Former FAA Inspector Filed Lawsuit Against
United Airlines on Basis of Corruption
Related to Specific Airline Disasters

Former federal air safety agent Rodney Stich, responsible for federal aviation safety activities at United Airlines, filed a lawsuit against United Airlines in the federal courts at Reno, Nevada. The purpose of the lawsuit was to circumvent the blocks to exposing the serious misconduct related to several major airline disasters and obtain publicity to force people in key government offices to exercise their responsibilities.

Among the many areas of corrupt activities by key people at United Airlines were the following:

• Management at United Airlines repeatedly blocked federal agents from performing their federal air safety functions, which resulted in a series of United Airlines disasters between 1958 and 1978.
   
• UAL management acted in concert with certain key management people within the FAA, to take retaliatory actions against certain FAA inspectors who were reporting and acting on unsafe, illegal, and criminal practices at the airline.
   
• Retaliatory actions taken against federal safety inspectors who had tried to perform their federal safety responsibilities in the face of unprecedented safety problems, safety violations, and criminal violations.
   
• Repeatedly falsified its training and competency checks by not performing them, and then falsifying government required records to falsely indicate the flights in the aircraft had been performed.
   
• Not providing the yearly required emergency evacuation training, doing it only every three years, and then only in part, and falsifying government required records to indicate the training had been completed.
   
• FAA-approved company check airmen had an anything-goes competency standards, allowing dangerous unsafe pilots to remain in passenger-carrying operations without corrective training.
   
• The flight engineer training and competency check program was a farce, with flight engineers poorly qualified, or not qualified to FAA standards.

The lawsuit alleged that federal aviation safety agent Rodney Stich had discovered and report into the official government records that key people at United Airlines had engaged in years of corrupt activities that resulted in a series of airline disasters, the certain people in the FAA had aided and abetted these corrupt and illegal acts and misused government offices to silence federal air safety inspectors, threatening the inspectors when they reported the misconduct; and the the political board members of the NTSB covered up for these practices when their duties required them to conduct an investigation when these matters were brought to their attention. The NTSB, by covering up, obstructing justice, then became complicit in the corruption, the crashes resulting from the corruption, and the deaths involved in the airline disasters.

United Airlines was served with the lawsuit, and the Reno law firm of Woodburn, Wedge and Jeppson, represented by Casey W. Vlautin, filed a motion (Nov. 14, 1988), titled, Motion of United Airlines, Inc. and U.A.L., Inc. For a More Definite Statement.

Stich filed a response (February 13, 1989) titled, "More Definite Statement of facts in support of Complaint. (MS Word) (Adobe PDF)

United Airlines answered the Complaint (Apr. 10, 1989), denying the allegations stated in Stich's complaint, which was a normal legal response. The airline also claimed that the statute of limitations had expired, and therefore the lawsuit was barred. Also, that the lawsuit was barred by the doctrine of laches, without explaining how that was so. Further, that the lawsuit be dismissed.

Stich opposing the summary judgment request, May 22, 1990.

If the federal judge had complied with the law, he would have been barred from dismissing the lawsuit on the basis that the facts must be considered as true for opposing dismissal; that Stich was entitled to have his discovery questions answered before making a decision on the motion to dismiss.

United Airlines filed a Motion for Summary Judgment and a request for an order barring Stich from filing any complaint in any federal court, making reference to the injunctive orders rendered by federal judges in California that blocked Stich from reporting any of the criminal activities that he and a group of other former federal agents had discovered, or from defending against the massive civil and constitutional violations that were involved in the lawsuits filed by a CIA-front law firm.

That was a parallel effort to halt Stich's exposure of the criminal activities. In that motion for summary judgment, United Airlines, through the Reno law office and lawyers, made numerous statements seeking to discredit the allegations of misconduct responsible for years of crashes by United Airlines. (Adobe PDF)

Including FAA and NTSB as Defendants

The NTSB was included because of the repeated cover-ups by the political members of the NTSB board, which constituted corrupt and criminal acts that led to still other crashes from the air safety problems and violations that were covered up.

Among the Arguments raised by United Airlines
In Their Motion to Dismiss the Lawsuit

Lawyers for United Airlines refused to address the issues or reply to discovery. Instead, they sought an injunction prohibiting Stich from proceeding with the action. They used standard off-the-shelf excuses for having the lawsuit dismissed, including (a) that the complaint is barred by the doctrine of res judicata and collateral estoppel; and that United Airlines had a right to be free from harassing, abusive, and meritless litigation.

Overwhelming Trauma Halted Stich's Efforts

Due to the overwhelming consequences of the multiple legal actions taken against Stich, which inflicted great personal and financial harm, Stich was unable to proceed with the lawsuit, and it was dismissed.

Details about the corruption by certain people at United Airlines, the FAA, and NTSB, and a list of fatal airline disasters associated with this misconduct, are in the book, Unfriendly Skies: 20th & 21st Centuries, and available from amazon.com. Segments of that and the other books written by the former federal agent can be downloaded at no charge by clicking here.