New York (AFP) – A Chicago jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon in a suit brought against Boeing by family members of a 24-year-old American who perished in a 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crash. The eight-person jury, consisting of five women and three men, began deliberations a bit before 1900 GMT, a judicial source said.
The suit was brought by relatives of Samya Stumo, who died in the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, the second of two MAX calamities that together claimed 346 lives. Nearly all of the civil lawsuits around the crash have been settled out of court. In Stumo’s case, however, her family was unable to reach an agreement with Boeing ahead of the trial, which began on Monday.
The trial featured testimony from Stumo’s relatives, including father Michael Stumo, who said the disaster still haunts the family. “It feels like since she’s been gone we don’t have permission to be happy,” Michael Stumo testified. “Sometimes you catch yourself being happy and you correct yourself, like you shouldn’t be.” In a composed tone, as his wife sobbed in the audience, he spoke for hours about “Sammy,” his “sophisticated and charismatic” daughter.
Boeing has acknowledged that its anti-stall software was implicated in both fatal crashes. The aviation giant’s attorney, Dan Webb, expressed the company’s sorrow at the crash, saying the company’s “only disagreement” with the Stumo family is “on the exact amount of compensation.” In November, a Chicago jury awarded a widower of one of the MAX victims $28.45 million. A second trial, in January, was halted after an out-of-court settlement was reached after the second day.
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