Boeing may face its first civil trial seeking damages for deadly Ethiopia crash
More than six years after a Boeing 737 Max crashed in Ethiopia, the first civil trial stemming from the disaster that killed all 157 people aboard the plane appears poised to move forward.
Boeing has settled most of the dozens of wrongful death lawsuits victims’ families filed against the aircraft maker after the March 2019 crash, but two of the remaining cases are expected to begin before a Federal Court jury as early as Tuesday.
The trial in Chicago, where Boeing was headquartered, is not expected to examine the company’s liability. Boeing has already accepted responsibility for what happened to Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and a similar 737 Max crash off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 passengers and crew less than five months earlier.
Instead, an eight-person jury would be tasked with deciding how much Boeing should pay to the families of Mercy Ndivo, a 28-year-old mother from Kenya, and Shikha Garg, a 36-year-old United Nations consultant from India.
The fatal accident occurred minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport. Ndivo and her husband were returning from her graduation ceremony in London, where she had earned a master’s degree in accounting. The couple is survived by their daughter, a baby at the time who is now almost 8 years old. Ndivo’s parents sued Boeing on his behalf.
Like a number of other passengers, Garg, a consultant for the United Nations Development Program, was on her way to attend a United Nations environmental assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. She is survived by her husband and parents.
In a statement Monday, Boeing told the families of the 346 passengers and crew killed in the two crashes that it was “deeply sorry.”
“We were committed from the outset to fully and fairly compensate the families of those who lost their lives in the accidents, and accepted legal responsibility for the accidents as part of this process,” Boeing said, adding that it respected the families’ right to pursue their claims in court.
The two cases pending before U.S. District Judge Jorge Luis Alonso were initially part of a group of five that could have gone to trial this week. But Alonso said Monday that only two projects could go ahead due to the U.S. government shutdown; an out-of-court settlement in either or both cases could still be reached at any time, even after a jury is impaneled and lawyers present evidence.
Details of previous agreements, most reached just before the scheduled trials began, were confidential and not publicly disclosed.
Robert Clifford, a Chicago lawyer whose firm represents many victims’ families, said attempts to reach a pretrial settlement through mediation have failed in recent months.
“Boeing accepted full responsibility for the senseless and avoidable loss of these lives, but they failed to mediate in good faith to reach a resolution for these devastated families,” Clifford said in a statement. “We are determined to achieve justice for each of them. »
From the moment Ethiopian Airlines pilots took off in their new Boeing jetliner, they encountered problems with the plane.
A device called a stick shaker began vibrating the captain’s joystick, warning that the plane might stall and fall from the sky, and for six minutes the pilots were bombarded with alarms as they fought to fly the plane.
U.S. prosecutors later charged Boeing with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with the two crashes, accusing the company of misleading government regulators about a flight control system it developed for the 737 Max. In both accidents, the software tilted the planes’ noses repeatedly based on erroneous readings from a single sensor.
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the felony charge and approve a pending deal between prosecutors and Boeing. If approved, the deal would allow Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for victims’ families and internal safety and quality measures.
