Boeing brought to trial over 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia

Fort Worth, Texas – Representatives of Boeing and relatives of some of the passengers killed in the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX planes will come face to face in a Texas courtroom Thursday, as the aerospace giant will go on trial on a criminal charge it believed it had settled for two years. Ago.

In a memorandum filed Wednesday, attorneys for the families accused Boeing of “the most violent corporate crime in US history.”

Family members were never consulted before Boeing entered into an agreement with the US Department of Justice to avoid prosecution for fraud. Up to a dozen or so people from several countries are expected to testify about how the loss of their loved ones has affected them.

There will be two main phases to the trial: Boeing will enter a lawsuit, and then the passengers’ relatives will ask the court to impose terms on Boeing as it would on any criminal defendant.

The families said in a filing on Wednesday that those conditions must include a court-selected observer to assess whether Boeing is creating a culture of safety and ethics — as the government has promised — and that its steps to do so be made public.

Boeing has faced civil lawsuits, congressional investigations and severe damage to its business since the plane crashes in 2018 and 2019, killing a total of 346 people. But Boeing and its top officials avoided criminal prosecution, due to the settlement reached between the company and the government in January 2021.

Boeing has been charged with one count of defrauding the US to get regulators to approve the Max. But the outgoing Trump administration’s Justice Department agreed to defer prosecution and drop the charge if Boeing pays $2.5 billion — mostly to airlines, but including a $243.6 million fine — and commits no more crimes for three years.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor has been ordered to appear before Boeing after finding that the Department of Justice violated the Victims’ Rights Act by not telling families about confidential negotiations with Boeing. A separate case related to whether Boeing should lose its immunity from prosecution remained unresolved.

Paul Cassell, the attorney representing the families, said he hopes Thursday’s testimony from the relatives will convince the Justice Department to abandon the settlement.

The Biden administration’s Justice Department has not opposed the impeachment, but continues to agree with Boeing that the settlement should remain. In a court filing last November, the department said that without the settlement, the government would lose its ability to ensure that Boeing follows through on reforms designed to prevent future tragedies.

Max’s first passenger flight was in 2017. The first crash occurred in October 2018 in Indonesia and was followed by another in March 2019 in Ethiopia.

Prior to both crashes, an automated flight control system that Boeing did not initially disclose to airlines and pilots pushed the nose down based on a faulty sensor reading. Boeing blamed two former employees for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about the system, known by the acronym MCAS.

One of those former employees, a test pilot, is the only person sued in connection with Max. A jury in Judge O’Connor’s courtroom found him not guilty last year.