. If you want another case you can look at the Diesel Gate Scandal at VW, it is German law, but the single most important question is always "who knew", because if the person did not know and had no reason to want to know he HAS to be innocent, regardless whether it is the CEO or anyone else.
> The specific case here about criminally negligent software design errors almost certainly never came up to the CEO.
He or she is responsible for the culture and governing within the company. So either way they are involved either by knowing and ignoring or by setting the precedent for this to go ahead without their knowledge. The punishment for those might differ but it's not a free pass.
> The specific case here about criminally negligent software design errors almost certainly never came up to the CEO.
It’s the CEO’s job to make sure these things “come up” to him. If he didn’t know about an engineering problem that got people killed then he is negligent and still should go to prison.
I don’t get all this simping for CEOs. CEOs don’t need us to defend them on HN. Trust me, they are doing fine without passioned arguments in support of them.
> Parents do not take on the crimes of their children. They are criminally liable for not overseeing their children's action and/or for not preventing their actions, which is something totally different.
It is not completely different. The CEOs should be liable for not properly overseeing their company and for not preventing the illegal actions of the company they're in charge of.
Parents are generally not criminally liable for the crimes their kids commit. They might catch some related negligence charges or something, but if little Jimmy decides to rob a 7-11 his mom doesn't get sent to prison for armed robbery.
The way i see it (and here I describe how I think the law should work, not how it works):
If a Boeing engineer has a breakdown and robs a 7-11, the C suite of Boeing is not responsible for that.
If the Boeing engineer murders people in their course of duty because of the incentive structure set up by the C suite then they are responsible for that. How do you prove that? The same way how you prove anything. Lots of discovery which reveals concrete evidence of the C suite setting up and maintaining said incentive structure and then the prosecutorial team describing the connection to a jurry of their peers.
It is the difference between little Jimmy deciding to rob a 7-11 because they are dumb as a rock, vs doing the same because they grown up in an organised crime family.
Under this theory I think maybe you could get the C suite for negligent homicide, but murder seems like a huge stretch for anything but a kangaroo court.
And as if precedent doesn't already exist - check https://treeandneighborlawblog.com for tons of (smaller) examples and also the concepts of "attractive nuisance" and such.
Juries are unlikely to criminally convict in a true case of "didn't know and couldn't know" but they also are likely to award large civil settlements even in those cases.
> Also, fines that go up to say 10% of global revenue.
10% ?
What? if you or I were found negligent that resulted in hundreds of deaths we would be in jail for the rest of our lives, effectively fining us 100% of ALL revenue FOREVER.
At a minimum they should have a massive fine (like 100% of revenue for a year) and do whatever it takes to halve the stock price, thus punishing the stockholders too - after all, they invested in a business that killed people, they should be punished too.
Also, fines that go up to say 10% of global revenue. That ensures that even activist shareholders take note and do not pressure the CEO to cut corners.