New York (AFP) – Boeing is poised to face a jury trial from Monday over the fatal 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane, the first civil case related to the disaster to reach court. The Chicago trial, expected to last two weeks, was to feature two plaintiffs who lost family members in the calamity. But one of the complaints was resolved in an out-of-court settlement late Sunday, a judicial source told AFP, in line with most earlier litigants. Barring another last-minute settlement, the trial will begin Monday with the selection of an eight-person jury.
“We have had some ongoing discussion that may continue throughout the day and the ensuing days,” Robert Clifford, who represents relatives of several crash victims, told the US District court on Wednesday at a pre-trial hearing. A deal could also be struck even while the trial is underway.
The Boeing plane crashed on March 10, 2019, just six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on its way to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board. Relatives of 155 of the victims had sued Boeing between April 2019 and March 2021 for wrongful death, negligence and other charges. As of late last month, there were 18 complaints still open against Boeing, a source familiar with the case told AFP. Sunday’s deal meant that a further three cases had been settled since then, multiple judicial sources told AFP.
This week’s Chicago litigation will now examine only the case of Canadian Darcy Belanger. Belanger, 46, who lived in Colorado, was a founding member of environmental NGO, the Parvati Foundation, and also worked in construction. He had been visiting Nairobi for a UN conference.
US Judge Jorge Alonso has split the Boeing lawsuits into groups of five or six plaintiffs, annulling a potential trial if all the suits settle. In November, the aviation giant reached a last-minute agreement with the family of a woman killed in the crash. The Ethiopian Airlines disaster followed another fatal crash involving a MAX plane — that of a Lion Air jet that crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board. Boeing also faced dozens of complaints from Lion Air family victims. Just one case remained open, as of the end of March.
Boeing’s settlements with civil plaintiffs have been confidential. The US manufacturer has “accepted responsibility for the MAX crashes publicly and in civil litigation because the design of the MCAS…contributed to these events,” a Boeing lawyer said during an October hearing. The MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) flight stabilizing software was implicated in both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes. The disasters led to congressional hearings, with irate lawmakers demanding answers, and to leadership shake-ups at the aviation company. The entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded for more than 20 months. Boeing later revised the MCAS program under scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which ultimately cleared the jets to resume service in November 2020.
The Chicago trial comes as Boeing also faces a potential criminal trial in June in Texas over the MAX. That trial follows on from a January 2021 deferred prosecution agreement between Boeing and the US Justice Department over the two MAX crashes. In May 2024, the Justice Department notified the court that Boeing had violated terms of the accord. That came after a January 2024 incident in which an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX was forced to make an emergency landing when a panel blew out mid-flight. US District Judge Reed O’Connor last month ordered a jury trial from June 23 after earlier throwing out a proposed settlement between Boeing and the Justice Department.
© 2024 AFP
