Boeing Seeks Dismissals in Lockheed Case

Boeing Co. on Thursday asked a federal judge to throw out most of the significant claims leveled by rival Lockheed Martin Corp. in a civil suit, including allegations that Boeing used stolen documents to win a multibillion-dollar rocket contract.

Boeing filed a motion to dismiss nine of Lockheed’s claims against the company, saying it did not violate state and federal laws against racketeering, as Lockheed has alleged.

The Lockheed lawsuit, filed in June in federal court in Orlando, Fla., accused Boeing and three former Boeing employees of illicitly using documents obtained from Lockheed to unfairly win a high-stakes competition for contracts for a new generation of rockets used to launch military satellites. The rockets are known as evolved expendable launch vehicles, or EELVs.

Lockheed has not specified the damages it is seeking. It spent at least $1 billion to develop its rocket bid.

Last week, the Air Force found that Boeing violated federal law by having thousands of Lockheed documents in its possession. The Air Force imposed some of the harshest penalties ever against a defense contractor, taking away at least $1 billion of rocket contracts and giving them to Lockheed.

In its motion to dismiss the accusations, Boeing said it does not dispute claims that a former employee had obtained Lockheed documents. But the Chicago-based aerospace giant rejected allegations that Boeing executives covered up the extent of the documents that were taken and that the documents had any bearing on the outcome of the competition.

Shortly after the 1998 competition, Boeing fired the employee, Kenneth Branch, who allegedly obtained the documents while working as an engineer at Lockheed, along with his supervisor, William Erskine. Branch and Erskine have been charged in a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

“Lockheed’s effort to damage Boeing’s reputation through this opportunistic litigation will ultimately fail,” Boeing said in its motion filed with the Florida court. “Boeing will show that its proposal was not based upon information gleaned from documents that Branch brought from Lockheed, and that the outcome of the EELV procurement was not affected by any such information.”

Tom Jurkowsky, a spokesman for Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed, declined to comment.