Boeing ordered to pay more than $28 million to 737 MAX crash victim’s family
By Diana Novak Jones
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A jury in federal court in Chicago on Wednesday ordered Boeing to pay more than $28 million to the family of a United Nations environmental worker killed in the 2019 crash of a 737 MAX jet in Ethiopia.
The verdict given to the Shikha Garg family was the first of dozens of lawsuits filed following the accident that occurred in Indonesia in 2018, killing a total of 346 people.
Under the agreement reached between the parties on Wednesday morning, Garg’s family will receive $35.85 million (the full judgment plus 26% interest) and Boeing will not appeal, according to the family’s lawyers.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shanin Specter and Elizabeth Crawford, who represent the family, said in a statement that the decision “provides public accountability for Boeing’s misconduct.”
Garg was 32 when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, crashed just minutes after takeoff, his lawyers said.
The lawsuit alleged that the 737 MAX plane was defectively designed and that Boeing failed to warn passengers and the public about the plane’s dangers.
The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed five months after Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia. The automatic flight control system contributed to both accidents.
U.S. The planemaker has settled more than 90% of dozens of civil cases related to the two crashes, paying billions of dollars in damages through lawsuits, a deferred prosecution agreement and other payments, the company previously told Reuters.
Boeing has settled three lawsuits filed by families of other victims of the Nov. 5 Ethiopian Airlines crash, according to its lawyers. The conditions of these settlements were not disclosed.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones; Editing by Jamie Freed)
