Boeing may face its first civil trial over payouts to families of victims in Ethiopia crash

More than six years after a Boeing 737 Max jetliner crashed in Ethiopia, the first civil trial stemming from the disaster that killed all 157 people on board the plane appears poised to move forward.

Boeing has settled most of the dozens of wrongful death lawsuits that families of the victims filed against the aircraft maker after the March 2019 crash, but two of the remaining cases are scheduled to open before a federal court jury as soon as Tuesday afternoon. Jury selection began earlier in the day.

The trial in Chicago, where Boeing used to have its headquarters, isn’t expected to examine the the company’s liability. Boeing already accepted responsibility for what happened to Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and for a similar 737 Max crash five months earlier off the coast of Indonesia, which killed 189 passengers and crew members.

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 originally from Kenya, and 36-year-old United Nations consultant Shikha Garg, who was from India.

The fatal crash happened minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. Ndivo and her husband were returning from her graduation ceremony in London, where she had earned a master’s degree in accountancy. The couple are survived by their daughter, an infant at the time who is now almost 8. Ndivo’s parents sued Boeing on her behalf.

Like a number of the other passengers, Garg, a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, was on her way to attend a U.N. 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 members killed in both crashes that it is “deeply sorry.”

“We made an upfront commitment to fully and fairly compensate the families of those who were lost in the accidents, and have accepted legal responsibility for the accidents in these proceedings,” Boeing said, adding that it respected the families’ rights to pursue their claims in court.

The two cases pending before U.S. District Judge Jorge Luis Alonso originally were among a group of five that potentially could have gone to trial this week. But Alonso said Monday that only two could proceed due to the U.S. government shutdown; an out-of-court settlement in either or both still could be reached at any point, even after a jury is selected and lawyers begin presenting their evidence.

Details of prior settlements, many reached just before the start of scheduled trials, were confidential and have not been publicly disclosed. Lawyers say 14 other lawsuits were still unresolved.

Robert Clifford, a Chicago lawyer whose firm represents many of the victims’ families, said attempts to reach a pre-trial settlement through mediation failed in recent months.

“Boeing accepted full responsibility for the senseless and preventable loss of these lives, yet they have not been mediating in good faith to come to a resolution for these devastated families,” Clifford said in a statement. “We are determined to achieve justice for every one of them.”

From nearly the moment pilots flying for Ethiopian Airlines took off in their new Boeing jetliner, they encountered problems with the plane.

A device called a stick shaker began vibrating the captain’s control column, warning that the plane might stall and fall from the sky, and for six minutes, the pilots were bombarded by alarms as they fought to fly the plane.

U.S. prosecutors later charged Boeing with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with both crashes, accusing the company of deceiving government regulators about a flight-control system it developed for the 737 Max. In both crashes, the software had pitched the nose of the planes down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor.

The Justice Department asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the felony charge and to approve an agreement between prosecutors and Boeing that is pending. If it is approved, the deal would allow Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing another $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for the victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.