Danko Meredith

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PG&E Chief Financial Officer Jason Wells appeared in Bankruptcy Court to answer questions under oath.  It was his second time.  The first time, I asked him about the bonus PG&E paid to CEO Geisha Williams as she was shown the door.   I couldn’t understand why, in the days leading to the bankruptcy, PG&E found $2.5 million in cash to stuff into her pocket, but couldn’t come up with the money PG&E agreed to pay …
Families of both Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610 have sued Boeing in Cook County, Illinois. To win, the families need prove only that a defect in the design of the Boeing 737 Max contributed to the crashes.  But first they have to convince the judges that their cases should be heard in this country and not in either Indonesia or Ethiopia, where the crashes occurred. Of course, if the Cook County…
Scott Deveau and Mark Chediak of Bloomberg report that PG&E is likely to sign Bill Johnson as its new CEO. Bill Johnson was most recently CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the large southeastern public utility. Critics are glad Johnson is now gone from the TVA because, they say, he consistently favored corporate interests over the public interest. They see Johnson’s departure as an opportunity to replace him with  someone who will put the “public” …
Normally, the FAA cannot be sued for doing a bad job certifying an aircraft as safe. But in the case of the 737 Max, things might be different. As a general rule, the FAA cannot be sued as long as, in certifying the aircraft as safe, it was exercising its “discretion.” The United States Supreme Court discussed the “discretionary function defense” in a case called United States v. Varig Airlines. In that…
Both the Department of Justice and Transportation Department’s inspector general are investigating the FAA’s approval of the Boeing 737 Max and, in particular, the aircraft’s anti-stall system known as MCAS. The FAA is supposed to ensure that Boeing aircraft are safe. Investigators want to know: Are the FAA and Boeing too cozy? Is the FAA’s oversight is too lax? Is it true that the FAA didn’t actually certify the Max’s anti-stall system as safe but…
The Boeing 737 The Boeing 737 was originally intended for short haul flights to short runways.  One of the 737’s unique design features was that the engines were mounted on the underside of the wing, instead of in front of the wings on struts and pylons. Mounting the engines hard up against the wing decreased drag, reduced weight, improved the aircraft’s center of gravity, made the cabin quieter, increased usable cabin space, and made the…