A new lawsuit in the ongoing saga surrounding late Boeing whistleblowerJohn Barnett is spotlighting the deep emotional stress the maverick quality inspector experienced from what he blasted as the planemaker’s campaign to muzzle him from exposing drastic production gaffes. The complaint also spotlights Barnett’s final thoughts as he contemplated taking his own life after locking himself inside his pickup truck overnight during a torrential rainstorm—a testament of righteous rage expressed in an extraordinarily tortured suicide note.
On March 19, Barnett’s estate filed a “wrongful death” action in the United States District Court in South Carolina, Charleston District, seeking damages on behalf of his mother and three surviving brothers. Joining the family’s longstanding counsels Rob Turkewitz and Brian Knowles is legendary litigator David Boies, along with Boies, Schiller managing partner Sigrid McCawley. Since 2017, Turkewitz and Knowles have been pursuing Boeing for allegedly violating the OSHA rules making it unlawful to retaliate against a whistleblower. Following Barnett’s death, the duo continued that regulatory lawsuit on behalf of the Barnett’s estate, and Boies joined the team. The wrongful death civil action states that “John’s PTSD, depression, anxiety and panic attacks, all caused by Boeing’s wrongful conduct, caused him to take his own life, which he would not have done but for being subjected to Boeing’s hostile work environment and its continuing retaliatory conduct.”
Fortune was first to report news of the wrongful death suit, and Boies’ involvement. When asked for comment Boeing told Fortune: “We are saddened by John Barnett’s death and extend our condolences to his family.”
The new complaint contains a copy of the suicide note, and the annexes present the full police report concluding that he died by his own hand. In conversations with Fortune, Turkewitz added further details on his client’s last hours. In the evening of March 8th last year, Barnett left the law offices of Boeing’s outside counsel in Charleston after testifying for two days in the OSHA case. Barnett was giving his account of how Boeing allegedly violated its own policies and procedures, and FAA rules, during his seven years as a quality inspector at the North Charleston plant that assembles the 787 Dreamliner. He’d delayed a trip back to his home in Louisiana to finish his deposition the next day, a Saturday. Videos cited in the police report show Barnett leaving the hotel around 8:30 PM, and getting in his Clemson orange, Dodge truck.
When Barnett failed to show by the 10 AM starting time for his final round of testimony, Turkewitz called the Holiday Inn to conduct a “welfare check.” A hotel employee saw Barnett slumped in the front seat of his vehicle. The Charleston police arrived to discover that the Dodge’s door was locked, and summoned a fire department officer who opened it with a “slim jim.” A barefoot Barnett was clutching a silver, Smith and Wesson pistol in his right hand, hair and blood showing at the end of the barrel. His right temple showed an apparent bullet entry wound, and an exit wound appeared in the back of his head.
A hotel employee working outside told the police he’d heard a “pop” just before 9:30 AM, but related that the driving rainstorm, one of the worst in Charleston’s history, muffled the sound. It’s clear from the reports included in the complaint’s annex that Barnett had spent the entire time since 8:30 PM in the truck. That’s a span of almost thirteen hours. Turkewitz added a detail not in the police accounts: Barnett had been running the engine all-night, and by the time the police arrived, the gas tank was empty; it’s also likely that the battery was dead.
Barnett’s tragic suicide note
On the seat next to Barnett’s body lay a message, written on a single page of a red-covered notebook. It was released with the police report in May, but its full contents weren’t widely noted. The sentences and phrases go in all direction, in script ranging from billboard-big to tiny. It seems that Barnett kept rotating the page by quarter turns as he added new thoughts in neat capital letters. Any of the four ways you orient the note, a lot of what he wrote appears upside-down or off to the sides. You can only read everything straight-on by slowly spinning the missive through a full circle.
Barnett wrote a central section where holding the note one way, you can read half the writing, and the other half’s jottings go in the opposite direction. He adds asides on both borders that run at a 90 degree angle to the middle part. The turmoil in Barnett’s writings reflect the fragmented form. You struggle to assemble the parts the way you’d puzzle over a cubist painting.
