Very easy to fault them, an innocent until proven guilty persons reputation and freedom are on the line.

Even if after all the investigations it turns out the manufacturer were without blame (which usually is not the case) their attitude doesn't reflect well on them.

Do you want to buy your yacth from someone who will blame everyone but themselves when things go wrong? I would rather buy a yacht from someone who will incorporate all the learnings into their new designs to make them as safe as possible.

The attitude of "we are perfect, somebody else's fault" stinks, even if they are. More so if they are not.

There are two possibilities: it’s their fault or it’s not their fault.

In either case it’s advantageous to do what they did: either you’re wrong and the fact that your defective product killed your customers far far far outweighs any messaging you did before that comes to light, or you’re right and the initial message shows confidence in your product.

Not making a statement shows the inverse: that it could be your product to blame, and if that story is what people run with then it’s much more harmful in the long run even if it turns out to be not your fault.

Nobody makes purchasing decisions on big boats based on the perceived and subjective pettiness of their PR department.

Yachtmaker: But… money

Hard to ignore they're trying to use their own employees as unwilling scapegoats of a very expensive mistake. If they were a wiser cartel, they'd know to generously bribe their employees so they willingly accept the blame.

No. Boeing is a case in point. When companies act defensive like that they burn trust that they are a serious engineering organization. I simply don't trust them at this point because they don't appear to be vocally self critical (or at least just quiet while the facts are being collected).

I agree with you and upvoted your comment as see it's down voted. It's a very valid point that would be their default position regardless of moral obligations but it does read this is a design flaw related to grandiosity from the article.

The design flaw was insisted upon by the (original) dutch customer, and the owner seemed pretty proud of the tall mast too. Caveat emptor.

I disagree IF their design was flawed. Regulated professions like engineers who presumably designed this thing have moral and legal obligations to not crank out a death trap and say it's the buyer's fault. It's actually something I don't respect about the tech industry a whole with a wild wild west approach so probably not a popular view here.

Which is why large companies, and companies in general, have far too much power.