Boeing was ordered to pay a huge compensation of 49.5 million dollars to the family of Samya Rose Stumo, a 24-year-old girl who died in the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max in 2019. 157 people lost their lives in the terrible accident.
The maximum compensation
The trial, which began May 4 in a federal court in Chicago, resolved one of the lawsuits still pending with the families of those who died in the crash. The sentence came after about two hours of deliberation: “The jury – we read in the official document – established that the total damages suffered by the appellant amounted to 49.5 million dollars”. The sum includes $21 million in moral and physical damages suffered by Stumo.
The trials and agreements reached so far have focused on the amount of compensation to be awarded to each family who lost loved ones in the tragic accidents. As part of a legal settlement reached between Boeing and most of the victims’ families in 2021, Boeing admitted full responsibility for the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the families agreed not to seek punitive damages. Only two families have not signed this clause: Stumo’s and another.
After the accident that occurred off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, with 189 victims, and the one that occurred in Ethiopia in 2019, with 157 deaths, the company discovered the existence of a faulty software system on the Max models, which were new at the time, which in both cases had caused the nose of the plane to lower, preventing the pilots from controlling it.
The cause of the Stumo family
The Stumo family waited years for their case to go to trial, while the court methodically reviewed dozens of other cases. US District Judge Jorge Alonso had in fact suspended the cases of the two families who had not signed the agreement, waiting for the court to deal with most of the other scheduled cases.
“The agreement aimed to guarantee compensation to each family for the loss of their loved ones, which is never a given if a case reaches court – explained the family’s lawyers -. Furthermore, it guaranteed that Boeing could not ask a judge to transfer the cases to the families’ country of origin, where they could have received lower sums”.
“We are deeply sorry to all those who lost their loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302,” a Boeing spokesperson said. “While we have resolved nearly all of these disputes through out-of-court settlements, families have the right to pursue their rights through the courts, and we respect that right.”