Inspired by absolutely nothing in particular, certainly not a specific aircraft manufacturer.
Do you mean deliberately, as in hired a hit man to take someone out, or killed someone through negligence or accident?
Mexican drug cartels do it frequently.
And if you switched your query to Cafe Society several recommendations would probably result–such as the last series of Reacher.
But nothing comes to mind for U.S.corporations: bribery, lawsuits, destroying people’s reputations… seem as far as they go.
The former, deliberately. I know the latter happens with alarming frequency.
The corporation itself can’t have individuals killed because that would require coordinated collective action that would have to be documented, even if that was confidential. It would be more a case of individual officers of the corporation taking it upon themselves to engage in plausibly deniable actions.
There are plenty of allegations that corporations had so and so killed, but I could not find a single case where a coporation was investigated, let alone anyone indicted, for a targeted killing. Not in America in the modern era, anyway.
In the past, your mileage may vary. The British East India Company and other colonial corporations did not treat locals well, and it could easily be that they killed some rabble rousers. The Pinkertons were also known for engaging in some dirty business for well heeled businessmen in the 1800’s.
It’s a modern movie invention that corporate leaders have assassins on speed dial and are ready to take out troublesome people.
Why bother? They can just have them thrown into jail. Sergey Aleynikov used some of the same open source software he’d been using at Goldman-Sachs after he left, and the FBI followed G-S’s instructions and sent him up.
There’s other examples of whistleblowers charged for industrial espionage, and not getting immunity even though the “espionage” had been done to expose illicit activity
I think there’s a percentage of corporate decision makers who would be morally capable of having it done if they thought it would be the best way to handle a situation. Perhaps a significant percentage. Even at that, it seems it would have to be a last resort, doing something so drastic. That we don’t hear about such cases doesn’t prove it never happens, but I do think it’s a compelling argument that if it does, it’s very rare.
TV, too.
I say, none, none murdered. But I’m open to evidence.
Hmmm:
Boeing Whistleblower Who Raised Quality Concerns Is Found Dead
John Barnett had accused the plane manufacturer for retaliating against him after he flagged problems he saw at Boeing’s 787 factory in South Carolina.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/business/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-dead.html
If they’re never even investigated for it, that sounds like it’d be really, really easy for them to get away with it.
Why do you define it this way? Coordinated and documented?
While murder is possible I think it more common that in cases like John Barnett that they make things so bad for people that they become suicidal.
Here’s another example (though government rather than corporation)
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/20/death-of-a-whistleblower-suicide-pentagon-office-inspector-general/
I couldn’t imagine a legitimate American corporation getting away with this nowadays (although I think Kerr-McGee sure did with Karen Silkwood) but they can certainly kill careers and potentially drive vulnerable people to suicide.
Seriously? “hmmm”
It doesn’t do a corporation any good to kill a whistleblower after they blew the whistle.
How about before they finish a deposition giving evidence against them?
When Ralph Nader was a huge thorn in the side of the automotive industry, there were instances of unknown women propositioning him; presumably, the most the companies were willing to do was attempt to ruin a person’s reputation.
(Little did they know that Nader appears to be asexual. The seduction failed spectacularly).
I couldn’t find the right words. What I was trying to say was that the corporation as an entity in itself couldn’t order someone’s death if only because strictly speaking there’s no process defined within the corporation’s charter for initiating such an action, because corporations don’t technically exist outside of the legal structures establishing them. It would have to be on the extralegal initiative of the human executives and officers.
Corporations don’t kill people because it creates too much paperwork? I can believe that
I was deep in this thread, seriously. Then I came on this line and wet my pants laughing.