B.F. Goodrich Ethics Case
Andrew Dopson
Oskar Otoya
Kekoa Taitt
Chris Ho
03/24/2014
B.F. Goodrich is a tire and brake production company that was founded in 1870
by Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich. After merging with another tire company called
Uniroyal, the B.F. Goodrich business took off and became one of the largest makers of
automotive tires and rubber. The Goodrich Tire line was later sold to Michelin in 1988,
separating B.F. Goodrich Tires from the original corporation. The ethics case we are
studying though, happened before the tire line was sold to Michelin.
On July 18, 1967, Goodrich was offered a contract to supply wheels and brakes
to the Air Force. They won the contract due to their competitive bid and their innovative
four-rotor brake design. Although they won this contract, they were still required to bring
forward brake qualification reports that passed specifications of the Air Force before
being accepted. They were given an entire year for design and testing, with the last two
weeks reserved for flight testing.
B.F. Goodrich was required to qualify the brake for testing prior to the flight test
commencement. After 12 attempts to qualify the break (all prior attempts failing), they
begin to “nurse” through the simulated stops, setting up fans to prevent overheating.
Brake test still failed, and on fourteenth attempt, Searle Lawson, engineer for B.F.
Goodrich is told by his supervisors, Robert L. Sink and Russell Van Horn, to qualify the
brakes “no matter what”.
A man by the name of Kermit Vandivier, discovers that Lawson was instructed to
do this, and Vandivier refused to write a falsified qualification report, and was backed by
his supervisor, Ralph Gretzinger. Vandivier was ordered to write the qualification report
anyways and he did, despite the fact that he knew it was a falsified report. Vandivier
then resigned from B.F. Goodrich, and in his letter contain multiple accusations of
ethical misconduct. Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin then requests to investigate
B.F. Goodrich’s qualification report. A four hour Congressional hearing was then held to
determine the accuracy of B.F. Goodrich’s qualification report test results, the effect that
the defective brakes had on the test pilot’s safety, the identification of additional costs
incurred by the Government to obtain an acceptable brake, and the responsibilities of
the Government in the qualification testing.
Some ethical principles that were involved in the B.F.Goodrich case was
upholding public safety while performing their professional duties, issuing public
statements in a truthful manner, and they should act in such a way to uphold the honor,
dignity, and integrity of their profession. These are the many ethical principles that the
people working under B.F.Goodrich failed to uphold during this incident.
The reason the company failed in upholding public safety was because the
brakes themselves failed during a test in 1968. This should have been included in the
reports they were required to present to the government, unfortunately the reports that
were submitted were falsified to try and ignore the failed tests. This puts a risk to public
safety because if these reports were not found to be false and they continued using
brakes that were not working as they should be, harm can be done to the public. A
plane trying to land could roll into a building or crash in another location harming the
pilot and/or other people near the area. So the decision to report false information could
easily raise the chances of the public getting injured in some way.
Another principle that the company failed to uphold was issuing public
statements in a truthful manner. This can easily be seen in the documentation they
turned in to the government. Since the documents were to be used to determine if the
brakes were successful or not this would be the same as the company telling the public
weather their brakes worked or not. In this case the documents were falsified to cover
up their failed tests. This shows that B.F.Goodrich did not speak truthfully about their
product to the public and did what they needed to pass their brakes off as successful.
To act in such a way to uphold the honor, dignity, and integrity of their profession
was another principal they did not adhere to. They did not uphold their integrity because
they were not truthful to their client. The company knew their brakes would fail the
qualification tests but instead of being truthful about it in their documentation the
company included false information within their reports. This undermined the integrity of
the report as well as their profession since they would keep their clients in the dark
about what really was going on with their tests.
Ethical Principles
● Upholding public safety while performing their professional duties
○ Falsifying the reports put risk to the public by trying to have defective
brakes on an aircraft
○ The company put their profit in the brakes over the safety of others
● Issuing public statements in a truthful manner
○ They gave false information to their client about their brakes
○ This gives a false assumption on how the brakes would operate
● They should act in such a way to uphold the honor, dignity, and integrity of their
profession’
○ The reports did not have integrity since it contained false information
about what really happened with their tests
○ In their profession their reports on tests they run need to be correct for
the clients to get a good understanding on how well the brakes
perform
There were many points in the projects life where if the appropriate steps were
taken, the disaster of the project could have been avoided.
When the new four brake rotor was being lab tested for the first time and Lawson
discovered that it would not meet specification requirements because the brakes were
too small, Warren could have chosen to redesign the breaks then. If Warren had fixed
the faulty design when it failed the initial tests, then the rest of the event would have
never happened. In the end, the brakes end being redesigned regardless.
Stricter monitoring on the tests could have helped. Neither LTV or the military
were really present for tests, and instead, relied on Goodrich. This was during a time
when brakes were not really innovative, and testing procedures were in place for brakes
that would often not deviate from the norm. When this new design was introduced, the
appropriate procedures to test it should have been taken into account.
The biggest action that could have been taken to avoid all of this is simple. The
engineers working on the project should have been honest. Multiple times, the project
manager of the A7D assured LTV that the design was a success and that the brake
tests were going smoothly. Reports were falsified. If the problems of the brake were
made aware the contractor early, compromise could have been made and both time
and money could have been saved. Vandivier and Lawson could have end up reporting
the actions of the company much sooner.
There are numerous ethical issues that our own project faces. Morals and ethics
define a person, but in an engineer they can change the world. Engineers sign a code of
ethics where each person state to follow the guidelines. Unfortunately, sometimes
people think they are above the rules and don't follow them. To avoid anything like what
happened to B.F. Goodrich we have a checks and balances happening. Each member
verifies the work of the other group member, this eliminates the falsification of any type
of data.