Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Party Plane

Mr. Soxley writes to tell us that the Boeing 767 recently purchased by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page is at the heart of what promises to be quite a legal battle. From the article: "Now the Delaware holding company that technically owns the 767, Blue City Holdings LLC, is embroiled in multiple lawsuits with an aviation designer hired to plan and oversee the massive plane's interior renovation. [...] But last October, Blue City terminated Mr. Jennings's contract, saying he wasn't doing his job properly. Mr. Jennings then filed a nearly $200,000 lien against the aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration for payment he hadn't received. He later filed a complaint related to the matter against Blue City and Gore Design Completions Ltd., the San Antonio executive-jet outfitting firm that worked on the plane, in District Court in Bexar County, Texas."

Comments

Doing the job well?

[alshithead]

"Mr. Jennings says allegations that he wasn't sufficiently involved in the project or accessible to the plane's owners are false, and has over 1,200 emails related to the project to disprove them."

Just because you have 1200+ emails relating to a project doesn't necessarily mean you are doing your job. With a project this size it could be argued that fewer emails mean you are doing your job better. This is the kind of project that requires a fair amount of oversight on a local level.

Must be a slow news day

[the_humeister]

If the plane wasn't even remotely related to Google, the story wouldn't even be here. Am I missing something?

Re:Must be a slow news day

[alshithead]

You're not missing anything. Must be a slow news day.

Re:Must be a slow news day

[Concerned Onlooker]

Yes, you are missing something. People who have achieved celebrity status or are influential are always more newsworthy, even for the small stuff. It's because lots of people are interested in their lives. If I have an operation for a hernia nobody cares. If Bill Gates has one you can bet it will make the news.

Plus, we get an insight into human behavior when we see supposedly brilliant, rich people bickering about idiotic stuff.

Re:Must be a slow news day

[the_humeister]

Plus, we get an insight into human behavior when we see supposedly brilliant, rich people bickering about idiotic stuff.

I think we get enough insight into human behavior in normal everyday life. Besides, there are plenty of erratic, yet brilliant people. And I don't think their incidence is any different than the rest of the population. (eg. William Shockley, Howard Hughes, etc.)

Re:Must be a slow news day

[TopShelf]

Exactly - this is about internet boom zillionairres squabbling like toddlers over their bling, more than anything else.

Re:Must be a slow news day

[Anonymous Coward]

This story reminds me of a poster I saw once that read:

Great people talk about ideas
Average people talk about things
Small people talk about other people

YRO?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is this YRO?

Re:YRO?

[Jerf]

How the hell is this YRO?

I think it's time that YRO either got re-named or re-thought.

Clearly we need a "Legal" or "Law" section. But if YRO was re-focused back to its original purpose, that might still be useful too.

(To forstall the inevitable "Why?" and "Who cares?", the answer is "So you can correctly filter the stories.", which is the only reason to have the sections at all. Someone can be interested in law stories like this and not actual YRO stories, or vice versa. And the purpose of these sections is so we can tell people who bitch about a particular set of stories to just filter them out, thus keeping the comment area that much cleaner.)

Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Why should anyone care? Lawsuits and construction go together like oil and oil. A $200k contract dispute is non-news.

This is a rich person's problem.

[Futurepower(R)]

You know that a company is on the way down when its founders buy a 767. Buying a 767 indicates that being rich is beginning to occupy their thinking, rather than management.

From the WSJ article: Mr. Jennings says Messrs. Brin and Page "had some strange requests," including hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane. At one point he witnessed a dispute between them over whether Mr. Brin should have a "California king" size bed, he says. Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt stepped in to resolve that by saying, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on." Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt at another point told him, "It's a party airplane."

Re:This is a rich person's problem.

[fm6]

If Brin and Page are losing interest in managing Google, it's none too soon. This is a company that desperately needs to grow up. It has no collective attention span: dozens of kewl new projects keep appearing, but nobody can ever be bothered with the boring work of making them in actual products.

OK, B&P wanted to found a company that did things differently. Good for them. But to do anything at all, and organization has to have follow-through. It has to balance all the creative geniuses with the dedicated, boring sloggers that get things out the door.

NASA Ames & the Googlejet

[Greg@RageNet]

Now you all know why Google signed the deal for office space at NASA Ames. It's not some expansion into the orbial launch business or some plot to be the intergalactic search engine. They signed a deal with NASA Ames so they could land their 767 on Moffett Federal's nine thousand foot runway biking distance from the Google campus. Must be nice to be all special like that.

Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767

[ScrewMaster]

Besides, if you're phenomenally wealthy I don't know of any law that says you shouldn't enjoy it. I mean ... what would be the other reasons for acquiring lots of money? Granted, a 767 does seem a bit grandiose, but no worse than the hundreds of millions that Bill Gates' has spent on his various homes.

Frankly, I think a hammock on a jetliner sounds like fun.

"Okay Bob, a nice gentle bank to the right ... okay ... now swing back to the left ... ahh, now you got it. Keep doing that for a while."

It wouldn't surprise me if Brin and Page get a little miffed at this guy for discussing their private jet in public, though.

Re:Oh No Not $200,000! That'll sink Google!

[winkydink]

You are assuming that no punitive damages will be awarded.

Oh, the humanity...

[Quiet_Desperation]

I just find it... I dunno... sad? offputting? ...that billionaires pretty much choose to blow off steam about the same way Bubba in the trailer park does, just more expensively. Booze and drugs and whores. Outside of technical endeavors, we are ultimately an uncreative species. :(

Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767

[DAldredge]

If I had a few billion in cash in the bank I would act like a spoiled child too.

Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767

[Rakishi]

And since the plane was purchased by the founders not by Google you are an idiot it seems.