The missive comprises 94 words, 11 sentences, and 20 exclamation marks. Half of the middle section reads, “America come together or die!!! Pray that the motherfk…ers who destroyed my life pay!!! I pray that Boeing pays!!! Bury me face down so that Boeing and their lying ass leaders can kiss my ass.”
Navigate 180 degrees, and the following cascades from the middle of the page: “I can’t do this any longer!!! F-k Boeing!!! Family and friends, I love you’ll.” Then the writing spills further downwards concluding, “To my family and friends, I found my purpose! I am at peace! I love you more John/Mitch Barnett aka Swampy Fununcle Mitch.” (“Swampy” was Barnett’s nickname bestowed by his hot rod racing buddies from his time in working at the giant Boeing facility in Everett, Washington; Funcle was short for “Fun Uncle,” the moniker his beloved nieces gave the figure they cherished for his zany humor.)
In one side border, he adds, “The entire system for whistleblower protection is f-k’ed up too!!!” On the opposite fringe comes a touch of dark humor in another single sentence, “And I wasn’t stoned when I wrote this really.”
The complaint includes a heartbreaking email (previously disclosed in the police report) that Barnett sent Turkewitz in 2021, included by the plaintiffs as evidence of Barnett’s super-depressed state of mind allegedly caused by Boeing’s on-the-job harassment. “I can understand the direct costs that we can establish, ie lost pay, bonuses, etc., Barnett wrote. “What I’m struggling with is how do you restore a person’s overall outlook on life? I used to be a very happy-go-lucky guy who loved his job and the products he built. I had a very positive outlook on life. Boeing absolutely destroyed my outlook on life. What is a person’s ‘outlook on life’ worth? How to put a price on that?'”
The Barnett family lawyers and Rodney Barnett discuss how Boies joined the team
Turkewitz told Fortune that he knew David Boies well from collaborating with the famed ligitator on an asbestos liability suit in the 1990s that won a big verdict for the plaintiffs. “Brian and I had been representing John for over seven years and were getting good results against Boeing’s high-priced lawyers,” he says. “We brought David and Sigrid onboard because we wanted to make sure we were viewing the case and its many complex issues objectively. I knew the trauma and sadness of John’s death had the potential to sway my judgment. If we were going to have additional counsel in the case, I wanted lawyers who were not only the best but who also believed in pursuing John’s mission of making it safer for the flying public and and hopefully making Boeing the quality and safety conscious company that John knew it to be earlier in his career.”
The day after the Barnett team filed the wrongful death suit, I spoke to John’s oldest brother Rodney from his home in Louisiana. He discussed the decision to enlist Boies, and its importance. “Boeing wasn’t doing right by my brother,” says Rodney, a retired electrical technician for the Air Force who later ran a dog grooming outfit with his mom, and now works at the local fire department, Rodney related that he spoke to David Boies along with his brothers by phone when the famed the lawyer was pondering whether to join the case. They met later in Charleston at a mediation session. “Rob and Brian have stayed with this through thick and thin. As with Rob and Brian, David and Sigrid agreed with John’s mission of protecting the flying public,” says Rodney.
Rodney relates how he witnessed up close how his formerly super-outgoing brother turned more and more reclusive after John retired to Louisiana to be near his mom, affectionately known as Miss Vicky. “He was the youngest of four sons but he looked older than the rest of us. You could tell the Boeing fight was taking its toll. His nieces would come over to swim at his place, but he didn’t get out much. You could see how things weighed on him, but he kept all of his worries to himself. He never imposed them on anyone else. The whole point is that we didn’t want the loss of his life to be in vain, we wanted to carry on his legacy.”
Now backed by a legal superstar, Barnett’s family will seek damages that John Barnett’s no longer around to demand or collect. Whatever the results of the cases, the complaint provides a reminder that John Barnett’s passion for safety in the skies, and the anguish that finally killed him, were real.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
